Daniel Lynch

Hi group,

My name is Daniel Lynch. I'm a 20 year old student from Ireland. I started playing minesweeper at age 14 buthave only been playing seriously for the past 3 or 4 years. After I felt that I had reasonable times, I went searching the net to find just how far ahead of the world I was- big surprise! My current records are 17 and 74. I've always struggled with my expert time despite plenty of sub20s in intermediate. My hope is to break the 70 mark and ultimately break the minute mark. Outside of minesweeper, I have plenty of hobbies. The closest to minesweeper would be chess. I played a lot with my secondary level school and have won, with them, a couple of All Ireland Scholastic Championships. This is more a reflection on the poor state of chess in the country than my strength. Recently, my playing has gone downhill due to university exams but I hope to raise it soon. At its peak, aged 17, I had a rating of c.1700 ELO. My other main hobby is quite unusual. I've always been quite taken by astronomy. As a kid, I joined a national club and saved up for a very decent telescope. Then in August 1999, when a total solar eclipse went through Europe, I positioned myself in Germany to see the event. Though cloudy and wet, I was hooked by the experience. Since Germany, eclipse chasing has brought me to Zimbabwe, Scotland and Antarctica. As you can imagine, the hobby is incredibly expensive, especially given the travel and equipment required (cameras, lenses etc).I have to work all the holidays that I get from university to pay for the travel. During the week, however, I teach chess to primary school children. While the pay is good, the hours are small but it's enough to keep things ticking over. For relaxation, I enjoy going to the cinema and listening to music. My favourite band are The Frames, an excellent Irish band. The link I am providing goes to an Irish eclipse chasing group. If you look towards the November 23rd 2003 eclipse, you can read my pictures and account of the trip to Antarctica. You can also see my pictures of most of the eclipses on the other pages.

http://www.ecliptomaniacs.com

Happy Sweeping to all,

Daniel Lynch