I'm primarily interested in pottery, particularly wood-fired pottery in anagama style kilns. I commissioned the translation of Furutani Michio's Japanese language book: Anagama: Building Kilns and Firing. Shiori Noro translated the book while Dick Lehman[1] and I edited the manuscript (Dick also traveled to Japan in researching some of the more esoteric points for the translation[2]).
Furutani's instructions in hand, I then built an anagama (shameless self promotion[3]). After three years and six firings, I think I may finally be starting to understand the kiln -- at least a little.
I also play go (board game), weakly, probably 8 or 9 kyu. I'm a Firefly (TV series) devotee and geek (Linux and Mac OS X).