My hobbies

Here you can find a list of things I like. They are not necessarily things I do often: in many cases they're even subjects to which I've not paid attention since a long time, or things I never did, but that I would like to learn.

Science

My first books spoke about subjects like the human body, the cosmos, dinosaurs... how could I avoid to become a "science addicted"? Well, at first I had no clear idea about what to do when I grew up: for a long time I wanted to be a palaeontologist (you know, dinosaurs always impress children a lot), then, when I was 14 years old, I changed my mind... if you want to know how, go on reading.

Astronomy

When I was 14 years old, as I was saying, I read a book about finding constellations in the sky. Well, at that point my destiny was already written, even if I didn't know that yet: I begun to spend some evenings on the balcony, I catched the first colds, and one year later came the first telescope. Now, if everything goes well, I'm going to become a professional astronomer.

Books

For me printed paper is almost as important as the air I breathe... I think that, if my house catched fire, the first thing I would try to save (after my parents, if they hadn't provided by themselves) would be my books. I read above all scientific essays, while I have to admit that I'm not very well-informed about fiction. I like above all horror stories, but the classical ones (like Dracula); among Italian authors, I like Stefano Benni.

Computers

My first computer was the mythical Commodore 64, followed in 1991 by a 33 MHz AMD 386, while in March 1997 a 150 MHz Cyrix P200+ took service. Finally, in September 2001 I got a 1.4 GHz Athlon Thunderbird. I'm trying to learn some programming languages: for the time being, the only ones I know are Basic (the traditional one, not Visual Basic) and Fortran 77/90. I know, it's really time for Fortran 77 to retire (even Fortran 90 is beginning to smell musty), but unfortunately some people involved in astronomy still insist on programming in this language, with criminal stubbornness. Finally, I'm learning C and C++ at full speed.

Interactive Fiction

Forget Tomb Raider and similar stuff: yes, I like Lara Croft too, but here we are not speaking about games requiring a last generation CPU and a graphic card with two processors and four cooling fans: instead of 3D images, text-based adventure games show (you already guessed it, didn't you?) simple text, more or less complex depending on the machine they're running on and the skill of the author. The best ones are involving like novels, and they are novels, after all... but in this case you don't read from the first page to the last one, but you act as a protagonist, giving orders to the computer and influencing the events.

If you want to know more, here are some links (to Italian resources, sorry...), which in their turn will bring you to other sites...