|
I loved my dad's K&E slide rule and challenged myself to figure out how to use it without reading the manual.
I toyed with the idea of buying a ham radio and for about two decades I spent every night in bed scanning the shortwave dials listening to broadcasts in languages I don't speak before I nodded off to sleep.
My favorite magazine subscription for the last twelve years or so has been Sky & Telescope from which I've learned a lot and I've toyed with buying my own telescope.
I have written programs in my free time to, for example, statistically evaluate different sequences of plays in Bejeweled to maximize one's score.
I have an ongoing project to digitize photographic images to reconstruct three dimensional arrays of such things as the branching and leaves on trees so as to map out and analyze the similarities and differences between species and individuals. Just for fun, mind you.
I read for pleasure.
I enjoy doing puzzles (crosswords, Jumble, sudoku, etc.) but I like to make them challenging by setting time limits and doing them without pencil and paper.
I love walking over to my bookshelf and opening up a physics or other book and working problems at random.
I hate fooling with gadgets for very long unless they give me something I want.
I'm pretty sure I'm a nerd.
|