Welcome to the Homo Ludens homepage!

A long, long time ago a bright ape figured out that by climbing down from the trees he could more easily master his life, and that of others. So, the new species homo was born! Some time later, homo found out that to master others, and to force them if they didn't obey quickly, it was an advantage to stand up. More respect, greater apparent size, and so. And stones reach farther when thrown from aloft. So, we had homo erectus.

Over the eons homo erectus developed more and more ability to master other's lives, soon being called homo sapiens. But when his inventive reached so far that he had developed weapons able to kill whoever didn't want to be told what to do, it was no longer thrilling enough to boss others around. Homo sapiens wanted something else, and better. He started to play. Homo ludens was born!

This page is about the toys and games (you may call them hobbies) played by one specimen of homo ludens: Me.

If you don't understand what "homo ludens" means, then please read Homo ludens for dummies!

Here are several subspecies of homo ludens. Over time, more species, and more contents about each, will be added.

Homo ludens radiactivus (amateur radio)

Homo ludens radiohistoricus (my antique radio collection)

Homo ludens electronicus (electronic projects)

Homo ludens volatrix (free flying)

Homo ludens nauticus (my homemade foldable kayak, and some yachting trips)

Homo ludens musicus (mostly classical)

Homo ludens aeromodellisticus (model airplanes)

Homo ludens andinensis (mountain climbing)

Homo ludens photographicus (one of my oldest hobbies)

Homo ludens philosophicus  (my thoughts about some odds and ends)

Homo ludens forestalis (setting up residence in a little paradise)

You can also use the site map to jump directly to any of the individual pages.

This web site is oriented toward contents, rather than special effects, bells and whistles. This should help in quicker loading and easier reading.

Contacting me:

I'm happy to receive any comments, questions, suggestions, corrections, rants and raves about this page. Just e-mail me at . Correspondence is equally welcome in English, German and Spanish. But I must warn you that since about mid 2009 I have no longer been able to keep up with the amount of mail received, so I have a growing backlog of messages, each of which expects a detailed, involved reply! I fear some of these messages will have to go unanswered, and I'm sorry for that, but each day only has 24 hours, and I need some of them for other tasks than writing e-mails...  If you have a comment, or a quick, to-the-point question, I will probably reply quickly too, but if you ask me to do a custom redesign of one of my projects to adapt it to your specifications (many people want just that!), or if you ask me to explain again something to you that was already explained in one of the web pages and you didn't understand, that mail may go unanswered! And if you send a note just telling me whether you like or dislike something, I will sure read it, take it into account, but might not reply.

If you e-mail me, please make sure that the return address specified in your address header actually works, and that your mail server does not block all mail that hasn't been previously authorized! It happens occasionally that I write a lenghty reply to someone, only to see my reply returned as undeliverable! That's very frustrating both for me and for the person who waits forever for my reply. At this moment I have undeliverable mail waiting for:

Mike Baxter, Hellmar Schmidt, Olaf Sorensen

If you are among these, please tell me some alternative e-mail address where I can send my reply to you! 

If you need to send me an attachment, please make it small! I live in a rural place, and use a cellphone internet connection, which is very slow and unstable. An e-mail with a three megabyte photo attached will totally lock up my system. The maximum size of e-mail I can reasonably download is about 200kB total.

And please do not send commercial offers and similar things. As a matter of principle, I NEVER buy anything offered by unsolicited e-mail.

Manfred Mornhinweg.