Your childhood hobbies and interests
Your childhood hobbies and interests
(OP)
Pretty much what the title says.
I spent my childhood during the early 90’s where video games were not so much fun at all (crappy 16 bit graphics) and only the rich kid in town can afford.
Being a poor kid, I only have limited choices to enjoy my childhood other than riding my bike and playing with other kids, so I chose “visual art” or simply what we call drawing. During that time, I was able to sketch cartoon characters such as Japanese anime characters, a little bit of portraits and landscapes, colorful posters with slogans and I was really good at it that I thought I would be a cartoonist or a painter someday
. But I ended up as an engineer; maybe being able to visualize things did a bit help in drafting.
So what about the other guys in here? Were your childhood hobbies and interests ended up being what you are doing today?
I spent my childhood during the early 90’s where video games were not so much fun at all (crappy 16 bit graphics) and only the rich kid in town can afford.
Being a poor kid, I only have limited choices to enjoy my childhood other than riding my bike and playing with other kids, so I chose “visual art” or simply what we call drawing. During that time, I was able to sketch cartoon characters such as Japanese anime characters, a little bit of portraits and landscapes, colorful posters with slogans and I was really good at it that I thought I would be a cartoonist or a painter someday
. But I ended up as an engineer; maybe being able to visualize things did a bit help in drafting.So what about the other guys in here? Were your childhood hobbies and interests ended up being what you are doing today?





RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
After 7th grade I lived in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, so before I had work to do or a car to drive my free time was filled with skiing in the winter (sat/sun every weekend) hiking, shooting, skateboarding, building forts, go karts, swimming at the neighborhood pool. Oh, and trying to get to the next base w/girls.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Note that my interest in radios and electronics in high school led me to start college with the intention of getting my degree in EE, but back then (1965/66) electronics was not really part of the curriculum to any extent. I spent a year learning about 'Delta' and 'Y' power circuits, high voltage transmission loses, phasing transformers, etc. I then got a summer job working as a mechanical draftsman but I was able to observe what the electrical guys did in the office and decided to switch to mechanical when I returned to school in the Fall, and then had to scramble to catch-up to the rest of the ME guys. Nowadays at my alma mater, the freshman year for most all engineering students has virtually the same course of study so that switching majors after the first year is no longer a big deal.
And while in college I took up photography in a big way, which helped pay for school as I worked for the university, did some freelancing and won a few photo contests. Today it's my biggest hobby (along with my continued coin collecting) and I've even sold photos to stock photo houses (not a whole lot but a few extra bucks here and there).
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Steve
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Now that I'm grown up: astronomy
Actually, there was a big hiatus in between, but I'm getting back into it now. I recently invested in a Canon 6D camera and a new scope mounted on a Celestron VX with an auto-guider. Goin' galaxy huntin'.
To J. Baker: Did you catch a shot of the moon last weekend?
STF
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
This was taken with my Sony A65 DSLR using a 400mm lens. The image is full frame.
I also got this shot of Mars that same night:
This was taken with the same set-up as above, but the image is only a portion of the full frame.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
My Mona Lisa was a scale grain elevator using all 8 of the mechano spring motors I had amassed. If you needed rice moved - I was your kid.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I had a workshop at the time stocked with most of the components I needed, my dad’s Radio and TV repair shop, there was a lot of moaning about the cost of some of the items I used, but he never kicked me out. One thing I never appreciated at the time was that this activity gave me the ability to read drawings and circuit diagrams. An asset that was very useful later in life.
Later I got interested in Scuba diving, then racing sailing dinghies, rifle shooting, and finally the nemesis of my life flying sailplanes. I was later reduced to building and fixing the things for a living.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Here's an photo, taken in September 1969, of some of their rolling stock in the Houghton rail-yard:
And here's a photo, taken in May 1971, of the old Copper Range train station (note the amount of snow still on the ground):
The rail-yard and most of the out-buildings have all been removed although the station remains and is being used as professional office space. The area where the rail-yard was is now homes and a water park.
There was another train station closer to downtown Houghton, originally belonging to the Mineral Range RR, and it was still being used by the Soo Line into the 60's (I can remember guys taking the train to Chicago and Milwaukee over Christmas and Spring breaks).
Here's a picture, taken in October 2010, of the old Mineral Range station. It's been taken-over and renovated by the Yalmer Mattila Construction Company and now houses the company's office:
Note that virtually all of the railroad tracks have been removed from along the lakeside in Houghton and Hancock with most of the right-of-ways converted into bike paths. They've even removed the rails from the lower level of the Portage Lift bridge and it's now being used as part of the bike path network.
