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My Interests

PF posing for his monster music CD...

I guess I'm like most people who like food, music, and movies!  hehehe  Top that with some wine and beer and you'll already be on my good side! I play guitar, ukulele, and piano and I like biking around the city and environs. I enjoy photography, making silly websites, and I like to write novels and the occasional poem.  I've written down the list of things I like so I will be able to remember them in my declining years!  hehe

| Beer | Food | Languages | Movies | Music | Radio | Sheet Music | Ukulele | Wine |

Music

I love Russian music, French music, surf bands, jazz, rockabilly, punk, and classical.   Here are some of my favourites listed in order I prefer.

Sheet Music

Musicals

  • Mary Poppins (my absolute favorite!)
  • Sound of Music
  • Rocky Horror
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
  • Lady in the Dark
  • Cabaret
  • Wizard of Oz
  • Doctor Dolittle

Fav. Food

  • Indian vegetarian food
  • Ethiopian food (miser wat, spinach, injera bread, etc...)
  • Mexican food (vegetarian tacos, quesadillas)
  • Favourite restaurants:
    • The Sitar (Indian - Ottawa, Canada)  Best onion badgies and pakoras in the world!!!
    • Horn of Africa (Ethiopian - Ottawa, Canada)  The vegetarian platter rocks!
    • Piz'Za-Za (Pizza bistro - Gatineau, Canada)  Best thin crust pizza I've ever eaten.  I order artichokes, mushrooms, and basil and it's delicious with red wine.
    • Le Nil Bleu (Ethiopian - Montreal, Canada) The vegetarian platter rocks!
    • La taqueria (Mexican - Montreal)  Low cost Mexican place that has the best quesadillas and black bean vegetarian tacos.   Great condiments bar underneath the wooden parrots! hehe

Fav. Beers / Wines

Movies

Languages

Literature (books & writing)

  • Sci-Fi Literature:  The Day of the Triffids (my all time favorite sci-fi book)
  • everything à la Edgar Allan Poe!  hehehe
  • Frankenstein (full text) Dracula,  The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Sir Author Conan Doyle's works
  • Robert J. Sawyer's Sci-Fi "How to Write Page"  (outstanding!) 
  • Todd Swift's poetry
  • various writers I like:  Victor Hugo, Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne

Radio programs

  • A Propos (a great Canadian program in English that promotes French music)
  • C'est la vie (a great show about French in Quebec and Canada!)  - Word of the Week is cool!
  • Des airs de toi (Gregory Charles en français) - I love when he makes fun of songs that use the same melodies
  • Deustche Welle (German radio)
  • Go (quirky Canadian show with music and madness by the master Bambury)
  • RadioFrance
  • Quirks and Quarks (a great Canadian science show with podcasts!)

Audio books & radio plays

TV

  • Prison Break
  • Six Feet Under
  • Les Bougon (Québécois show in French)
  • Hogan's Heroes
  • Star Trek (original series, Next Gen, and Deep Space)
  • WKRP (original series)
  • Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard series)
  • Outer Limits (old and new)
  • Sherlock Holmes portrayed by Jeremy Brett (I own almost all the videos and I saw him live in London at Wyndham's Theatre in 1989)
  • Are You Being Served?
  • Fawlty Towers
  • Addams Family (old and new)

Ukulele Links

)Computer Stuff

I have a plethora of favorite productivity software lying about for my personal and lazy use.  I use Windows XP SP2, Photoshop CS2, Office Pro 2007, and FrontPage 2003, all to aid my feeble attempts at writing or my various web page projects.  ;-) hehe!  I was an Atari ST computer user from 1990 to 1996.

From a musical perspective on the computer, I use Sonar for recording music to my PC and Finale for scoring piano\vocal sheet music and Sibelius for web scores. I own a Roland HP-3 digital piano which I like very much. 

Retro 80s Video Games

  • Skifree - a cool skiing video game for the PC (and it's free!)
  • My Favorite Retro 80's real coin-up arcade video games are now for free: Moon Patrol ; Scramble ; Jungle Hunt with the right emulator and ROMs... wink wink nudge nudge!  hehehe  
  • You can also use old Atari ST software with the STEEM emulator for the PC.  Here are some free old Atari ST games I like: Bouncing Boubles ; Umich Atari Archive
  • I also have Scrabble in French and English

I used to play Asteroids, and mostly Asteroids Deluxe in the early 1980s.  We had an Asteroids Deluxe machine put in our school cafeteria and I used to grab my few remaining quarters, and play it before class (making me late).  I always had the high score in the school (until the machine got unplugged each evening!)  The machine became too controversial for the school and it was removed back to the local Jimmy's arcade.  I used to go to the arcade to play it again, but I then switched to other games like Tempest, Pleiades, and my fav. Moon Patrol. 

Well, a few years back (2001), I found Asteroids Deluxe on a discontinued CD-ROM (for PC) from the Atari Arcade Hits I for $10.  I picked it up right away.   Though, I just put it in my closet for years and only brought in out in the spring of 2005 to play again on my new 2.8 gig PC!  Let's just say I'm attempting to relive a few old high school memories... hehehe    However, now that I am 42 years old and can drink beer at my side while playing...  my advice to the youth out there.....  NEVER DRIVE A SPACESHIP WHILE BEING DRUNK IN AN ASTEROID FIELD!  hehehe

Asteroids Deluxe

Asteriods Deluxe screen shot

Last updated: 30-Aug-2009