what are your hobbies

[Beau Geste (imported)]

Ted--

Your photographs show a real feel for texture. Curious--did you do any editing on them, or are these raw images? (I'm assuming they are digital rather than film photos.) One of the beach photos brought back old memories associated with a beach picture that used to hang in the offices of an ad agency in Los Angeles.

Do you have a definitive diagnosis on your illness? And are you on a course of treatment to ameliorate the problem, or possibly get a cure? In any case, hope you're feeling better and getting more mobility.

[Blaise (imported)]

Ted--

Your photographs show a real feel for texture. Curious--did you do any editing on them, or are these raw images? (I'm assuming they are digital rather than film photos.) One of the beach photos brought back old memories associated with a beach picture that used to hang in the offices of an ad agency in Los Angeles.

Do you have a definitive diagnosis on your illness? And are you on a course of treatment to ameliorate the problem, or possibly get a cure? In any case, hope you're feeling better and getting more mobility.

Thank you. I edited the images. I scan old slides and negatives and then manipulate them with Adobe Photoshop Elememnts 4. Most images are a decade or two old. I took the pictures with two or three Minolta cameras. I mostly use Kodachrome film, though many of the images I have posted come from color negatives. Since 2000, I have not used color positive film. Kodachrome 200 became impossible to obtain. I think that the company stopped making it, though I am not certain. I drastically underexposed color positive film. I have never used a digtal camera though I will move in that direction. Many of the best images, I made with a 100 mm lenes that belonged to my former wife. I have not bought a new one.

I use photography because my artistic skills have always been limited. My aspirations never obtain reality.

I do have a probable diagnosis for what causes the loss of cognitive skills, though we do not know for certain what is wrong. I am in treatment. I take a medication that improves my mood and some memory functions. It helps immensely. The course of the illness may be ten or twenty years. I have trouble with some tasks--I cannot read highly abstract works as well as I once routinely did. I now read more biography and even some literary fiction than abstract philosophy.

Thank you for posting. I appreciate your comments.

[Blaise (imported)]

1.) I have long enjoyed philosophy. Some thoughts about it:

Reading philosophy consumes an immense amount of time. One must read the texts slowly, only to return to read them again more slowly. I once told my teacher Tony Nemetz that his students had read so slowly that we had not yet finished reading the title of a work he assigned. That was not entirely false.

In addition, the literature is vast. However, one great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein did not bother to read much in the field. He trained as an aeronautical engineer—before airplanes existed.

I read something named process philosophy for about eight years before I grasped it well enough to talk about it. I took more years to be able to criticise it in coherent ways. That is the case with much of my reading in philosophy.

What we read at university was awful stuff. The preferred philosophers based their work on assumptions that no one now affirms—one of these involved dividing feeling or affect from cognition or from abstract ideas. Most significant thinking has an emotional aspect, but we forget the emotional part of it of ideas. I know that a handbook on repairing an engine might not seem emotional and maybe it is not, but, when we think about politics or art, we do involve ourselves in emotions that shape what we think abstractly.

Beyond Nemetz and a fellow named Bowman Clark, my teachers and most professional philosophers I was likely to encounter did not accept emotional thinking as significant as what they thought was unemotional. That is how they discounted religious thinking. Philosophy, however, never really resolves itself, except in the minds of readers.

There is a fine philosopher names Patricia Churchland, who along with her husband Paul Churchland, writes about the brain in ways that make a great deal of sense to me. The New Yorker recently featured them in a profile. When philosophers of mind first encountered the works from this couple, they disdained them. I found the work the Patricia Churchland did extremely helpful. It was much more intelligible than most writing on the mind. Her husband’s work is almost as good.

A lot written about thinking—about then mind and brain—had seemed to me cloudy, even nonsensical. Sometimes not grasping something is a sign of good thinking and good sense.

