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What are some more obscure hobbies you enjoy?
For example:
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Weird collections
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Kitbashing - Bashing model kits together to make unique creations instead of following the instructions
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Making knives out of random junk
Mapping. Pick an OpenStreetMap client, start out by mapping out your local neighbourhood.
There's always something to add there, from business contact details to road changes. I've cleaned out a few long closed businesses and added new ones as a start. From there you can go wild from mapping buildings, accurately putting every bench and trash can in a big park, to actually going outside and submitting GPS traces.
Like the other comments mentioned, there's no particular end reward for it unless you use OSM data yourself. And it's kind of zen to map out an area very familiar to you.
A fellow mapper !
As mentioned in a sibling answer, StreetComplete is a pretty good starting point for casual mappers (and an excellent way to walk the dog in the neighborhood). EveryDoor is also a good app for "on the ground mapping".
Lately I got interested in Mapillary. The idea is to provide crowdsourced street view images, with an interesting development being automated mapping with computer vision. Having a 360 camera with me, this might be something I'd like to contribute to. Sidefortunately, it's owned by Facebook now. On one hand I have only middling trust in Meta, on the other hand in the map department its Google vs all the other big players (Meta, Amazon, Microsoft) via Openstreetmap.
This is so cool! It would also be super useful for my geocaching hobby! I’d love to see some of the work you’ve done sometime.
I've added a couple of "local-knowledge" shortcuts to my neighborhood on OSM - little footpaths that connect a park to an adjacent road, things like that. The benefit is that I can now get accurate walk-time estimates instead of Google telling me to walk all the way around.
That sounds really cool, how did you initially get into mapping?
Not OP, but I first got into it through stumbling upon an app called StreetComplete. It used your current GPS location and asks you questions about things around you to improve OSM. Things like whether there's bicycle lanes along a given street, the safety of pedestrians crossings (tactile markers, raised intersections, etc). Also stuff like business hours and names. I'd recommend that if you want to start out
Thank you, I'll definitely check it out!
Huh. I once had this as a job. The government used to pay me to do what people apparently are doing for free now!
Ayy this is pretty cool! Thanks for mapping, I play a couple of games that use street/map data from OSM
Oh that is so cool! I've contributed to stuff on Google Maps and while that feels really good that I'm probably doing something useful for other people, it did always feel like I'm just contributing to Google's data. Something more open would feel better.
I do a great deal of Scottish country dance, a kind of traditional folk dance done with a partner in a "set" of dancers. It's typically social but performances aren't unheard of. I participate in events in my local area as well as regionally/internationally. I also sometimes teach, though it's definitely not my career.
When I was younger I spent a lot of time editing wikis, including Wikipedia and several video game encyclopedias. I'm not nearly as active as I was, but I still keep up with the software.
Watching this dance, I'm thinking... is there a meaning behind it? Originally, did it serve a specific social or customary purpose that was known to the dancers? And what did it communicate to the viewers?
Are those stupid questions? :P
Not stupid questions! Country dancing, including Scottish, was and is a social dance form that offers people a way to meet each other and have a good time. It wasn't typically meant to be performative, which is why the dancers face each other in sets; they're dancing with one another and not for the sake of an audience. Centuries ago this was an essential way for young folks eligible for marriage to intermingle, but people of all ages fundamentally did it because it was fun!
I'm sure the figures meant something to the individuals who danced them, but perhaps more along the lines of "I love dancing the reel with the handsome gentlemen because I can be flirtatious in a socially acceptable way" rather than "this arm position refers to the stag's antlers, which symbolizes our great country…" (the latter is possible and maybe plausible, but most traditional figures probably evolved fairly naturally). Many older dances are named for corresponding musical tunes that predate them; the dance would be written to go with the music. Plenty of tunes and/or dances were written to commemorate specific people (a monarch, a naval officer, whichever fair maiden the devisor was courting, etc.), locations and groups (such as "Flowers of Edinburgh"), cultural myths and legends, and other things. There are also plenty of dances that involve a formation like St. Andrew's Cross (for example) which has nationalistic significance, but I think most of the complicated ones tend to be modern-ish. Modern dances often have known backstories and many figures have specific symbolic meaning in the context of that dance, such as (random example) a figure with a sort of sweeping geography representing the devisor searching for their lost cat. Modern figures tend to be more complex and were written for a specific dance, progression, or occasionally symbolic purpose. The Scottish Country Dance Database keeps track of all the dances, devisors, publications, steps, figures, and other information we know about.
