Sat down at our family’s Compaq Presario 9546 c. 1995.

Passion since I was a kid. The earliest memory I have is me touching tthe LCD of a laptop.

• Video games: lifelong tech interest + it was what the other people in school were doing? I found that I like to compete as well
• Podcasts: monotonous tasks always really annoyed me as I was mentally understimulated. Listening to podcasts solved that particular issue, and now I can wash dishes and clean for days at a time
• Walking: I was overweight and wanted to change that, and I had trouble getting into running due to me finding it mind-numbingly boring. Just walking and walking a lot was very helpful in this regard. Combined with the aforementioned podcasts it was a winning combination
• Biking: I don’t own a car by choice, being able to get around more than just fine with transit where I live. During the pandemic while I was working from home, this became a challenge as I didn’t want to risk infection when going to buy food or other things. As such, I dusted off an old bicycle, and started using it to get around my local area. I quickly noticed that it was great fun to bike, despite having just a bog-standard terrible bike. I then changed jobs and wanted to go to the office more, and figured one day that I would try to combine my new-found interest in biking with my desire to be at the office by commuting by bike. It was a bit hard to justify time-wise as it was generally faster to go by transit, which motivated me to go faster every day to try to beat the transit alternative. As such, every day became two small races, and I fell in love. Cycling is way more fun than running and I have never been healthier than I am today, I believe.

I have a flower garden because I like taking pictures of flowers and bees and butterflies and shit.

I have a camera because I wanted to have original photos of textures and objects to practice CV and photogrammetry techniques on. (I still haven’t really done that much of this, lol.)

I think the CS stuff generally was from a Stanford course on YouTube?

I existed in the vicinity of computers.

Liked someone who did the hobby and wanted to get closer to them

By trying a lot of other shit I found out I wasn’t wasn’t into

Music: my dad was in a hard rock band in the 90s and got me into a lot of rock and post grunge, then I got Guitar Hero and it was all downhill from there. Decided to pick up bass guitar because it was the less popular guitar instrument and I liked to be very slightly non conformist, and I just kept at it.

Video games: my mom bought me a game boy color, which I loved, then she let me use her Windows XP home machine, and I tried tons of free to play MMOs, private server world of Warcraft, then Half-Life 2 and Garry’s Mod when Steam became a thing, and that was all downhill from there.

My grandma being an artist.

“How is that made?” I now bake my own bread, jerky, pickles, jam, brew beer, 3d print, etc

Circumstance, really. Some things just stuck with me.

Went for a walk. Liked it. Walks got longer and longer while the equipment got better and better. Ended up with trekking.

“Hey, this card game looks pretty cool. Can you explain me the rules of it?” The bane of my wallet, Magic the Gathering, entered my life.

After oven pizza #2947294 “This tastes like shit. What am I doing to myself?” Learned to love cooking.

Brewing- my dad taught me, I could drink everything I made. Underaged me really liked this arrangement until I found out how much work it is, then I started to like it and now it is my job.

Fun. That’s why they are my hobbies.

Guitar: as a kid I just thought it’d be awesome to shred. Now I mostly play acoustic fingerstyle, but shred some. Interest has ebbed and flowed over the years, but been playing forever.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: I wanted a challenge and to get good at something new. It’s hard, but I like it and just keep coming back. Been doing it for a couple years and am a blue belt.

Hiking: did it as a kid, now I do it with my wife who pushes me to hike more than I would otherwise which is good

Tech stuff: coding, piracy, stuff like that. Dad was in IT and taught me to look for solutions with tech. Never stopped. I’m not a fantastic coder, but use it for work and also to solve personal challenges, enter piracy.