About me: 48 years old, professional nerd, with too many hobbies to list and enough interests to keep me busy for a very long time: To give you some idea, I am interested in, amongst other things, irreverent snarky humor (a la Monty Python, MST3k), game theory, astronomy, cryptography, the general history of science (especially history of space exploration, and the history of computers (from origins in WW2 to present day AI)).

I am also addicted to listening to maker/hacker podcasts and have a long history (since before high school) of programming stuff: basic/quickbasic, pascal, database scripting/front end apps in Lotus Notes, C++, and of course most recently python. Spent high school competing in programming competitions, etc. Fun stuff as a hobby and for high school summer internships but not exciting enough to make in to a career!

I also have more professional interests in the brain and cognitive science, and recovery from stroke/brain injury. Medicine is never boring and is always evolving, so it's a good fit for me.

I am a native English speaker, and am also semiliterate with Español, and I studied русский язык in college. I am currently working on learning 日本語 and am currently trying to master the 2000+ general use Kanji (but am only about 20% of the way through that project so far). .-. . -.-. . -. - .-.. -.-- .. .- .-.. ... --- .-.. . .- .-. -. . -.. -- ... .-. ... . -.-. --- -.. . .- ... .-- . .-.. .-..!

The day I stop learning new things will be the day after I've died.

I thoroughly enjoy puzzles, and games in general - especially games of "perfect information" that don't depend on randomness. Chess is an excellent example.

I am dropping down my # of daily games, with the intent to study more tactics and read through some of my (many) partially read chess books. I play 2|1 for a quick chess fix, 5|5 if I have a bit more time, and 45|45 for serious games.

My goal is to be able to play (and perhaps occasionally win a few games) in Senior tournaments once I reach that age...

If anyone reading this has never played 'Go' before, but would like to learn/give it a try, please let me know. I'm a complete Go newbie (literally, I've not played before) but would like to try learning it with a fellow newcomer...

Cheers!

plux