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Roland's Hobbies (with links)
At school I felt at home in 4 subjects in particular : Art
& Music / Mathematics &
Science. For some reason, this combination proved unusual and difficult for my
teachers to accept. Yet Einstein,
Mussolini and Klimt played the violin. Mendelssohn
painted lovely watercolours of the Amalfi coast, and Sir William Hershel, who discovered
the planet Uranus was also a great musician. So one might almost conclude where there is Art, there is Mathematics, and vice versa.
For example ; If your colour theory
is weak you will not be able to mix the right colour. If your perspective is
off, things will not look right.....likewise......If you have little
imagination, you will not come across that initial spark of an idea which leads
to the successful coding of a computer program. If you don't have fantasy,
you'll never look for some pattern which characterizes a new Scientific
discovery ! If you share an interest in one of my hobbies let me know, please !
In no particular order here are my hobby related interests in life :
- Astronomy :
( Click to view page ) When I was 9 I had a department store refractor. When I
showed Venus to my Mother she exclaimed "My Goodness, I can see craters
on Venus !". Well I had to explain that Venus has a thick atmosphere,
and dew on the main lens was probably the culprit. Now I have a
better "Newtonian" telescope, and a
"Maksutov" reflector is on it's way. I am a new member of the Bristol
Astronomical Society.
- Backgammon : This game is radical ! I'm addicted to it. It's
easy to learn and play, but hard to become an expert. I play on Yahoo!
games sometimes. We can have a game online...my nickname is "mars_music".
I nearly always participate in the local Bristol
Backgammon tournaments held at Bristol County Sports club, on the 2nd
Thursday (7:30) each month. I once got into the final and twice into the
semi. I'm still learning a few tricks though as I practise with Jellyfish
and Snowie, two neural-net backgammon
bots. In January 2001 I won the Bristol Open Grand Prix tournament
consolation prize.
- Collecting DVDs and CDs : Don't we all ? My collection is mainly
classical. I also like Jazz ( Brubeck / Buena
Vista Social ) and 60s easy listening ( Herb Alpert / Bacharach ). My
classical collection is too complex to try to describe. Helmut Walsha and
Glenn Gould play Bach well. Kripps conducts Mozart nicely. Mravinsky's
Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Svetlanov's Tchaikovsky's Suites are all nice. I
have some great Supraphon discs I bought in the Czech republic of Mahler's
Symphonies.
- Flight Simulators : FS2000, Fly!, Falcon
4.0 - way too cool - Flanker 2.0
is a Russian flight simulator of the Sukhoi Su 27 for the high end PC. I
once flew a Cessna too in real life. Yes it's nice to fly and soar freely
like a bird....especially in an armchair. In Falcon I like getting into a
deep stall in an F16 at 20,000 feet, and rocking the stick to regain
controlled flight before you eject at 5,000 feet.
- Forth Programming : What's this ? It's a high level programming
language invented by Charles Moore in the 70s to control radio telescopes.
It still survives today ; for example ; The Space shuttle's robot arm's
software is written in Forth. You define words based on pre-existing words
in a vocabulary. You build up your definitions, extending that vocabulary,
until you reach one final top level word that runs your program. I use SwiftForth,
and Quartus Forth for the PalmPilot.
You have to be very imaginative and artistic to program.
- Robotics : I program the LEGO Mindstorms RCX 1.5 Programmable brick
with a language called pbForth. This overwrites the firmware on the LEGO
microchip, to allow HyperTerminal to send Forth definitions in real time to
the brick. The Lego Mindstorm series is a good toy for grown ups...let's
face how many 12 yr olds can program Artificial Intelligence ?
- French Films : I am talking New Wave here.... Truffaut,
Goddard, Rohmer, Tavernier.... these are the the best film directors of all
time. Period. I do like German directors ( Wim Wender's "Paris,
Texas", Russian too ( Mikhailkov's "Burnt by the Sun" ) and
even Australian directors ( Peter Weir's "Picnic ad Hanging
Rock".) However, I like the sound of the French language alot, though I
don't speak French particularly well. Two of my favourite French films are
"A Man and a Woman" and Rohmer's "Boyfriends &
Girlfriends"
- Painting : Every year in school I won the Art
prize ! I was
only allowed to paint in Oils and soft pastel, so after school I bought some
watercolours. I have sold many paintings in the past, but haven't
done much for a long time. I'll post my new works here !
- Sports Kites : Yes, these are neat little things that do all sorts
of tricks ( if you have the know-how ). You only need 100 hours of practice
a day. I fly Benson's kites : Reflex, Phantom Ultra-Light, and the late
"Phaser". I crashed my Spirit of Air kite....needs fixing. I can
do a few tricks, like float the kite on it's back, and flip it back just
before touch down. I can also do a leading edge take off. Well I only
started a year ago, give me another year !
- Sport ( not exercise, which bores me ) : Table Tennis / Fuzzball /
Frisbee / Swimming / Badminton / American Pool / Tenpin bowling / you name
it, if it's a game I play it....
- Science Fiction : Books and Films. Recently I have read Ben Bova's
"Return to Mars", and this year "Venus". I have read 22
Robert Heinlein books. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C.Clark, Robert Silverberg and
Bob Shaw are some of the authors I have enjoyed most. I'd like to write a
novel too, one day. ( After I've written my book on Violin Playing , of
course ). Films ; I like 2001, Contact, Fahrenheit 451, Dark Star and The
Alien saga,
- Cycling : Out and around Bristol. I have a chrome frame Diamond
Back hybrid bike with 21 shimano gears.
- Photography : I've set myself a task ; to take all my student's
portraits with my new digital SLR, the Olympus Camedia E10. I am going to
put up a page of the ones that have turned out really well so far.
- Internet : Nope, just joking.
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