Some recent writing about the brain involves complicated mathematics that is beyond my ability to grasp. That might be where the field goes. This sometimes involves something named Bayesian probability, which in simple form seeks to explain how subjective experience changes or influence outcomes; however, beyond that simple remark, I do not grasp it. Apparently, the brain operates in terms of making probabilistic predictions that shape behavior. In other words, it seems that subjective experience influences these predictions. The mathematics of this is not something I ever learned.

2.) In my youth, I enjoyed hiking and just plain walking. I also enjoyed both gymnastics and white water canoeing. My father enjoyed beekeeping. I used to enjoy observing the hives.

3.) I collect books, DVDs of classic movies, and CDs of classical music.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

You have given me much to think about. --FLO--

[ramses (imported)]

Thanks for starting this wonderful thread, Sag. It was a great idea and I think you deserve a few points of reputation. If there is anyone that doesn't know how to add reputation, just click on the scales under someones avatar and go from there.

I also enjoy geology, biology, astronamy and pottery. There is nothing like a horse hair , raku fired piece of pottery...

[jemagirl (imported)]

Well, I wasn't quite sure what to write. I'm an artist so the things I do as an artist are not a hobby in the strict sense of the word. They are photography, camera making, filmmaking, painting, sculpting, 3D modeling and animation. Each of those things really can be broken down in to sub discipline, but I think it's suficient to get the idea across.

So what in the world are my hobbies. I think I only have two at the moment. Playing pool on with my teamates ( The Cinchsationals ) in the SFPA, and zapping Phobotrolls in the R&R section of craigslist. Maybe some one here can see if they can spot any of my postings on CL.

Any way big hugggs to all the EA members whether or not you have a hobby.

[sag111 (imported)]

Blaise you are a very interesting person and I love thoes pics of yours.Jema I have seen some of your work and you are a very good artest.Thanks Ramses I just felt we needed a change from some of our posting latly and I love reading about all thies interesting people in here.

[Christina (imported)]

Before my back injury I enjoyed cycling and seeing the sights outdoors, like parks and historical places of interest. I've even got all the equipment for a nice camping trip someday, something I've done in my youth, but never got around to it later in life.

Nowadays I'm limited to armchair geocaching, a hobby that looks quite fun and exciting. One day I'll get out there and find my first cache. I do like a good PC game now and then. Most of them are adventure type games, although I'll try several other genres. Right now I'm playing World of Warcraft.

Another ongoing hobby I do is N scale model railroading. I'm working on a new layout now made in a much different way than my old layouts that used plywood and heavy wood framing. This new method of construction is made from light weight foam, something (I hope) I will be able to move around if need be with my back injury. I still have the old layout, but dare not try and dig it out in the condition I'm in.

[Blaise (imported)]

Before my back injury I enjoyed cycling and seeing the sights outdoors, like parks and historical places of interest. I've even got all the equipment for a nice camping trip someday, something I've done in my youth, but never got around to it later in life.

Nowadays I'm limited to armchair geocaching, a hobby that looks quite fun and exciting. One day I'll get out there and find my first cache. I do like a good PC game now and then. Most of them are adventure type games, although I'll try several other genres. Right now I'm playing World of Warcraft.

Another ongoing hobby I do is N scale model railroading. I'm working on a new layout now made in a much different way than my old layouts that used plywood and heavy wood framing. This new method of construction is made from light weight foam, something (I hope) I will be able to move around if need be with my back injury. I still have the old layout, but dare not try and dig it out in the condition I'm in.

I hope that you like me have good memories of those old activities. I enjoy knowing that I once got to realize some of the things I enjoy. I would love to do more white water canoeing, but that seems close to impossible these days. However, I enjoyed the little bit of that activity I got to do.

[sag111 (imported)]

I also have a train layout but I havent had time to work on it for about a year now.It is an out door layout in G guage that has about 300 foot of track but I will redue this layout this spring.I have also had some fun latly polshing rocks I find in my sluce box along with some gold if I get a luckey spot.I have a metal dector that I have found some nice rings and about a thousand dollars in coins but again I havent had time to get this out latly.And I do have the garden going and that dose keep me busy.I love it because I never know what new hobby I will come up with next but it sure is fun thinking up new things to do.