BTW, I'm going to be back in Houghton the week of April 20th for some activities at the university.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Note that today I primarily work with a Sony A65 DSLR when I need it to be as professional as possible. I do a lot of volunteer work for our church and church groups. For example, for the last several Easters I've taken photos at the Easter vigil Mass when new converts are Baptized, Confirmed and receive First-Communion. When I'm travelling light, I use a Sony NEX-3N but am planning to upgrade to a Sony a6000 soon. Of course, in a pinch I've been known to use my iPhone 6 (my wife uses her iPhone 6 almost exclusively even though she has her own DSLR and high-end digital point-and-shoot cameras).
BTW, I know the details about the images I posted because every photo that my wife and I have taken (and decide to keep), starting in 1960, have been scanned (slides and negatives) and have been placed in an archive, along with the more recent digital images, and for which I've got a relational database where I've recorded, when each photo was taken (month/year), camera and lens, film size and type, where the photo was taken and what the subject matter was including the names of any known and identifiable persons in the scene, along with a thumbnail image. This database is fully searchable using any combination of the data fields, as well as relevant keywords. As of today, I have 36,462 images stored in my archive and recorded in the database. The images are stored on a 2TB external eSATA drive as well as being backed-up on TWO sets of DVD-ROMS of which one set is in my gun safe here at the house and the other is locked in a filing cabinet in my office at work.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
My main hobbies now are astronomy (15 years as an active and advanced amateur, include 4 years as president of my local club), photography, HP calculators, hiking, reading (mostly history and astronomy), travel, and several more.
SparWeb…
I bought an Advanced VX mount about two years ago as an upgrade from an Orion SkyView Pro. It is a fantastic mount. I mostly use it with my 5" SCT for both prime focus and piggyback astrophotography (nothing too fancy at this point because I still use 35-mm cameras for astrophotography). I also bought a 6" Newtonian tube with it (only $100 more), but only used that tube a couple of times. Now, my son-in-law and I are going to turn the 6" into a Dobsonian for my granddaughter, who is now old enough (almost 7) to handle it. My main scope is a Celestron CPC-800, but an 11" is calling my name, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Fred
==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
The Advanced VX is my first "go-to" mount so I'm still poking buttons to see "what does that do?".
Did you find the polarscope impossible to use with the big Alt adjustment knob in the way?
Here it is - last week's eclipse:
STF
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I haven't had any problem using the polar scope, but I'm at latitude 36°N and change. If you're quite a bit farther north, I see where that could be a problem. A shorter knob might be in order.
Fred
==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
STF
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
One other advantage to my location in Central California is access to high elevation observing sites in the Sierra Nevada. Our club participates in the annual, summer-long, ranger-led public star party series at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park (elev = 7200' = 2200m). This year, our club gets the last weekend in June and a waxing gibbous moon, but last year we got a new moon. We also have a primitive camping site at a lake between Yosemite National Park and Kings Canyon National Park that I make it to a couple times each summer for two or three nights. It's at an elevation of 8200' = 2500 m.
I don't do a lot of astrophotography (and I still use 35mm for some of it), but you can find some of my images at http://www.cvafresno.org/galmem.cfm?id=6. The other three guys who have posted images on our club website are doing far more sophisticated imaging that I ever plan on doing.
Fred
==========
"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I always liked photography when i was young but couldn't afford it.
Z
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I also had interest in photography though I'm not as good as the others who posted, but I am trying to learn by myself. I have a D7000 with 50mm and 11-16mm lenses which I play around during out of towns.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I had a 6x6 as well- a Bronica, which was a poor man's Hasselblad. Guess what? The mirror went on it too...
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Of course, after using my compact Sony NEX-3N (16.1mp) with the new E-Mount lens, I'm tempted to move to something like a Sony a6000, a 24mp camera, like my A65, but a lot smaller and easier to handle. Sony, as well as a few 3rd-party brands, are now offering a pretty full line of E-Mount lens including a new super wide-angle as well as that's always been the bane of these compact or so-called hybrid cameras (mirror-less but with interchangeable lens).
