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My largest and most time-consuming hobby is definitely working with computers. I'm one of the lucky few, perhaps, who get to do work they truly love; I employ XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Xara Xtreme, jEdit, a handful of browsers and a few other tools to design the UI for an enterprise-class web-based product during the day (and frequently well into the night as well).

When I'm not dancing for the whip at work, I'm often reading up on new tricks/hacks for the same, but I also try to do stuff for myself, too.

For starters, I believe heavily in Open Source (especially when it means getting away from a dependence on the 800 lb. gorillas of the software industry) and run Linux on every machine I can of my own and evangelise to others as well. I don't make a nuisance of myself, but eventually a lot of people will turn to free alternatives once products like Vista make them more attractive. I confess that while I have tried (and have a machine ready and waiting) to switch to using Linux as my primary desktop, it's just not there yet: the in-development, open source Xara Xtreme LX is getting close to usability (which is great: It's one of the biggest deciding "switch" factors for me), but the amd64 platform is causing me other grief besides: wine, suspend/hibernate support, photoshop (please don't even mention the GIMP), and even instant messengers (I personally prefer Miranda over all the rest and don't care at all for GAIM) are all hurdles yet to be overcome before I can comfortably make a successful switch. Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that I decided to switch from Gentoo to Ubuntu on the desktop thinking it would be easier ... and it turns out it's even more complicated to get these things running than Gentoo (which at least still has pretty good docs going for it even if they do manage to continuously break package functionality by continuously adding/altering USE flags for everything).

Linux aside, one of my favourite pieces of software in the whole world is Boodler, a program written in Python (and a little bit of C) by Andrew Plotkin designed to create a soundscape of your choosing.

If it sounds corny—like those little alarm clocks with gentle save sounds to put you to sleep at night, or a CD of an hour-long thunderstorm—then it's because you've never played with Boodler. The whole point is, you design your own soundscapes in an OO programming language at whatever level of complexity you want; My current crowning glory is a soundscape of different thunderstorms that come and go with random strengths, durations, etc. I eventually want to integrate them into a larger simulation of an entire Boreal forest with weather simulations, possibly influenced by external events. The whole shebang is piped to an mp3 encoder then broadcast over my LAN via Icecast; I typically set up a playlist of music on my SqueezeBox in the bedroom at night with the environmental audio stream as the last item in the playlist—so I get to sleep to thunderstorms all night every night, never hearing the same thing twice. Boodler, in case your interest has been piqued, is free and open source, and definitely runs on Windows as well as Linux with no problems at all. There is also a Mac version but I can't vouch for whether it works or not. If you want to design your own soundscapes though, beware: You will need to know (or learn) at least a little python before you can get started. Get in touch with me if you want to learn more about Boodler and I'll try to help you find your bearings.

I listen to a wide variety of music, but only a few varieties with any frequency: Ambient, Electronic, and Video Game soundtracks. Here are a few select artists/albums that I dig:

• Biosphere
• Oöphoi
• Paul Schötze
• Thomas Köner
• Boards of Canada
• Brain Pilot
• The Future Sound of London
• Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears, Kirité, etc.)
• Homeworld OST
• Grim Fandango OST
• Jesper Kyd (Hitman series)
• Amon Tobin (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory)
• System Shock 2
• Tron 2.0
• Zone of the Enders

I'm not fiercely loyal about movies, but here are a few random groupings/faves.

• V for Vendetta
• Bill Murray (anything, really)
• Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks CG animation
• Any reasonably good sci-fi, the harder the better (usually): Alien quadrilogy, Dune (Space miniseries), 2001/2010 are a few off the top of my head
• Anime, sci-fi again preferred
• Jean Reno and/or Jean-Pierre Jeunet
• Harry Potter

Incidentally, I hate renting movies, and typically either already own it or I don't care to watch it. I go to the cinema perhaps once a year as—as far as I'm concerned—the price is ridiculous for the mediochre-at-best experience of being ripped off for admission, queuing up, limited play times, being ripped off again to consume anything besides water with your film, noisy/rude audiences and their cell phones, poor sound quality, choppy film playback, sticky floors, broken chairs, ... the list goes on, but I think the point comes across.

I tend to prefer comedy on television—I need a laugh every now and then to take a load off. I probably watch too many British TV shows for a guy living in Canada, but I can't knock their comedy.

• Monty Python
• Mystery Science Theatre 3000
• Little Britain
• Black Adder
• Kids in the Hall
• Firefly
• Space: Above and Beyond
• Rome
• Sherlock Holmes (w/ Jeremy Brett or forget it)
• Family Guy/American Dad
• Duckman

I love reading, but I'm a slow reader and a complete coward at picking a book whose author I don't know off the shelf and giving it a read. I rely heavily on the recommendations of friends, but they've never steered me wrong. Here are a few authors and book types I read with any frequency.

• Stephen Banks (with or without the "M.")
• Stephen Baxter
• Alastair Reynolds
• Frank Herbert
• Neil Gaiman (mostly Sandman comics, collaborations with Dave McKean)
• JRR Tolkien
• Japanese Art Books (Amano, Shirow, Cowboy Bebop, etc.)
• Classic Heavy Metal Artist Art Books (Manara, Serpieri, Bell, etc.)/li>
• O'Reilly manuals (even though they've become somewhat the bunch of jerks, lately, it seems)

Same as with movies, I hate borrowing books from the library, and I either own it or I probably haven't read it.