This site features several of my hobbies, but my main focus is on Weather, Astronomy,
and 3D environments (worlds).

Weather has always been a hobby of mine since I was about 7 years old.  When I got
a little older, I remember having a Lionel Weather Instrument set (neon lights on a
cardboard display panel) and a plastic wind direction and anemometer that my dad
helped me put together and wire.

I also remember having to count how many times the neon light at the center  of the
display panel flashed in 30 seconds, then had to look on a chart to get the average
wind speed.  In addition, a sling psychrometer was used to get the wet bulb reading.
Geesh... seems like just the other day.

Now I have a Davis Weather Monitor II up on the roof, and am doing pre-recorded as
well as live weather broadcasts on the web, and using software like Interwarn,
Digital Atmosphere, Virtual Weather Station, and I am also a CWOP member, with
my weather information for my station showing up on http://www.wunderground.com
as well as on http://wx.findu.com/CW2148.

Astronomy is another hobby of mine.  I remember having a 2 1/2 inch Refractor
Telescope back in late 1972 and looking at the sun with the solar filter that was
included.  Also included with this scope was a moon filter, which cut down on the
bright glare, especially when the moon war full and very bright.  I could also observe
a few planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and also a few nebula like M42 in
the constellation Orion.

In 1976, I purchased a Celestron 5 for $595.00.  It was a larger (5 inch mirror), and
much better than that 2 1/2 inch Refractor.  It had a built-in clock drive, and also an
attachment that allowed users to add a camera to it for timed exposures.  I have some
pictures on this site that can be viewed by clicking on the Astronomy link at the top
of this page.

Virtual World creation is a relatively new hobby that I got into around 2000 / 2001.

Adobe had come out with a beta version of Atmosphere.  It was an open beta
and anyone who joined the forum and was interested in being a beta tester simply
just downloaded a beta version of the then called "Builder".  When I started with
this, I believe the version was Builder43.

I found this rather interesting, so I kept up with it, and got to know other people
through the forum messages as well as the chat-enabled homeworld that was
created by the Adobe Atmosphere Development Team.  We all got to know these
guys, and later nicknamed them as the "zombies" because they all put in so many
hours of dedication and hard work fixing the errors we found, as well as adding
new features that were suggested by the beta testers.  This helped make a
product that would have revolutionized the way buisnesses could sell products
or interact with customers in a 3D Store environment for example.

Unfortunately, the "world" in some ways were far behind this software, which many
of us thought of as technology ahead of its time, or so it seemed.

Any prospective customer for example, could enter a chat-enabled Virtual
store, walk through this store, and click on 3 dimensional products in that "store"
which would then open up a small browser window describing that product,
while the customer could view it from different angles, etc..

It did not seem to catch however, so eventually further development of Adobe
Atmosphere was discontinued in December of 2004.

Other 3D Virtual world developers came up with different software packages
such as Blink3d by pelicancrossing, which was the closest to Atmosphere, but
these too met there demise.

I was lucky enough to request and receive the free opensource version of the
Atmosphere Server before the entire Atmosphere project was discontinued.

My version of the server was filled with errors, but it was not a hugh undertaking
go fix.  I simply had to teach myself how to use linux, then learn abit of the
C Programming language.  I mostly learned this by just looking at the source
code in the files, and found that many lines had been commented out.  The
actual version I and several others received were likely Alpha versions of
the Atmosphere server.  I was lucky though to get a version that was rather
simple to fix.

I have shared my modified server with the a few of the former beta testers
and we have chat in our worlds.  I have some of those world here on my
website, and they can be accessed by clicking on the Atmosphere link
in the main menu link at the top of the page.

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