Chris' Hobbies

Web Design

As you may have already noticed, web design is one of my hobbies. Visit my portfolio section to see some of the sites I have designed for other people. Since I was a kid I have always been talented with Art. That talent stayed with me when I became interested in computers. I will post some pictures of my artwork as soon as I get a scanner.

Computers

My latest project has been an old Sun SPARCstation 10 that a friend gave me. I purchased some spare parts off ebay and now its got enough diskspace and memory to act as a multi-purpose server. Here's what I have set up. For more information see my SPARCstation Project page.

• Solaris 8
• Apache Web Server with PHP and MySQL
• Ipfilter firewall which filters all traffic going to my other computers
• DHCP server to provide dynamic ip addresses to my other computers
• Samba file server configured as a Windows Primary Domain controller using roaming profiles. Every time I log into a computer at my home, it connects to my server and downloads my user profile (links, documents, settings) then backs it up on the server when I log out.

For day to day computing I use Windows XP on a machine I built from scratch. It is a AMD Athlon 2000 (1.67GHz) with 1024MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, NVidia GeForce graphics card, CD-RW and DVD drive, and much more. Its more than enough power to run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and a few video games. I just finished Max Payne 2 and now I'm working of Medal of Honor.

Music

What can I say, I love all types of music. My CD collection contains everything from Madonna to the Eagles. In high school I played trumpet in the marching band, concert band, wind ensemble, orchestra, and jazz band. I kept up with it while in college and currently I am playing in the Sharon Community Band.

Cars and Car Audio

To go along with my love of music, I can't listen to a poor sounding stereo while on the road. I purchased a new Protege5 in March of 2003 and have already planned an elaborate stereo system for it. The equipment I have collected from previous systems consists of a Clarion cd player, MTX amps, and Eclipse component speakers and subwoofers. I would have installed it by now but I spent the last year finishing up my fiance's car. You can also see my 87 Cougar and 90 Grand Marquis installs on CarStereo.com.

In an effort to keep my Protege5 looking stock I hacked open the factory stereo to add RCA pre-out cables for connecting external amplifiers. Here is a how-to I wrote up while doing this.