I have several 'hobbies' outside of what I do professionally which itself has, from time to time, been indistinguishable from a hobby (as I have enjoyed it so much).

My principal hobby is Amateur Radio (or, as our transatlantic cousins call it, Ham Radio).  At one stage this was a very important part of my life but since graduating I am afraid that it has gradually taken more of a back seat to maintaining a general existence.  Anyhow, I have a separate set of web pages for my Amateur Radio activities that I am trying to develop into a resource for others interested in the Hobby.  You can find these pages here.

My other lifelong hobby is photography, which again has been an occasional interest but it has proved to be easier to pick up a camera for an occasion than to dust off my old radios or find where I was in a constructional project.  I'll be putting up some of my photographs here from time to time, including scanned slides from my days at Southampton University and my many interesting foreign trips and excursions.

A more recent interest is owning an old car which consumes considerable amounts of money but has significant rewards.  I bought a Bristol 409 in late 1999 and have been using it pretty regularly during the months of March to October since then.  Bristol still produce fine cars and I take it down to their service centre in Chiswick each year for a service and MoT.  More about my Bristol can be found here.  I was appointed Registrar of the Bristol Owners' Club at the AGM in 2004, resigning in March 2009 after five years service, and have been actively involved in Club activities since I bought my car.  My most significant achievement for the Club was the preparation of two CD-ROMs containing archived copies of the Club bulletin from its inception until 2000.  These CD-ROMs were issued to all members of the Club (and there are stocks that will last the Club some years for new members).  I have prepared some supporting information pages for these CD-ROMs here.

Another significant interest is computing.  I was fortunate to have access to computer facilities from an early age and had the opportunity to learn various programming languages including BASIC, FORTRAN, BCPL, assembler and various machine codes.

The first computer that I actually built was a Compukit UK101, which was itself based on the Ohio Superboard single board 6502 based microcomputer.  The kit was built for my brother who used it to some success, having a game published in PCW in the early 1980s.  You can find out more about this machine at various enthusiast sites such as here and here.  However, for my own use I bought an HP41C and this is described on my HP-41C page.