Who?

Hi

I’m Dan.

What Keeps Me Going

I’m passionate about naval and aeronautical architecture. I had a sailboat for about ten years. It was a Shark, quick. lake-worthy and built like a tank. On the aeronautical side, I must have at least several hundred hours of flight time on flight simulators. I have built, flown, and repaired – yes in that order – several remote control airplanes. I have about five hours of actual flight time on both a Cessna 172 and a Piper Warrior.

I like to fix things. I have a degree in electronics although I never worked in the field. I am also handy in mechanics and other fields. My apartment has, other than one bedroom, one electronics lab, and a general-purpose shop. This is a perfect environment for me and is a perk of living alone.

I witnessed the birth of the Web. My first modem ran at a blistering 300 bps. I’ve owned or used a great number of computing devices over the years. I run Linux and have since the first version of Slackware. I use, and favor, Open-Source software. There is not much I cannot do

I love music. I am mostly into British rock and classical. I also have a soft spot for Disco, Funk, and New-Wave. I have a few years of classical music studies that mostly left me with a profound hate of recorder flutes. I have learned musical theory better using this book (in French) Dictionnaire de musique from Larousse. I own several musical instruments of which I play with various levels of proficiency. Bass guitar is my must played instrument. Not having neighbours for six of the nine years I have lived here allows me to play at all hours at maximum volume (110W); 80+ db.

Scholarship

School having generaly been hostile environments to me, I acquired knowledge differently. I started reading the dictionnary while still learning to write. When I arrived here, I had already read half of the common names.

From then on, I have read all I could get my eyes on. In my native French at first but soon also in English: I never learned to read German unfortunately, but then again, there was not much German material here. I still own some of my childhood books : kids’ encyclopedia, educational, etc. In my tween years, I read all of my progenitors military school notes. I knew the effects of a 20kt bomb, how to disassemble both the FN C1 rifle and Browing 9mm pistol.

Then came American periodicals such as: Popular Science, Popular Mechanics. Mechanics Illustrated, Scientific American, Omni, Life Extension Magazine and many others I forgot about. Of the first three, I had all copies from 1943 to 1979. Had I kept all those magazines, it would certainly fill three or four cubic meters or about one third of a room, floor to ceiling; no shelves.

Then came Internet. No Web yet. Archie, Gopher et Usenet where the avaiable tools for searching and communicating. Information was of high quality, often originating from universities and knowledgeable people in a variety of domains. I have learned alot about marine architecture by communicating with naval architects over a few years, on Usenet. Had it been possible, I would have connected the Internet cable at the base of my skull to skip the serach interfaces.