Video & Home Cinema - Bevis has a long standing interest in all
aspects of Video technology, and particularly Home Cinema.
He has a large collection of video kit including several LaserDisc
players, various DVD players, three Sony DVCAM digital decks,
four SuperVHS VCRs including a Panasonic edit pair, Standards
Converter, Satellite receiver, AV Amplifier, and (fairly) large screen
television. There's a wiring diagram for his AV
system on the web (sad or what?).
He runs a mailing list discussing LaserDisc in Europe (and other PAL
countries) called Europe-LD, another
about DVD called Europe-DVD and has
also written a detailed introduction to
Worldwide TV Standards which is now available on the Web.
Travel - A six times circumnavigator and general inveterate
traveller, he has visited all but two contients on the planet (an
oversight he plans to rectify soon). In terms of countries, he's
visited Andorra, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cook Islands,
France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Kenya,
Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, New
Zealand, Poland, Romania, Samoa, Spain, Singapore, Switzerland, Tahiti,
Tanzania, Thailand and the United States of America.
Within the USA, he's visited Arizona, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho,
Illinois, Indianna, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Montana, New Jersey, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon,
Pennsylvania,
Tennesee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and
Wyoming. In Canada, he's travelled as the length and breadth of British
Columbia (north to Fort Nelson, west to Prince Rupert), and is gradually
exploring Ontario.
Science Fiction - An avid collector of science fiction films and
TV series, Bevis has an extremely large video tape, LaserDisc and DVD library
collected over more than a decade and half and from throughout the world.
His current favourite TV series include
Xena Warrior Princess, Sabrina
The Teenage Witch, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Charmed.
Other long term favourites include
Blakes' 7,
Dr Who, Earth 2, VR.5,
Something
Is Out There, Babylon-5, The X Files,
The New Avengers,
Clarissa Explains It All,
Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager (most of which he's written
web pages about).
and
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Railways - Bevis has for many years been interested in railways
in general, with particular emphasis towards preserved and Narrow Gauge
railways. Initially interested primarily in the British scene, recently
he has branched out into US, Canadian and New Zealand lines.
This interest extends to model railways and he owns a moderate
G-gauge LGB and
AristoCraft (well actually, more
accurately the custom products made by AristoCraft for
HobbyCraft Canada)
setup based upon Alpine metre gauge railways and Canadian standard gauge.
He also has a growing N-gauge collection in both British and US outlines.
Recently a small collection of Canadian outline HO-gauge equipment has also
been added to the inventory, plus a few bits of UK OO stuff.
Pretty much all of it except the UK-outline N-gauge stuff has now been
equiped with decoders for Digital Command Control (DCC).
For a random collection of railways related stuff,
click here.
Female Singer-Songwriters - Bevis's interest in music mainly
concentrates on female singer-songwriters, particularly those who's music
falls into Rock or Metal genres. Amongst his favourite musicans are
Lee Aaron, Laura Branigan,
Kim Carnes, Lita Ford, Debbie Gibson, Heart, Joan Jett, Jenny Morris,
Sharon O'Neill,
Suzi Quatro, and
Jennifer Rush. He's also
into all-girl rock groups such as The Bangles,
The Go-Gos, and Vixen.
Needless to say he has a pretty large collection of CDs collected from
all around the world...
In the area of computing, he is a strong critic of Microsoft and a proponent
of Linux/Unix alternatives, and the GNOME desktop environment in particular.
He occasionally documents stuff he's been working on here:
![[Photo]](B.King.gif)