Interests

I got into climbing in about November 2003 and really, really took to it. As a result I climb generally 4-6 times a week at a variety of indoor walls and outside anywhere. The effect was I lost a lot of weight, got very fit, found a new passtime, enjoyed myself immensely, and got quite good at climbing quite quickly. I currently lead up to E3 (November 2005) and 6c (French) outside, and am playing with 7a/7a+ inside.

2) Aikido.

In theory I should attend Aikido about four times a week. I generally average about once but am hoping to push it up to twice. It has been described to me as the “gentleman’s” martial art - almost totally defensive and allowing a graded response much more than other martial arts. In Karate (which I studied as a kid) your options are far more limited. In Aikido you have the option of either avoiding an attack, deflecting at and making your attacker look stupid, or causing varying degrees of harm from minor sprains to death.

I have been studying Aikido for just over three years now and I will freely admit that I am very poor at it and need a lot more practice!

3) Language

Also in theory I am currently learning German. This is something I have been looking at for a while for I, like most others, have a smattering of school German and it appears a shame to waste it.

4) Computers

a) Gaming

I have for a long time been gaming on-line. This all started in early 1998 when I used to play Quake2. I then started playing Unreal when it came out in July 1998. Unsurprisingly, I was not very good, and spent a long time contributing to other people’s scores. Finally, after around 4 hours play a night (and increasingly panic-stricken letters from BT’s debt collection department) I finally got to be a decent player. I then decided to pay out for a ISDN connection at home, and enjoyed for a few months the wonderful experience of being an above-average player.

Unfortunately, I then spent a long time away from the game. This was mainly because my firm decided to send me anywhere which didn’t have a computer. I then had some personal issues and in the end spent around 5 months totally out of the game. I have never really got back into it either.

b) Building & generally messing around with.

I suppose I started computing in the early 80’s, in the lazy, hazy days of the ZX81, Spectrum, and the Commodore 64. I personally had (and still have somewhere) the C64, and played elite from dawn until...well dawn, actually. After the sad demise of the C64 I remained computer-less until 1995 (when I first got a proper computer (486-DX33/8Mb).

I played with this trying to get some more performance out of it (a bit of a forlorn hope to be honest), and eventually gave up and bought all the bits to construct a AMD-K5-75 system. From then on it went in leaps and bounds, K5-P166, Pentium 233MMX (o/c to 266), Celeron 450a (Overclocked 300a), AMD Athlon 1466. The last of which I have had since November 2001 and it is really due for an upgrade, but since I don’t really do much gaming anymore then I don’t see the need for it at present.

I really enjoy generally messing around with computers. I try and keep learning, trying new programs and new things with old programs all the time. For example, this website was built partly with Photoshop even though I am quite happy to use Paint Shop Pro. At the end of the process I come away knowing a lot more about Photoshop then I did to start with!

5) Goth, Gigs and Nightclubs.

I am, as you can probably work out from the photos , an active participant in the Goth scene. Although I would strenuously deny that I am actually a Goth (I wear far too many colours), I do enjoy the scene. This is mainly due to the open-mindedness of the people, the friendliness of the people and the quality of the music. At present it is also an amazingly active music scene. After years of the same old songs being played there has suddenly been a vast increase in the number of bands and also the number of those who are producing good music.

The scene is very active in the area in which I live, with regular events every week. Most weekends are totally taken up with Gigs and Clubs and there is a fair number of mid-week events as well. I suppose I try and get to gigs about once every fortnight at the minimum, but recently it has been considerably more than this.

6) Reading, Cooking, and other miscellaneous pursuits.

I like to read (Anything and everything. Pratchett to Heller). Cook (Curry), Eat out (Chinese, Thai, Indian, Greek, English), etc. I like films and try and go to cinema every few weeks or so. I have quite a reasonable Video/DVD collection which I also try and keep reasonably up to date. Film types? - Thriller, Horror, some Comedy. No Drama though .

I try and get a reasonable amount of exercise, and in addition to Aikido (mentioned above) try and swim when I have the chance.

7) Things I don’t do:

Watch TV (have no time), listen to Radio (ditto), read newspapers (ditto). As a result I am almost totally ill-informed regarding world events. This I regard as a good thing.