Spare time

Occasionally, people ask me what I do in my spare time and I am happy to tell you. Here is a list:

Sports

Running is what I do regularly and I commute by bike, and sometimes I exercise on my racing bike. You can see all the details of my workouts on my Strava account. I tend to go running in the morning, right after waking up and before breakfast. In the first 15 minutes, thoughts pop up that have been occupying my mind lately. Then, after a little longer, I am able to clear my mind. I believe it feels close to a religion. I’ve done experiments by doing mathematics during exercise: at a certain point of intensity, it’s not possible anymore to focus the mind. It’s great to just let the body and mind operate autonomously and enjoy the workout. Happy being home, rinsing off.

Lifting

Heavy lifting, alongside the running. It asks for something different and it clears the head differently: running empties the mind over distance, where a heavy set does it in a few seconds, because there is no room left for anything else.

Spirituality and mindfulness

I do a bending routine, and I try to meditate. Try is the honest word there. It reaches for the same thing the running gives me, a cleared mind, but on purpose rather than as a side effect of the effort.

Reading

The most recent one I bought is Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature by Federico Faggin, who led the design of the Intel 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, and has spent the years since arguing that consciousness is not something a computer will ever produce.

Consciousness

A long-running interest, and the one I read most about. It sits where the microbiology background, the interaction work and the engineering meet: what a mind is, and whether it is the kind of thing a machine could ever have. The Faggin book above is the most recent stop, not a conclusion.

Formula One

Yep, year in year out watching F1 on TV. A heritage from my family, when my uncle Paul was active on dirt bikes on Sundays: back at home, we watched the sports broadcast (Studio Sport) of that day and hoped to see a glimpse of his heats.

Sometimes, there was F1 on TV too and we started watching that more and more. And later on, when it wasn’t on Dutch television, I watched it on the BBC.

A small boy in orange overalls and a Camel cap sits cross-legged on the grass beside a
motocross track, holding a bottle of orangeade, with the rutted dirt course behind him. — At the motocross, September 1980.

A family posing around a small car parked at the foot of Eau Rouge at
Spa-Francorchamps in 1982, the climb behind them lined with period hoardings for Bastos,
Gitanes, Texaco and Shell. — Spa-Francorchamps, 1982. The foot of Eau Rouge.

The technical details and advancement the teams make, combined with the drivers’ talent on the different tracks around the world, are really nice to keep up with. It makes the races interesting. I have a growing interest in the other classes: F2, F3 and Formula E.

House maintenance and improvements

Being a house owner, the work never ends. It runs from painting (which is the last step of a long process) to laying laminate flooring or sticking draught strips in strategic places.

Indoor (and outdoor) gardening

Since 2016 I have been growing avocados, and I am trying to save red peppers by keeping them indoors. I still have a lot to learn about plants. I have been fighting caterpillars, soil flies and all sorts of other bugs to keep them from infesting my (house) plants.

And plenty more

This is a selection, not the list. Interests arrive, get taken apart, and then either stay or do not, which is the same habit that runs through everything else on this site.