One of my hobbies is taking pictures. At times, I can spend 10 minutes looking for the best viewpoint. I'm using a Praktica MTL5 and a Canon Rebel II. Well, the Praktica is now only used with on old 200mm Carl-Zeiss-Jena tele lens. Here are some of the shots I did 1994 in New York City. As a school boy and student I used to use the darkroom and do the prints myself. Most of what I learned about the technical perfection and the artistic feeling needed for good photography I owe to Jens-Peter Redlich.
Another one of my hobbies is building and upgrading computers. All started in June 1990, a few weeks after the monetary union of Germany, when we bought our first PC (386sx, 16MHz, 1MB RAM). For the first upgrade - a Seagate 120MB disk for 1000DM - I hired a computer science student. I asked, listened, and watched very closely - and have been doing every other upgrade since myself. Most of the time we waited until the next processor+mainboard that was about twice as fast as our last one dropped to mass market prices:
In 1996 we installed an Ethernet LAN (with much help from Harald Böhme), linking three PCs and a notebook. This was partly upgraded to 100MBit/s in 1999. Since 1994 I have been using Linux as main development platform. Around 1997 a strange thing happened. With my small budget of about 1500DM per year I could maintain two PCs at home that began to outperform the IBM workstations at university that were upgraded with about 20000DM per year. At the same time, Linux, the Open Source movement, and commercial products for Linux gained momentum, such that virtually all tools known from other platforms became available for Linux, too. Judging from my own quick'n dirty benchmark, my current Athlon machine beats all the DEC and SGI workstations at work in terms of compile time performance by a wide margin.
Back in 1974, I started to take piano lessons from Jürgen Tolksdorf (Musikschule Hoyerswerda). I continued with interest but without enthusiasm until 1981. Then we moved and the piano could not be brought up the staircase. I didn't miss much, but started to play the guitar instead. Only a few years later I realized that I couldn't play the simplest piano pieces anymore. Whenever I saw someone playing live, my fingers itched and I thought it would be nice to have a piano at home. (I was especially impressed by Marco Frittelli in Oberwolfach.)
When I passed the magic 30, I thought ``now or never'' and went shopping for pianos. By 1997 digital pianos had achieved an astonishing sound quality. I spent several hours playing piano using headphones in show rooms and fell in love with the sound of the Real Piano series by General Music. Luckily, they offer this sound in entry level instruments at very attractive price points. (I was baffled when I learned that they equip their entry level instruments with the same advanced synthesizer chips that power their top notch machines.) I decided for the RP 8, since it has weighted keys + hammer action, which the RP Basic does not have. With a list price of 2290DM, the first offers were 2200DM, 2100DM, and 2000DM. The longer you play yourself and the more critical you judge the instruments, the lower the price is you get: ``1900DM. This is may last offer.'' Then I visited Berlin's ``Tastenkönig'', told him about my wishes and the GEM RP8. He said ``I give you the best price in town.'' And very much so he did: 1750DM.
So how is the GEM RP8? I mostly use it with headphones. The piano sound is great. The harpsichord is lovely. The church organ is impressive. Don't expect to get that sound from the builtin speakers, however. If I want quality sound for an audience I play through our HiFi system. (Authentic acoustic performance from the instrument itself costs much more.) Here are the technical specifications: