81 replies to this topic

[mike]

Just wondering if any of you have other hobbies besides cartography/GIS? Or maybe cartography/GIS is your main hobby? If you do, please share.

I'll go first, my two main interests are in photography and cars.

I have been into photography for a few years, but finally decided to take the big step and bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT as a beginner SLR. I've joined a local photography club here and I'm learning alot. I consider myself a selft-taught beginner for the most part. Here's one of my latest images that I've been working on.




My other hobby is wrenching on my car or friend's cars. I learn alot from being in a car club for more than 4 years. So alot of what I have done and know are self-taught and through the help of other people. I work on my own car to save money (I don't like paying other people to do the work). Everything from brakes to engine work and detailing.


some of the engine work i've done on my car.


So what do you like to do?

[Derek Tonn]

Mike,

My two passions outside of family and mapping are:

1. Disc golf. I LOVE to play disc golf, and am actually using my web and map design skills to try and further the exposure and presence of the sport. I even got my local community to fund a new nine-hole course this summer...of which I guess I am the temporary "club pro", though I am FAR from a "pro" when it comes to disc golf.

2. Bandwidth conservation. I LOVE doing whatever I can to make web sites run faster/better/cheaper....and by FAR the biggest impact I generally am able to help with is the replacement of unnecessarily-bloated graphics with efficient ones that look identical on-screen, but are 60-70+ percent smaller in bytes. Most web designers don't have a clue how to efficiently load a graphic or strip extranneous data out of an image. I love to help with that kind of stuff whenever I can...."teaching people how to fish", if you will.

Derek

[Hans van der Maarel]

Well...

Music (I'm sure regular readers here have already noticed my love of The Who)

I dabble in photography, would like to have some more time for it.

I play badminton, although lately I'm largely confined to giving training to the kids in our club, rather than actually playing myself.

And I like to travel, often using maps or music as an excuse and doing some photography on the way

[drew]

Count me in as one of the photo hobbyists when not doing GIS. At least I thought it was a hobby, until a couple of months ago it spun out of control. Now it's a full-time unpaid job.

Long story short: I started taking a few pictures of a supermarket demoltion. A few pictures turned into 2000. Then a chance meeting with the director of the local arts council turned it into an exhibit, and it kept snowballing from there!

The official opening is next week. After that, I need to get back to GIS and try to become solvent again. More info on this upcoming exhibit at: SuperValu Redux

[David T]

I, too, enjoy photography. I love taking portraits and nature shots. I've enjoyed being a photographer at weddings (never paid for it), and I've done pretty well. I also enjoy taking nature shots - plants, birds, flowers.

My biggest hobby is being a sports fan - baseball in particular. I'm not much of a hockey or basketball fan. I enjoy watching football. But baseball is a bit of a passion for me. There's nothing I enjoy more than going to a baseball game.

Although I'm on the west coast, where we don't have the volume of minor league baseball teams that exist back east, I'm pretty fortunate to have a minor league team about 30 minutes away. I try to get up to their games once or twice a month.

I do have season tickets to the San Diego Padres. I go to about 10-20 games a season.

[CGIS]

3D (my other company), so it's like photography, but not quite. Other than that, I'd say skiing and biking and woodworking!

[loximuthal]

What do I do when I have some time for myself? I'm a (very) amature astronomer, I like to go bike riding, and I read. Lots of reading, if at all possible. Prefered genres are science fiction (just recently discovered Terry Pratchet), history, historical fiction (have read all the Aubrey/Maturin books twice), and assorted non-fiction.

[Hans van der Maarel]

Ah, Terry Pratchett!

Map-making had never been a precise art on the Discworld. People tended to start off with good intentions and then get so carried away with the spouting whales, monsters, waves, and other twiddly bits of cartographic furniture that they often forgot to put the boring mountains and rivers in at all.

In some of his books he describes little towns as "only being there because cartographers hate embarassingly empty spaces on a map".

[Rob]

surfing, snorkeling, swimming, building stuff/carpentry/fixing my old house, watching football in the fall. and learning anything new.

[mike]

Count me in as one of the photo hobbyists when not doing GIS.  At least I thought it was a hobby, until a couple of months ago it spun out of control.  Now it's a full-time unpaid job.

Long story short:  I started taking a few pictures of a supermarket demoltion.  A few pictures turned into 2000.  Then a chance meeting with the director of the local arts council turned it into an exhibit, and it kept snowballing from there! 

The official opening is next week.  After that, I need to get back to GIS and try to become solvent again.  More info on this upcoming exhibit at:  SuperValu Redux

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Congrats... you have some nice shots in there.

What kind of photo equipment do you use?

[Martin Gamache]

Prefered genres are science fiction (just recently discovered Terry Pratchet)

I just discovered Richard Morgan's (British Sci-Fi writer) Tacheki Kovacs series which is some of the best sci-fi I've read in a long time.

mg

[Nick Springer]

When I get a few minutes away from the family I also like to make photographs. I finally got a digital SLR (Canon Digital Rebel XT) and have been taking more lately.

I love to play Ultimate (www.upa.org), but last week while playing in the local league, I dislocated my knee and tore my ACL, so I won't be playing again unless I get the replacement surgery

I am also an avid bird watcher, hiker, and amateur naturalist.

[mike]

When I get a few minutes away from the family I also like to make photographs.  I finally got a digital SLR (Canon Digital Rebel XT) and have been taking more lately.

I love to play Ultimate (www.upa.org), but last week while playing in the local league, I dislocated my knee and tore my ACL, so I won't be playing again unless I get the replacement surgery

I am also an avid bird watcher, hiker, and amateur naturalist.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nick, sorry to hear about your knee! Hope it doesn't hurt too much and that you have a speedy recovery.

I also use the Canon Rebel XT. Great camera for it's price and size. I did get the battery grip though. Makes it a little more balanced with the added weight. I'm only working off the 18-55mm kit lens right now, but i'm looking into getting another lens this summer.

if you are a bird watcher, you will need one of those 400mm super telephoto lenses.

[Hans van der Maarel]

The XT is the same one as the 350D, right? 'cause that's the one I have...

 IMG_2337_medium.JPG   99.42K   137 downloads  IMG_0105_large.JPG   102.89K   142 downloads

First one was taken with my 'old' camera though (a 300D). I've been using Sigma lenses, 28/90 and 70/300, for almost a year now, haven't touched the stock lens ever since (although there were times when I wish I had it with me...)

Mike, I got the lenses plus a very useful bag for a decent price here: RitzCamera

[Unit Seven]

...yes it's another wanna be photographer?like that b&w truck picture and those demolition ones. Not to say your aren't great Hans - just objects and archtecture are more my think than wildlife. Have just got back into this after having not really done much since I was 21, just brought a 20d (pretty similar to the 350d) and it's a big change from the Olympus OM-10 I used to use which did nothing automatic except shutter speed - I still love that bullet-proof camera tho. Anyone else here using Flickr?

Also spend a lot of time converting a warehouse I brought a few years ago when I used to be working as a set builder. Making it into a more living and workshop space, have added a mezinne which I am putting two bedrooms and an openplan kitchen/living room and putting a shower and another toilet up there. Not sure if it counts as a hobby or a curse.

And a dog who's a handfull at times.

Nice to hear some more about other people on here than just their map obsessions. and some more photos shared - a few I've liked that I've taken.