I have many interests. Way, way too many of them to keep up with all at
once, so I rotate, and only pursue a few at once. At the top of the page
you can find shortcuts to various substantial websites I own. Below that,
you can read me waffling on about myself to your heart's content, together
with links to yet more pages.
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Science
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- Computer Science
- This definitely comes under my work interests, but
then again, I'm lucky to have a job which involves the
sort of learning I enjoy.
- Astronomy
- I got interested in Astronomy when a teenager, and
have remained interested in observing ever since, mainly
spotting planets, asteroids, comets, nebulae, globular
clusters and other fuzzy objects in the sky. One such
sight, as you may remember, was Comet Hale-Bopp, which
blazed through our skies in March 1997 (see below).
In fact I even went so far as to make a quilt of it!
I am a life member of the Oxford University Space and
Astronomical Society. No, I don't have a telescope.
It's amazing what you can see just with a pair of binoculars.
My puzzles page also has some astronomical puzzles on
it.
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- Meterological Phenomena
- I also like spotting various pretty meteorological
phenomena in the sky, such as rainbows, halos, sun dogs
and the like. Visit my Meteorological Phenomena page
for more information and some explanations and pretty
pictures.
- Mathematics
- I am interested in mathematics, but that usually
comes under my work interests. I am, however, a life
member of the Oxford University Invariant Society (a
society which enjoys mathematics) and Oxford University
Scientific Society, and I do read mathematical recreations
books sometimes. Fractals in particular, have fascinated
me ever since I first learnt of them back in 1987. For
Science Week 2000, I prepared some fractal exhibits.
There are some still images and some fractal movies,
which you are welcome to go and have a look at!
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Sports and Exercise
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Racquet Sports
- I tend to like all sorts of "bat 'n' ball" sports. I've
tried and enjoyed badminton, tennis, table tennis, softball,
rounders, squash and volleyball. In particular, I used to
play a lot of tennis and badminton, playing for teams at my
local clubs (that's a photo of me at a tennis match at Woodstock),
but I had to give most of that up due to something called
plantar fasciitis, and now I just play the occasional game
of badminton.
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Caving
- In the past, I belonged to Oxford University Cave Club, and enjoyed some
great trips down various assorted Mendip, Welsh and Yorkshire
caves. It's kind of like doing a giant obstacle course, with
interesting scenery interspersed with challenges.
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Other Activities
- I do an assortment of other exercise: I cycle to get around town, and sometimes
go on cycle rides out in the country. I like swimming and
aqua aerobics, and have been fortunate enough to enjoy the
big Olympic-sized swimming pool we have here at the University.
I also enjoy walking, when I can. Some of the places I've been to include
some Spanish mountains in the Picos de Europa, parts of
the Yorkshire Dales like Ingleborough and Pen-y-ghent, a
couple of peaks of the Lake District, parts of the the Oxfordshire
Way and the South-West coastal path. More recently I've
done some walking in assorted parts of Scotland. The photo
is of me resting on the trig point of Cadair Idris (just
to prove I really did get up there!). Unfortunately it looks
like any other trig point in the cloud!
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Music
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Instrumental
- I like to play to a reasonable amateur standard, and at
various times I've played the piano, organ, trumpet, and more
recently, French horn. I played the piano from the age of
7, and though I have accompanied singers and instrumentalists
in the past, I haven't done so for a while now. Playing the
organ was something I did for 6 years 1988-1994 as the organist
at the chapel at Somerville College, Oxford, but I haven't
played since then. Nowadays, I currently play trumpet for
the local big band, Big Band Substance. See poster on the
left from when the band played in Glasgow City Halls in January
2000 - that's me on the left in the red t-shirt.
I also play French horn in the local orchestra. I used to
play trumpet, but then one time we ended up with 4 trumpets
and 2 horns (an orchestra is supposed to have 2 trumpets and
4 horns) and I switched. I completely fell in love with the
French horn, and now for once in my life I'm actually doing
lots of practice! My favourite radio station is Classic FM.
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Vocal
- I am unfortunately one of those people who know far too many Gilbert &
Sullivan quotes, and it's doing G & S that I've had the
both fun singing. I am a life member of Oxford University
Gilbert & Sullivan Society. In the past I've played various
roles, including Lady Jane in Patience, and Katisha
in The Mikado. For the latter the local press dubbed
me as an aggressive man-eating soprano, but this is most emphatically
not true! I'm a mezzo-soprano.
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Leisure
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- Humour
- I like to think I have a sense of humour. I started keeping a collection
of humour files for my own amusement, but thought I might
as well make them available via the web, and so here are the
files themselves.
- Cooking
- I like cooking, and a lot of the cooking I do is vegetarian,
mostly things that aren't stereotypically vegetarian, but
food that meat eaters will like too. These days I still tend
to do a lot of vegetarian cooking, and some of my favourite
things to cook include baked goods, fondues and ices. These
aren't foods I tend to want to consume a lot of but fortunately
ice-cream keeps for a long time in the freezer, my friends
and work colleagues are very obliging at disposing of things
like cookies and cake, and I don't have fondue too often.
The photo is of a Christmas cake I baked in 1995. I often
put recipes of mine up on the web, in my Recipe Pages (about
300 recipes so far). You might think it's for your benefit
- ha! It's for me! So when I'm far away from home, if I can
still access the internet, I can find the recipe. Plus, it's
a place to quickly jot down last night's fabulous concoction,
so when I want to try that recipe again, I can find it easily!
- Crafts
- I do a lot of all sorts of crafts, mostly sewing types,
so much so that the 2nd bedroom is known as "The Sewing Room"!
I make a fair few items of clothing for myself, often things
I can't find in the shops, or that I can make a lot cheaper.
I also do the odd bit of embroidery, some cross-stitch, the
occasional bit of braiding, and I fell in a big way for patchwork
and quilting, as can be seen from my Patchwork and Quilting
pages. Besides these, I got hooked into tatting, glass painting,
and a bit of stencilling. I'm a novice lace maker, too.
See my crafts page for more details.
- House
- In August 2000 I bought my own house, in the completely gorgeous location
of Alva (about which I'll put up a web page with piccies soon!).
At the moment I'm very much enjoying buying furniture for
the house, making curtains to match, doing the odd spot of
decorating. Also there is the garden to do...
- Gardening
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I love gardening. At the last house I lived in, I had access to a garden
and grew a great variety
of flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables. That's one of the sunflowers I
grew. After living in a flat for two years, I now have a garden once
more, however I have grand plans for it and so it's being completely
re-landscaped at the moment. I'm sure once it's done up nicely I'll
have a web page up with before and after photos!
- Bridge
- This is a marvellous game giving you a good mental challenge, whilst simultaneously
teaching you proper respect for little old ladies when they
beat you hands down. I haven't played for a while now, as
my bridge partner moved and then so did I. I did belong to
Oxford University Bridge Club however.
I do have here a couple of pages with some whist-like card
games suitable for three players, Sergeant Major and Nomination
Whist, which you might be interested in.
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Size Acceptance
- I'm a moderator on the moderated size-activism newsgroup, soc.support.fat-acceptance.moderated.
Yes, I'm a large person myself, and dislike the prejudices and
misconceptions that abound about people of different sizes, and
I wish that Western society had a better attitude in general towards
body size. I have some big folks FAQs that I keep in various states
of maintenance, namely: UK clothing, Exercise and Fitness Resources
and Sports and Activities for the above newsgroup, and several
of the FAQs for them. At the moment, I have some (a bit out of
date) pages concerning Health Information about Fatness, and some
day I'll get around to doing my own pages on fat-acceptance.
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