Hobbies
I have too many hobbies to count, really. I don't update this page particularly often, so it's probably not the best place to look for current information. Are some of my hobbies, in no particular order:
Skiing
I love to ski. This is probably my single favorite thing to do outdoors. I've been skiing since I was three years old, and I've been all over the Midwest and Colorado, and a few places in Utah and California to ski. I've never skiied anywhere outside the United States, although I would love to do it. My favorite kind of skiing to do is regular alpine skiing, although I do delve into some backcountry skiing from time to time.
I recently bought a pair of skis. They're the Salomon Lord (picture), with the following stats: 185 cm long, 128/88/116mm tip/waist/tail, 19.5m radius, 3780g weight. They're a semi twin tip tail, with the rocker shape. I bought them to be an all purpose all mountain ski, and they do that well. They're about the stiffest twin tip I could find, which is nice for an aggressive all mountain skier like myself.
Cycling
I also love to bike. Right now I ride a very nice custom frame: the Gunnar Roadie. There are a lot of really great blacktops in Iowa to ride on, although right now I'm living in downtown Minneapolis, so I don't have my bike with me (and as a result I'm running to stay in shape, which I enjoy much less). I've done RAGBRAI a number of times, and it's a lot of fun. The longest distance I've ever ridden on a bike is in a single day is 119 miles, although I don't know how long it took me.
Rubik's Cubes
One of the hobbies I've picked up while in school is solving a Rubik's Cube. I've cut my 3x3x3 time down to about a 50 second average using the Fridrich method. I can also solve a 5x5x5 "Professor" cube in about eight minutes, although I've not really practiced that solution at all, so I'm sure this time could be improved. speedcubing.com has a list of "unofficial" world records, which are really just self recorded records done outside of a tournament. There's really some pretty amazing records on there, though.
My primary cube is a cube I built purchased from masterthecube.com, which is a site I recommend. For high quality replacement stickers, I recommend cubesmith.com. Cubesmith sells tiles made out of lexan (which is the same stuff that football helmets are made out of), and they last forever. I highly recommend the textured version of the tiles over the non-textured version, as I'm convinced they help me hold on to the cube better. I currently don't use any cube lube, although I have yet to really experiment with it. My cubing obsession seems to come and go in phases, so I'm sure the next time I'm in phase I'll give it a try.
Computing
Computing is probably the thing that takes up most of my time. I'm very interested (and active) in the 'free software movement'. I've been an exclusive GNU/Linux user at home since April, 2006. I absolutely love the idea of packages, and the power of a GNU/Linux workstation. For getting things done, it's unparallelled. I like learning about new programs, programming and scripting languages, and utilities. My favorite editor is VIM. I run a TOR relay.
I'm interested in programming, as well. I've completed about half of Project Euler in various languages (C, Ruby, and Python being the three most frequent). I enjoy writing C programs more than any other kind, and I've even released some free C code (you can find all of my free packaged code at files.tycho.ws/code as a Subversion repository). I've done things like sort a terabyte (1012 bytes) on a parallel computer for fun.
Live Performance
I enjoy live performances, specifically live music and comedy. I've been to see hundreds of live shows, and I'm always interested in going to see more. While I lived in the twin cities, I frequented the Brave New Workshop quite a bit. I've also been to see a number of different standup acts, and I enjoy the band Da Vinci's Notebook, which is a hilarious hybrid of comedy and music.
My love for music and performance art in general is probably gleaned from my parents, who are both amateur musicians and love performance art as well. I've played the violin for 14 years of my life, taken some piano lessons (although I was never very good), I've been the 4th bass on a 4 bass drumline, and I've also sung in various choirs since I was 12. Probably my favorite band of all time is a "groove metal" band from Sweden called Meshuggah. Of course, I like lots of different genres of music, which you can find on my Last.fm page.
Camping
With backcountry skiing goes backcountry camping, although I've done quite a bit more backpacking in the summer than I have in the winter. I've done 3 different treks at Philmont, though, which really spoils you as a backpacker. Philmont trails are all very well maintained, there's no mosquitos (yeah!), it's not hard to re-supply, and it's awesomly wild out there. I've also done some other backpacking trips in the Porcupine Mountains, Isle Royale, and I've camped in different state parks all over Iowa. I've also spent a week canoeing in the Boundary Waters.