interests
Apart from socializing and sleep, I'd put all my activities into two categories: computers and physical activity. There's been a recent dabbling in video
games — to be certain, I dominate in
Perfect Dark and
Quake III (yes, I know it's 2010) — but it's mostly just something to while away the hours while avoiding any
sense of accomplishment.
On the outside world, I've recently developed a fondness for bouldering; you can find me at the
Belmont Planet Granite
several nights a week and once or twice on the weekends. I'm not much for rock-climbing (too much time to tie-in) or actual rocks (too much time to get there),
but the stucco walls and plastic handles fit my "hey let's climb something" need from childhood pretty perfectly. My dad's been on a half-marathon kick lately,
and though I'm not certain why this happened, we've been enjoying some father-son time pacing each other for a couple hours here and there, in whatever city
we find ourselves in. When running sucks, as it often does, there's always
racquetball at the Y,
a sport at which I fail and my opponent, a former state champion, never ceases to dominate.
More importantly, I devote my spare hours to cycling. I bike to work when it's comfortable (not rainy or cold; I'm particular about this, but it's a 12-mile ride),
and during the season I do 200-300 miles per week. I try to do a couple of centuries every year (easy pickings are
Tierra Bella
and the
Sequoia Century, but I've been failing the lottery for the
Death Ride);
it's a family tradition to do the
Western Pennsylvania MS150 each June,
and if you're interested the NMSS or
Team in Training are excellent ways to get into cycling. Less seriously, you'll
find me in the hills on the Peninsula, and up in the
MROSD preserves on my mountain bike. When I'm actually out riding —
and not just hammering in the gym — I try to post my adventures on my
other blog.
Academically, I'm a theory guy. Out from school, I don't follow math so much anymore, but I pay attention to the high points (Perelman, for example) and try to
read an article every now and again. My real outlet for this has become game theory. Microeconomics destroys all else in terms of general coolness, so far as
I'm concerned; the wonderful thing about the field of game theory is that it engages thoughts on learned behaviour, which leads me to my main time sink.
Computers occupy most of my life; the discussion came up at
Homestead the other day, and we all realized we spend roughly
16-18 hours online every day. Sad, in a way, but I've come to terms with that. I throw my time at web projects to keep myself reasonably up-to-date (although I know
that some of you are seeing the .php extension and scoffing at that); I'm trying to get into open-source, but it's tough to motivate myself into that. The real
deal here, for me, is AI and machine learning. Holy rusted metal, Batman, ML and recognition is the answer to 90% of the things I grew up thinking would be
totally and truly badass. Merge this with game theory, and I end up spending a strangely large amount of my time on evolutionary models in Perl.
Most importantly, I've taken a brewing class. Pontificating on beer and literature are two of my side projects, but, strangely, few people are all that interested.
Guess I'll just have to stick with math and economics.