Art and science in all forms, which covers a lot. Daily it’s mostly gaming, music, movies/shows and science videos and articles.

I have 4, one for each decade of life

1. Stargate SG1
2. Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology, and Sociology of Sex
3. Violence prevention, deescalation, and management in inpatient psychiatry (which became my career)
4. Western Esoteric spiritual practices including Tarot, Astrology, Tasseography, Palmistry, and the myriad religious beliefs that they syncretistically evolved from

My family learned thirty years ago never to utter the words ‘Doctor Who’ in my presence.

Currently it’s buying stupid but vaguely useful things.

I spent $50 on a SDR radio that can listen to a very wide spectrum of stuff. Also got a cheap pair of GMRS radios and got hooked onto the local repeater tower for about a 50 mile radius of communication.

A friend had a gas coming from their oven on occasion so I got a sensor for about $70 to try to fix it (and did so successfully)

I have more flashlights than any one man needs, but they do come in useful.

I just got a lock pick set and a practice lock. Probably never use any vague skill I’d develop, but if it saves me calling one locksmith, one time, it’ll have paid for itself.

A good pair of binoculars is just nice to have.

Tools of any sort.

Non-stupid prepper stuff should some crazy shit go down. Water purification, solar systems, weapons.

I’d like to try one of the mesh networks, but have more pressing hobby-crap to pursue.

Ive always kinda been obsessed with truth. Its not a good obsession. outside of that I can be a bit of dilettante sometimes delving deeply but for a period and you can’t really stay at depth if you keep moving around as in any field things change a lot. There were times I was into scifi/fantasy/reading and technology and its not like Im not anymore but its more like its not that unusual anymore compared to when I was young.

It feels a little generic, but video games. I’ve been playing them since my dad got a Gamecube around launch, and I’ve been reading about them since ~2011 when I discovered Steam and graphics cards. I learned within a year of watching the store that sales on Steam generally update Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ve checked what goes on sale for at least 90% of the Tuesdays and Thursdays since then.

I used to read a lot of IGN, then Kotaku, then r/games to keep up on everything. Now I mostly listen to a couple gaming podcasts (Minnmaxx and Triple Click) and that covers enough big and small games for me.

I like to say that I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of gaming from about 2007 onward, meaning for a given game I can give you a general idea of the genre, reception, notable influence on or from the industry, and I can usually recall at least 5 seconds of gameplay. The most exciting thing for me in conversation is when someone brings up a game I haven’t heard of or know nothing about.

License plates.

Plane crashes.

Not in a morbid sense, but rather I like reading the NTSB reports about how the holes in the Swiss Cheese model line up. There are several Youtube channels that give detailed breakdowns on accidents that I like to watch as well.

Why?

It started when I was 19 when I saw the aftermath of United 232. My parents and I were driving through Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. Fortunately, the highway was far enough away that only the larger parts of the plane could be seen. Bodies were not visible or had already been removed. That was 37 years ago and I still remember it like it was still happening.

I launched into learning everything I could about what happened to that airplane.

I had done the same thing with other accidents as well. Like many my age, I watch the Challenger accident live and Chernobyl happened that same year as well.

Add to that, in the 90’s I started skydiving. My home DZ flew two Beech 18’s. In one aircraft I experienced engine problems twice that elicited a bail out of all the jumpers. On both occasions the plane landed safely and put back into service after the engine was repaired, or replaced. The other Beech 18 I actually experienced a crash. It was fuel starvation on climb out and the pilot, who was the Drop Zone Owner, was flying. He put the plane down in a corn field off the end of the runway. All the jumpers except one got into the other Beech and jumped.

That just fed my curiosity. And yes, I still jumped after all of those occurrences. The crash actually happened first. I just tell it chronologically backward as it was the most serious of the incidents.

I also think that my studying of aviation accidents made me a better and safer skydiver. I was always thinking in terms in how things were lining up to allow bad things to happen. Not that I didn’t have close calls, I even wrote about one of them in a previous post, but I never experienced any major injuries in my 4500 jumps.

I am one of the developers for Project Rubi-Ka, a server emulator/private server for the classic sci-fi MMORPG, Anarchy Online.

AO is now nearly 25 years old and no longer has any developers at the company that released it, but it is still running.

I have written over 2,000,000 lines of server emulator code for AO. I am now probably one of the world’s foremost experts in how the game works.

Too many. I collect special interests.

The one that’s lasted the longest are:

Filmmaking (specifically no/low budget filmmaking) with the premise being that regardless of tools, there are things that anyone can do to improve their product without a large budget. (ie. remembering to record tone for later editing. Planning your shoot for the proper time of day. Using reflectors even if you can’t afford lights. Blocking and Business, Shooting enough coverage for later editing, etc…) A large amount of quality in low budget films comes from taking the time to actually plan things out rather than just showing up with a camera and pointing it at volunteer actors.

Things like proper blocking, shot planning, etc… are free. With digital cameras, film isn’t a commodity and there’s nothing stopping you from filming enough angles to give the video editor something to work with rather than just constant two-shots. Editing software itself is free.

Point being, there is no excuse for lazy filmmaking, even if you don’t have access to expensive equipment. Planning trumps equipment 90% of the time.

Okay…rant over.

Coding. Why did it have to be coding? I’m not good at it. Everything I’ve read about it makes little sense. The tiny bit of coding I do get needs to be reinforced 1000 times over. So far I’ve made some triangles and my terminal spout some shit out. Nothing fancy. Yet in the back of my mind I’m gonna make a fucking video game one day and all this confusion and struggling will pay off.

Reefkeeping. Been into it for well over 25 years. Had several reef tanks over the years, with my largest being a 225 gallon that I had to break down last year (still pissed about that one).

Clouds!

And other weather phenomena, of course.

I just think they’re fantastic and they change so often and tell us so much

During the pandemic I decided to get a barbell and start lifting at home. Fast forward a few years and I have a full on powerlifting rack and weights and completely changed my physique from “skinny runner” to “quite stout”. I’ve never felt or looked better in my entire life, and will yap uncontrollably if anyone mentions lifting within earshot

For many years now, unions. It started when I became a union organizer in 2021. I love the rich history of the labor movement, the unending struggle against capitalist forces, the drama, the conferences, all of it. I’m going to Labor Notes this year as a rep for my local!

I tend to have distinct phases of special interests, and I still find the topics interesting after they fade. The earliest I can remember is tractors, then space, then castles and knights, then guns, then ww1, then ww2, then computers and programming. Now it’s unions