Personal Info

Clues about what I might be up to right now from twitter.com.

To the left is a radio player which plays my music from last.fm. Sometimes when last.fm "fingerprints" songs from your library it mistakes a song you have for one which you don’t. Because of this there are a few erroneous tracks mixed in here which I may not actually own. Below the radio player is a list of songs I have listened to recently. Below this text is information about music I have been listening to recently on last.fm, including "quilts" of albums and artists I listen to frequently and a ranking of this weeks top artists in order of the number of times I have played one of their songs. All of this information is automatically updated based on what I have been listening to on my ipod, in iTunes, on last.fm and from other sources. Recently I have been listening to a lot of electronic music, but I also really like indie rock bands such as the strokes, the white stripes, Ozma, and Electric Six. I also like Weezer, The Killers, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Muse, and many more.

When I’m not studying or doing research There are a number of things that I like to do for recreation. I love building things, from model rockets as a kid, to web pages and software. I also like cooking, and subsequently eating, good food. When I get the chance I really like to go out sailing, typically on my Laser, but these days I am usually pretty land locked. When not out on the water I often play squash or go get dirty on my mountain bike near Princeton.

The videos I have posted below are the most interesting sailing videos I can find on YouTube. The first three are pretty sweet scenes from offshore racing which is a dangerous and expensive endeavour not for the faint hearted. Someone once compared it to standing under a cold shower and ripping up hundred dollar bills. None the less it is quite fun, especially when you can get a ride on someone else’s boat (that way they supply the hundred dollar bills).

The next three videos are of dinghy sailing. The first of these last three videos is of part of an Australian 18' grand prix race. These boats are pretty nuts and can hit 40 MPH. The last two videos are of Foiler Moths. These boats have hydrofoils, or under water wings, which cause them to lift out of the water once they start moving. These boats are also extremely fast.

Unfortunately I don’t own any of these boats, and probably never will, but my little Laser is still quite a bit of fun and can get moving pretty briskly in a good blow.

I have an awesome Cannondale F1 29er which I like to go beat up on the trails. It is shown below, but mine is in a raw aluminum finish rather than the black with green flames. The 29" wheels are great they roll over log piles like a hot knife cuts through butter.

The only recreational reading I do these days is usually not terribly high-brow. I really enjoy Tom Clancy novels such as The Hunt for red October, A Clear and Present Danger as well as Robert Ludlum novels like The Hades Factor and The Scorpio Illusion which I am currently reading. Both authors more or less write spy adventure stories, but Clancy’s tend to be slightly less fantastic, and more technically sound, whereas Ludlum likes to go for the more absurd plot twists, and complicated romances to distract the hero as he tries to save the world.