How to keep track of interests
It seems that blogs are good to find out who's sharing the same interests as you do. When google'ing multiple words, it's likely to provide hits to blogs that have all words in articles. This is what this post is trying to do: describe some of the interests I have so that you, who share them, can find me.
I like Astronomy.
For me this is the "master" hobby, as it covers topics ranging from physics, optics, photography and hiking (guess why !). Photo astronomy has taken a brand new horizon with computing and CCD imaging. I have put together some images I did 10 years ago with real photographic rolls, and last winter with a digital camera body. What a change...
I like Radio-Controlled (RC) Model Planes.
Until a few years ago, planes had to be patiently built out of balsa wood, and covered with paper or plastic films. They had to be propelled with noisy, heavy, powerful and dangerous gas engines. It was not possible to power small planes at all, because electric motors (and especially batteries) were too heavy. All this added to a dangerous hobby, frustrating, and expensive.
All this has changed in the past few years, with technology borrowed from CD-ROM drive motors, and cell-phone batteries. Planes are made of EPP (a form of polystyrene), that is virtually indestructible.
I keep a separate blog about RC planes.
I like Aviation.
I became a private pilot in 1989, and flew about 150 hours since then. I flew for 2 years, stopped for 13 years, revalidated my license, flew for one year, then stopped in 2003. I now replace this with RC planes, that yields similar pleasures, with the added benefits of costing less, being much less dangerous, and not as time-demanding. I wrote an article (in French) for pilotlist, a French aviation forum, and a follow-up.
It is possible to mix aviation with astronomy.
It is also possible to mix RC aviation with photography.
I like computer programming.
This is good since this is what I do for a living !
I like to play the piano.
I started playing it about 2
years ago, and enjoy it. We own an electric piano (Yamaha Clavinova),
which is good because it never gets out of tune, can be played with
headphones (at night, or when studying a piece...), and can be moved in
the house easily if necessary. If you want to hear some, click here
at your own risk... Music is one of those things where practicing is
usually much more enjoyable than listening to what other people (with
similar capabilities than you) do. Kinda like software programming in
fact...every day people write millions of lines of it, but no one's really interested to read other people's code (unless there's a bug in it !).
That's it for now.
