More about
Travelling
My favorite - although intensive - way of travelling is backpacking, together with my girlfriend. Before the journey really begins, some preparations have to be made, like making hostel reservations and planning your route. From the day the journey really starts the holiday officially begins. I prefer the Northern/Western Europe countries - and so does Nina luckily - so at the moment we’ve done a round-trip Denmark-Sweden-Norway and a round-trip England-Scotland-Ireland. Both by train. We hope to visit more countries in Europe in the future, preferably also by train, although some countries to get to require a different method of transport.
Reading
My favorite genre in books is hard science fiction, these books are like science fiction, but try to be more scientific accurate/detailed. Some of these books are Diamond Ag, Otherworld (Tad Williams) and Tau Zero. Other books I really like are the Singularity (Ray Kurzweil).
Drumming
A while ago I started drumming. My first experience with a drumkit was an electronic kit, the Yamaha DTXplorer. It’s rubber pads and relatively affordable price and a nice soundquality made it a good start for me. But I missed the “real” experience on this drumkit. I could go for a Roland TD-nn series kit, but for the same price I could also get a real kit. So I bought a Pearl Export ELX drumkit, where I play once in a while on. Not enough playtime, but I hope to increase that frequency somewhere in the future…
Photography
Take a look at the travel gallery or take a look at all the other pictures I made at <url-to-be-inserted>.
Computers
At my parents home I started at the age of 9 with a borrowed Commodore 64 with tape-recorder, there I started programming my simple and perhaps stupid software in BASIC. Shortly after that I got a second hand ColecoVision (Z80) from my parents. The next step was a “real” PC, an XT-machine with CGA monitor. From there on it really started for me and the rest is actually history. I won’t bother you with further technical details here.
Metabolomics and bioinformatics
Metabolomics is all about studying chemical fingerprints that cellular processes leave behind - (c) Wikipedia
Simpler said: your body cells do something and one way to look at all this activity on the chemical level is by applying metabolomics. What is then found are called metabolites, which are actually small molecules.
Things to be done in this relatively new field - and are partially already done - is developing a so called platform, so that every scientist can access his/her data in an easy way. Software has to be built, standards have to be followed and many people have to be involved, so that in the end everyone will be happy. Bioinformatics is the software part in this, which is actually nothing more than combining computerhard/-software with biology.
Wikipedia
I like using Wikipedia, but I also like to contribute a little bit to the Dutch and the English Wikipedia.
