...the toy box
(past, present and future favorites)

Here are some of my favorite toys - those I own, those I've owned in the past, those I've never owned, and those that aren't done being invented yet.

Those I own:

• My black 1995 Mazda Miata (seen here with my lovely wife Jennifer):
• Computers, computers, computers!
  • My current home computer is a Dell 4100 1GHz Pentium III running Windows Millennium.  I play games, surf, program, create graphics, and do MIDI sequencing and digital audio recording on it.
  • My favorite machine is my Sony VAIO 505JSX, one of Sony's ultra-slim notebooks. Technically, of course, this machine belongs to Microsoft. It rocks.
  • I also own a PowerMac 7200, an Amiga 500, which is collecting lots of dust, and an ancient Hewlett-Packard terminal (which my roommate David (Hi Dave!) and I used to play ULarn on during my year of college without a "real" computer - now it's a spare debugging terminal) - how ancient is it? Well, it has an integral thermal printer on the top, and weighs about the same as a large sack of cement.
• Music toys!
  • I primarily play keyboards - my main axes are a Roland RD-600 digital piano and a Yamaha S80. I also regularly play a Kurzweil K2000, and have a studio full of miscellaneous synthesizers, mixers, digital effects boxes and drum machines.
  • I also play the didgeridoo (a native Australian wind instrument), and have made a number of didgeridoos from bamboo, so I have a collection of those in the music room (and usually have at least one at the office), as well as a few miscellaneous ethnic instruments (e.g., ocarinas, maracas, and an African shaker instrument whose name escapes me at the moment). If you're interested in making a didgeridoo, check out my page on making a bamboo didgeridoo.
  • I've started taking up guitar, and bought myself an Ibanez AEF-18TVS acoustic/electric (click on "AEFTVS18" at the bottom).  This is a gorgeous guitar, both visually and sonically, and pretty inexpensive.
  • Just because I don't have enough to do, I took up bass guitar as well, and picked up a used Ibanez Ergodyne EDB400 bass.  It rocks.
  • Here's one of the tracks Jennifer and I put together, titled "Superstition". (MP3, 2.5Mb) This is several years old - we finished it in 1993, I believe. It's done mostly on a Yamaha TG33, with an Alesis D4 providing the rhythm track and the Korg DS-8 and Kurzweil K2000 coming in for one sound (the whale-call sound in the middle of the song).  This is a really old track, and heavily sequenced - we do much more live, organic stuff now.
• Pets!
  • My wife and I have four pets - our two cats, Casey and Dora, and our two bunnies, Pugsley and Bailey.  Casey is solid grey Humane Society survivor - we think he's a near-purebred Russian Blue.  Dora is a tortoise-shell mix we rescued from a roadside stand - she's about a year old.  Pugsley is a black Polish Dwarf rabbit - our only pet store purchase, and the elder statesman of the family.  Bailey is a Siamese rabbit (her coloring is similar to a Siamese cat) we picked up from Paws. Sadly, my pet Black Dutch bunny Monty, whose company I'd had for almost seven years, left us Christmas Day 1996. He was diagnosed with cancer in his lungs, and we had to have him put to sleep on Christmas day.

Those I don't own:

• BMW Z3 roadster. I wanted to buy one instead of the Miata, but I would have had to wait for delivery at the time. On reflection, my Miata kicks ass, and is a much better deal - although I cannot stand the new Miata design.  I think the headlights make it look like a Honda (no, I don't have anything against Hondas - but I do think it ruins a classic design).