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I went to the olympics in Vancouver with a Nikon D80 and a 200mm telephoto lens. During some events I wished I had a longer lens, but, then, waving around a long camera while in the stands seemed to get on the nerves of some people around me, so I tried to be more discreet. Hard to be discreet if I had a 400. Most events had plenty of elbow room for us shutterbugs, like biathlon:
STF
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I agree that the best (camera) (knife) (gun) is the one you have with you so I want to get something significantly smaller and lighter than my 35 mm film SLR. The micro-four-thirds cameras seem to be just about the sweet spot in size vs image quality. I would not go smaller on sensor size, that is the downfall of most point and shoot cameras and all cell phones, the sensors are too small. Most people think only in megapixels because it's a simple number (and aggressively marketed) but it's probably one of the least important.
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
--
JHG
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
BTW, the little Ricoh WG-20 (last year's model?) I took with me on vacation last week worked like a charm. I never went very deep with it, but used it several times snorkeling and taking pictures at the beach. This is my youngest and a friend we met at the beach:
A bit blurry due to the waves, but not bad considering. Video works even better.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Isn't Killarney a spectacular area? It's quite close to my island. We have been going up Kirks Creek from McGregor Bay into Three Narrows Lake long before it became a provincial park. The little fishing town of Killarney used to be water access (or float plane) only. We boat there almost every year for a fish dinner on the docks.
This is just west of Killarney, McGregor Bay in the foreground, Bay of Islands to the left and the La Cloche mountains to the north.
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
What you see across the lake (it may look like a river but it's really a lake) is the university's ski hill. Down by the water is an old copper smelting site which has been shut down since after WWII, but is being cleaned-up and will eventually be opened as part of a national historical site perserving some of the history of copper mining in the area.
Note that ship is the Ranger III which is operated by the National Part Service and is how people can get to Isle Royale a National Park out in Lake Superior near the Canadian boarder.
This shot to more toward the city and shows the old hockey stadium where our school played (they're a Division I NCAA Hockey school). This was also where our commencement was held when I graduated back in 1971. It you'll note up on top of the hill you can see the shaft house for the Quincey mine, one of the deepest (over 6,000 feet) shaft mine in the US. They mined copper there until after WWII when the price dropped to where it was no longer feasible to continue to mine copper using anything but open-pit methods. That site has already been designated a national historical site and will be part of the overall historical site. Note that the mine had 23 levels but water now fills it to the 7th level, which I've been down to a few years ago as part of a mine tour that I took.
Anyway, the images below shows you what it looked like this morning when I got up. What a difference a day makes:
Hopefully that's it for the week as I head back Friday morning. Note that the Ranger is not there as it left yesterday morning for the first run of the season to Isle Royale so the ice on Lake Superior must have broken-up enough for them to make it there and back.
These shots were taken with my iPhone 6. I've also taken some photos with my Sony NEX-3N but it was easier to get the iPhone shots over to my laptop as I could simply mail them (note that the Sony a6000 that I'm thinking of getting has built-in WiFi so I'll be able to easily move those photos to my laptop).
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Lego; Meccano; cycling; fixing bicycles; tree forts; canoeing; building and using rafts in the creek; swimming [it's a wonder we never got sick in that E-Coli-infested dairy farm country creek; trespassing on railroad properties, getting into any unattended building or caboose we could, but never vandalizing anything, eventually, in my teens, my brother and I inveigling a ride on the local milk run freight train, with our bicicles along for the ride, so as to save ourselves eight miles of riding from the nearest town where we had stayed WAY TOO LATE in the day; model trains; playing with a Mamod model steam engine; making a funicular railway up the stairs in the house using Hot Wheels track as a guide and a shaded-pole induction motor out of an old rotary TV tuner to do the hoisting - "why can't we get it to spin the other way? It always runs one way, even if you get it spinning backwards before you switch it on..." ..and only being able to play with it for so long before the motor got too hot to hold because it was never made for that kind of duty cycle...
Different stuff in my teens - bu that wasn't childhood anymore...
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
The pictures I posted yesterday shows the shots I took on Tuesday and then Wednesday. Well here are the same shots taken this evening about 7:00pm:
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Built numerous electrical kit devices.. Got my first ham license at 14, 2nd class FCC commercial radio telephone license a year later.. Took all the math and science I could in high school.
Felt very fortunate as I approached college age in that I knew exactly what I wanted (unlike so many) and willing to bust my rear end to get it.... to graduate with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from a difficult, highly respected engineering university. And during an incredible (to put a man on the moon and safely return) era for an aspiring engineer... also during the draft for the Vietnam war.. 4 years Naval Reserve up to 2nd class Radioman, commissioned and served 3 years active duty as Electronics Material Officer/ Electronics Warfare Officer.
Primary civilian career as product development engineer, engineering manager at IBM (back in the days of when the company actually did hard core research, design, development and and in house production)..
