My Hobbies
Those who know me best usually come to the conclusion that I have altogether too many interests and that I do not pay sufficient attention to any one of them. Others consider that I have a butterfly mind and can never settle to anything for very long. Both of these facts are, of course, perfectly true.
I, on the other hand, put all this down to having an enquiring mind (also to being a genius which is my usual excuse for absent-mindedness). Certainly I am interested to some degree in most things - though I have little interest in sport of any kind.
Theology
I became a Christian at the age of seven and since my early teenage have been interested in all things Christian. I have also looked into other faiths and have read translations of non-Christian scriptures.
By the age of 22 I became particularly interested in Theology and it is that interest which is the main content of these pages. So I won't say much about that on this page.
Music
As a child my main musical influences were home and the Church. My parents had
a rather limited interest in music. Light classics and brass band music were
just about the extent of listening at home. This gave me my grounding in
Gilbert and Sullivan and the like. Church, on the other hand, not only taught
me to love the old hymns but also, I suspect, my interest in folk song because
of the similar structure of hymn and folk-song.
My brother, Peter, on the other hand, loved jazz and played in a jazz band. Although I was never as interested in jazz as Peter was, I have always kept some good trad jazz discs around for when I need a change of musical mood.
As a teenager I loved the music of Buddy Holly. Then I got into Everly Brothers music which led me to Country and Western and Bluegrass music. These in turn (along with skiffle) led to folk-song. I actually worked fairly close to Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society where I learned to play folk-style guitar and picked up my earliest repertoire of songs.
You could not spend every Tuesday and Saturday evening at "The House" without also noticing folk-song's nearest relative, folk dance. At the time I would occasionally slip into the big hall where the dancing took place and join in for a few minutes. Much later I discovered the real joys of country and folk dance.
At the time I belonged to a "Community Church" in Leicester. I once said to the Pastor,
"How come we call ourselves a Community Church but if we want entertainment we have to go outside the church?"
His answer was fairly typical. "You've got the vision, brother. You deal with it."
I learned to Call for
Barn Dances
, starting with a couple of dances at a birthday party, until I was able to
provide at least one area of entertainment in the Fellowship. Calling for Barn
Dances has been a major hobby ever since. Chris got involved soon after we met
and we have been kept busy at weekends for the last sixteen years -
interestingly enough, most of our gigs are for Churches.
Although I'm musically illiterate, I do like to play about with music and one of my favourite programs is " NoteWorthy ". This program is to be highly recommended. It works rather like a musical Word Processor. It saves files in its own format but also exports and imports midi files. It also prints out fairly professional looking scores. It is probably one of the easiest music notation programs around and is very inexpensive.
My Computer
When my son got his Sinclair ZX81 back in1981 he got me hooked straight away. I have never become an expert with the things but I can bluff non-computer people into thinking I know what I'm talking about.
My real enjoyment, though comes from writing these pages and playing with music on the computer.
> My most recent project is a foray into 3D graphics. I started with Terragen - a brilliant program for making landscapes. What is more - it's free. As it is an ongoing project, the author allows it to be used freely unless you wish to use it commercially in which case it needs to be registered, which costs about $80.
From there I went to Vue D'Esprit, another brilliant program which rivals Bryce. Once again it is a landscaping program but with scope for all sorts of other uses. I am now trying to get to grips with Poser, which enables the user to produce realistic models of humans (and animals) which can be imported into other 3D packages or rendered within Poser itself. I am not finding Poser easy!!
I'm not into computer games. I loved the old Text Only Adventures but could never complete them. Had lots of fun trying though! I never could get on with the "real time" games and besides, what chance would a wrinkley like me have with Lara Crofts?
Actually, I am just getting back into Text Adventures, though they now tend to be called "Interactive fiction ". I have just finished programming an adventure in an "IF" language called TADS. The adventure is fairly simple, being intended for children of about 11-12 years of age. It's not very original - the plot was published about 20 years ago though I have extensively rewritten it. It's simply called "The Tower".