Country dance in general originated in post-Renaissance Europe, particularly England and France, and reached its peak around the late 18th century. I imagine it took a certain amount of inspiration from formal dances at court, but the exact nature of the dancing was pretty regional and definitely not exclusive to the upper class, especially in Scotland. When country dancing spread to lowland Scotland it intermingled with highland reeling from the north to eventually become a distinct form now called Scottish country dance. Scottish highland dance is its own kind of dancing that you'll see at cultural festivals: in the 21st century it's almost entirely performative, though you sometimes see highland steps show up in social country dances. English country dance is still also practiced. Contemporary American contra dance is a derivation of country dance—George Washington was an avid country dancer before contra existed—and various Latin dances also take inspiration from country dance. If you've ever done line dancing at a bar, that would be contextually comparable to cèilidh dancing, which vaguely overlaps with country dance and is certainly familiar to country dancers today. There are videos of Queen Elizabeth II and her court doing Scottish country dancing, which she loved. Modern Scottish country dance has a pretty different atmosphere than Regency and adjacent dance communities because SCDers are usually interested in dancing itself more than costumes, although kilts and other historical garb show up at balls and in demonstrations.
If you're curious about trying Scottish country dance, I encourage you to check out the Scottish dance group finder. It's surprisingly widespread. I'm familiar with many of the groups in North America and a few in Western Europe if you ever have specific questions about the community. They tend to offer inexpensive or free beginner's classes in addition to hosting social programs, and you can get the hang of it pretty quickly. Being communities rather than performers, I've also found them to be uniquely welcoming. :)
Thanks for sharing this, I found it very interesting! I've done a fair bit of contradancing and some assorted other folk dancing and it's cool to learn more about their history and evolution.
This is some great history. Thanks for sharing. My wife and I hosted a contra dance at our wedding reception. A good caller (the person providing instructions and teaching the dances in real time) can teach a room full of novices simple dances utilizing a handful of basic steps. We had little kids to old folks participating. Contra dancing is a blast!
Love the dances. My dad used to host similar events, but for breton bal folk dances. I never danced myself, but I did the sound engineering for those events, so this gave me a good dose of nostalgia. :D
How many people dance at a time for scottish dances? I remember in the bal folk events there were like 20-30 people or so at any given time.
I'll have to check out Breton bal folk dances in my area. Thanks for sharing!
A set in Scottish dance normally has eight people, typically with three couples dancing and one standing out; the first couple is the "active couple" who has the most complex track. There can be any number of sets in the hall, organized in lines whose "top" is nearest to the music. There's no maximum except the size of the floor. The dimensions of the set vary, but a comfortable set would be 15'x20' and a tight one 12'x15'.
Most regular instructional classes have one or two sets (8–16 people), but I've seen as many as five. Depending on how active the local branch is, a smaller social (non-class) event might have 2–3 sets (16–24 people) and a well-attended one 4–8 sets (32–64 people). At a large ball, you could see anywhere from 10 to 20 sets (80–160 people) in a hall (examples: Edinburgh, St Andrews, Boston). It's hard to get the whole thing in a photograph. The biggest Assembly Halls in Scotland could conceivably take 150–200 people, perhaps squished, though you'd probably only see everyone on the floor at the same time for the grand march and first dance. After that, some people would be taking water breaks. At festivals with purpose-built facilities you might have record-breaking crowds of several hundred. I've never seen that though.
A ball program today might have 12–18 dances for a whole evening; except at Hogmanay, which might have two programs' worth: one for the old year and one for the new. :P
This sounds a bit more involved than the breton dances. From what I remember, those were more organized in lines or circles. You do occasionally get pairs, but I think they all do the same thing, and the pairs switch up pretty regularly.
12-18 sounds like a lot, how long does an event last typically?
In addition to longwise lines, Scottish country dances are also sometimes done in "square" sets (like square dancing) or in a circle around the room, like cèilidh dancing. You're almost always in a pair within that though. There are some "mixers" where you switch partners in the middle of the dance, but usually you only change partners for every new dance.
A jig or reel/hornpipe takes perhaps 3–4 minutes and a strathspey 7–8, depending on the tempo. Even though a dance is only 32–40 bars long, most dances are repeated eight times, so each couple has two chances in each position. It varies though. A program is normally written in a format like JSR–JSR–JSR so the balance between quicktime and strathspey time is approximately equal overall.
Scottish country dances don't have a caller like contra, but there are too many dances to memorize, so each dance is "briefed" by an MC beforehand (dancers will have learned individual figures and can string them together just fine). This usually takes about a minute, but if the dance has a particularly challenging figure or progression, the MC may ask the sets to walk it through once or twice. If a ball goes late, it may be because the whole program was difficult (or many beginners are present) and they walked every dance.
I would say most socials last about 2–4 hours, all things considered. People aren't expected to do every dance or stay the whole time, though the young and energetic crowd often will. A well-written program has enough structural, technical, and musical variation that it doesn't become excessively tiring or repetitive.