Retired still playing with electrical stuff, computers, video, security systems, ham radio including building and maintaining a number of VHF/UHF repeater systems over the last 20 years..
Great time to be alive for those who enjoy and are fascinated by current technological development.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Does anyone have any philosophical thoughts about why this happens to some people and why it doesn't for others? Where does the spark come from?
I know many people who don't have hobbies, who drifted to the jobs they have, or just because their parents wanted them to do it, or spend their free time just whiling it away. Nothing seems to have drawn them down any particular path. I have difficulty understanding this, when I always seem to have a line-up of interesting stuff I want to do. How can people see the whole world around them, and all the fun stuff that can be done with it, and not be motivated to go try some of it? Why didn't the spark strike them? It would be easy to pass judgement on people, but I remember that many people didn't understand me, either, for all my crazy science talk and inventions when I was young.
STF
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
M main hobby now is oil painting, been at it for about 15 years.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Z
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
In addition to being four-function-calculator-capable, I loved trigonometry, and "got" exponentials and roots, and therefore logarithms etc.; but what "functions" were supposed to be I had no idea...and I ran out of school years before finding out.
By the time I was in Grade 6 I already had a pretty good idea I wanted to find a life path involving water and/or steam and/or electricity; that year I was very blessed to have a teacher with a technical background, and one day in a conversation about steam locomotives I mentioned feedwater injectors and how I couldn't understand the way they worked - and lo and behold if he didn't find a way to explain it in terms that this kid in his sixth year of arithmentic was able to intuit...to this day I don't know how he was able to convey the concept of converting the internal energy content of steam into the kinetic energy required to harness Bernoulli's principle in a venturi, may he rest in peace.
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Also built a frankensteim BMX bike out of cast-off parts from friends and garage sales
Also "helped" dad work on our cars, especially his 52 Chevy pickup hot rod.
Legos definetely led to my career choice.
David
Connect with me on LinkedIn. http://lnkd.in/fY7-QK
Quote: "If it ain't broke, I must not've fixed it good enough"
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Moved upto melting lead in bean tins after - again into lego moulds, this time lined with small pieces of plaster slab(sheet rock) as insulators.
20ys later pouring stuff into moulds became a big part of my life/career...
Brian,
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
My family was very into motorcycles, so I gave it a go when I was about 8 years old. I was homeschooled, so I had much time available to ride. I use to ride 5 hours a day on a course that we built using backhoes we borrowed from a friend of ours who left them at our house while he wasn't using them. I became pretty good at running them, but unfortunately he took them back to work. I did all my own maintenance on the bikes, restored the transmission 7 times by the time I was 14. I've been featured in motorcycle magazines, and local news papers. Created national records, and at one time, won third place American in the world round series (a three day event) in Sequatchie TN.
I loved working on the motorcycles as much as I loved riding them.
I still have 2 bikes, 1) 2007 GasGas 280 TXT Pro, 2) 2006 Triumph Tiger 955i.
-Joe
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
That reminds me of when I was 8 or 10 and asked my neighbor why he kept blowing up so many speakers. He proceeded to explain Ohm's Law to me and I was hooked on electronics!
Z
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
Gotta say, it makes me wonder: if your neighbour understood Ohm's Law, why did he keep blowing up speakers?
During my teens, my steam mentor was a retired marine engineer, a gentleman in his 70's who'd cut his teeth aboard his family's steam-driven fishing boat on Lake Erie. He got his steam ticket via the 'learn by doing' method; I remember well his description of what it involved to simultaneously stoke the boiler, tend its water, and run the engine to orders, the latter transmitted from the 'bridge' by a smart pull on a rope leading to a bell down in the engine room by the "one bell, stop; two bells, ahead; three bells, astern" method.
He told of getting lazier as he got older, eventually extending reach rods to his chair so that everything other than stoking could be done without his even having to stand up...
I met the man in the pickling plant where I had my first non-farm summer job; he was surprised that I already knew how injectors worked, and a few times he put me through my paces operating the injector on the main boiler just for the familiarization...
Guys like me need people like him, may he rest in peace.
CR
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
I just picked up a kit from a garage sale... I think my 9 year old will enjoy building it.
David
Connect with me on LinkedIn. http://lnkd.in/fY7-QK
Quote: "If it ain't broke, I must not've fixed it good enough"
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Your childhood hobbies and interests
David
Connect with me on LinkedIn. http://lnkd.in/fY7-QK
Quote: "If it ain't broke, I must not've fixed it good enough"