Astronomy
Two years ago I have finally bought a half-decent telescope so I could see something nice, finally - it's a 5" Newtonian,
and has let me finally see the clouds on Jupiter with naked eye. The main thing that really goes against this hobby around
the area where I live is almost permanent cloud cover.
I have a Fuji camera with a broken power supply, but it sports a really nice 2 megapixel full color Sony CCD, so my next project is to hook this up
to the telescope. A little smaller improvement will be to add heating system to the telescope so I don't have to worry that
much about dew.
Here is a picture of the moon I took with just a regular point-and-shoot camera and my telescope in late January of 2005.
Games
That's the other hobby of mine - I enjoy playing games - almost any games, preferably those that tickle my brain at
least a little bit. From classics, I play Chess, Bridge, Skat, Scrabble, Clue, and more. From less classic, lately
Magic, also computer games if time allows, although I prefer competitive games and unfortunately a lot of competitive
computer games are rather dull (gee - he scored 2 more points than I did - duh.) One little exception lately was
Guild Wars - that's probably the first competitive computer game with at least half-reasonable idea. Computer games have taught me quite a few things
over time. Nethack taught me patience and resource management. Simcity taught me a lot about resource and money
management. They helped me develop my planning-ahead skills, taught me persistence, helped me develop a healthy
sense of competition. They probably taught me a dozen other things I don't even realize.
The only competitive sport I have ever liked to play is volleyball. Unfortunately, it takes 12 willing people to
make two full teams. Even for beachball, it's at least 4 people, but since there are no beaches around Pittsburgh,
not many people play that here.