I work as a programmer for avionics software and my hobbies include old film cameras and radio amateur hobby.
I've always been interested in technology. When I was a five year old kid in a theme park I was more interested in knowing how all of the machines worked rather than trying to ride on them. So that is how it all started. I had to take apart all of my toys to see how they worked. As I got older my "toys" got more expensive. Soon I had to figure out how to put them back together because I couldn't just leave them as pile of parts. I started to swap out parts in broken phones to repair their screens or to change how they looked.
All of that lead me to be interested in how electronics worked and soon I was assembling electronic Velleman Minikits and in few years those turned in to Arduinos. Of course I had no idea how to use an Arduino and my parents had no idea what they were. So I had to learn enough English to use Google so I could find more information. Soon I was copying sketches from the early Arduino website so I could play with serial and LEDs.
Now as I work as a programmer and sit in front of a computer all day it had the effect of not really wanting to play with them on my freetime. So that lead me to picking up few new hobbies.
During Covid and working I got fed up sitting at home all of the time playing the same old video games. Contrary to my usual habbit of staying inside I wanted to go outside this time. Analog cameras were starting to become popular again and I loved old things so I thought I'd combine them. I bought my first analog camera and took few pictures on color film and tried to develop them at home. All of the C41 chemicals and complicated developing process never gave me good results. So I figured out I'd try black and white film. I bought a medium format camera and many rolls of HP5 for it. It is now one of my favorite ways to photograph the world. Everyone can take good color pictures with their smartphones. But the worlds seems so different through B&W film. It feels like I can capture the moment in B&W film and it doesn't care about if it's 1940's or 2020's.
But analog photography is a bit boring in winter. It's white snow and little light on the short days. So I needed a hobby that works in the dark of the winter after work. So I got in to amateur radios. More old things and more expensive toys. Of course I can talk to anyone in the world using the internet but there is something special when you use just 10 watts of power to send messages to Germany or Russia. With good weather or more power I can communicate to Japan or United States.