About this Site

Andor and friend

The year 2011 is generally considered to have been pretty much of a flop. I don't expect 2012 to be much better or even very different. In fact, however, my own life was not all that bad in 2011 and I was not personally affected by the big catastrophes that were so succinctly described in all of the media. I try to be thankful for that.

A very special friend of mine once paraphrased John Lennon, saying "Life is that which happens while you are making plans." John Lennon didn't make it up, but he made it famous.

This website is mainly a place for me to store pictures and information that I might want to share with a few friends. If you got here by accident you are certainly welcome to look about, but I'm afraid you won't find it particularly entertaining.

I worked as a scientist for a long time. Science is no longer my passion. In fact, I became rather disillusioned about science many years ago and thought it better to help other scientists with their projects than do "original" science myself. Maybe it's just me as a scientist about which I became disillusioned.

I do live in an interesting house and I previously lived in an even more interesting house, so I have lots of pictures of those.

Coffee is one of my passions and I will devote more and more pages to that topic, in particular coffee roasting and how to properly make espresso, even though there are now many such pages on the Internet. I presently own an interesting, if not particularly common, coffee roaster and I will present information about it in some detail here.

You will not find a blog here. I very much dislike the word "blog" and I have little to say that would interest anyone beside myself so I ignore that possibility. I hope you are thankful for that. You also will not find me on any "social networking" sites, which I tend to think of as anti-social in nature. I must admit, however, that another reason is lack of time, energy and interest. At the same time it surprises me somewhat that people whom I think of as being relatively level headed share a great deal of personal information about themselves on Facebook or LinkedIn. George Orwell really got it all wrong. No one has to spy on people, they voluntarily make themselves transparent to the rest of the world.

Although trained as a scientist, for more than 20 years I have been earning my living primarily by looking after computers, repairing them, installing both software and hardware and teaching people to use them. There are, however, many people who are far more capapble of helping you with your computer if you have a problem. I don't really like computers, but working on them is better than digging ditches or writing scientific papers, so I continue along that line.

I also do a lot of translation. I only translate from German into English and I generally only translate scientific papers. A good translation is almost a work of art. It is very demanding and requires concentration and an understanding of the subject. I find it very stimumlating and gratifying.

Cooking is another one of my passions, but I have yet to devote any space here to that field. I enjoy cooking various Italian styles, US American, German, Indian, Asian and other styles. I am not a great cook and I tend to make many mistakes while cooking, forgetting ingredients and the like, but I'm getting better at covering up my mistakes. I have a "hero" cook, J.O. He's taught me more about making food taste good than any of the 475 cookbooks in my book cases.

You won't find much about literature here, but I have read a few books in my life and I have some favourite authors such as Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. As I have grown older (and I am getting along in the years) I have discovered that having a lot of knowledge is not necessarily a good thing and I am thankful that I have forgotten a lot of what I once thought I knew.

I do like quotes from people who are or were a lot smarter than I am, so I guess I will put a page of quotes up here somewhere.

I put up a page of thoughts that have been helpful to me here.They may seem somewhat bleak and sad, and yet I am not an unhappy person at all. I think that one challenge of life is to find happiness and contentment in spite of the horrors and injustices that surround one.

So there you are. If you have gotten this far you must not have anything better to do, so you might as well stick around and look at the pictures. Feel free to drop me a line or two if you like. It might take awhile, but I'll try to get back to you. If you have any interesting recipes I like those, too.

Good luck with whatever you are doing, whoever you are. Enjoy yourself if you can and put your energy in whatever you are passionate about. And drink good coffee made from good, fresh beans.