I used to hate doing "social dancing" as it was called in school and my mum was a PE teacher so I couldn't escape it at home either. Me and my brothers used to have to dance with my mum to jog her memory on the dances every year.
Now that I'm older though I really love them, I'm always excited when a friend says they're having a ceilidh at their wedding or other special event and me and my partner go to a Burns night every year with friends to eat haggis, drink beer and whisky and dance a Gay Gordon's or Canadian Barn Dance!
I follow MUDs and text-based interactive fiction in my own infrequent, ambivalent, ADHD way, with a focus on games and game-like experiences.
This is not the same but kinda related for me, but I used to test and follow the development of traditional chatbots such as Alice and other winners of the Loebner Prize. ChatGPT made those irrelevant overnight.
I chronicled my dive into MUDs (Multi-user dungeons)[1] in several comments and one post:
I research visual novels (not academically), but I'm not really a fan. It's just an interesting format that helps me understand interactive fiction as a whole.
I am now interested in the text-adventure engine Inform7, and just started the game Counterfeit Monkey, which won a few awards. It has an interesting puzzle mechanic that was compared to Portal, where you alter the world by removing letters from words using a letter-removal gun.
I'm neither a programmer nor an "IT person". Nevertheless, I may create some kind of MUD or interactive-fiction game in the future. But I'd probably need a lot of help! :D
[1] MUDs are the multiplayer, text-based games that predated MMORPGs. Some MUD aficionados are very firm in their notion that MUDs are games, not interactive fiction, so I'm respecting that distinction here.
I’m really happy whenever MUDs come up — I spent so much of college on them, it gives me a little blast of nostalgia! Some friends and I have run a MOO (the social version of a MUD) for the last 30 years as a way of keeping in touch. :)
I am a new convert I'm afraid, and a cranky one at that :P
You must have some very interesting stories!
How was that MOO you guys had?
I spent waaaaay too much college time in MUSHes. Major nostalgia. I still keep the doors open on a MUSH, more or less, even if it's kinda just me and a couple others these days. Someday text will have a revolution!
Oh very interesting, I'll have to check it out! I think this is something that I would enjoy honestly. I'm too young to have played MUDs, but I do miss the spontaneous interactions with internet strangers back when I played MMORPGS in my pre/teen years.
You’ll need some notebooks,pens,highlighters, Mt Dew, and cool ranch Doritos to complete the experience.
Sounds like an homage to Mark Dunn's Ella Minnow Pea that has the same-ish underlying context.
Counterfeit Monkey seems fun! I'll be giving that a try. I'm only familiar with a basic version of interactive fiction games where you pick from multiple choices, which has a thriving community on Tumblr (most of them are curated by this blog). I've also explored the idea of making an IF game with one of the no-code/limited-code platforms since from a storytelling perspective it's fascinating to see all the what-if scenarios played out, one of the reasons I loved the Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid.
I like to make things out of materials that would otherwise head to the landfill or recycling center. This usually means combining various types aluminum, cardboard, plastic, wire and hot glue. I watch STL sharing sites where people make really clever toys and tools with their 3D printers, and I often find you can just as easily make the same objects with material from the recycling bin. I'm at this very moment making a river kite with my toddler and we'll be heading down to the river to test it out in an hour or so. I also used to make models of satellites out of junk, and I even promised the Tildes community that I would post about my next project. Well... that project hasn't happened yet, but I still haven't forgotten and I owe you all.
Excuse me while I go off on a bit of a tangent, but you've basically hit the nail on the head as to why I don't care too much about the community built around 3D printing. It's very full of people who just print pre-made stuff obsessively. It's just a bit annoying to have a machine that can basically make anything but everyone's too busy making tiny boats that aren't even very good at floating upright.
It's nice to be able to print out a tool or something instead of needing to go out and buy one, but for the most part I want to see things that I can't just go out and buy.
Edit: This is not to say there aren't people designing awesome stuff every day - there absolutely is. It's just that they tend to get lost in the noise at times.
The boats you see a lot of are probably Benchy boats, which are more for calibrating/benchmarking your printer. Those aren't meant to float and actually contain a bunch of angles and geometry that helps identify issues with your printer.
I do think there's a lot of saturation right now, and it's only going to continue. Printers are getting more sophisticated and feature -rich every year with negligible cost increase. The printer I started out with is barebones compared to something at the same price point today.
I definitely printed a lot of stereotypical stuff early on, but once I dive back into it (my printers are both out of commission for now and it's a busy time of year for me) I have some specific projects I'd like to try my hand at and with any luck those will include at least some custom modeling on my part.
I know they're Benchy. But they're also a meme, and it's common to see them remixed into new memes. It's also frighteningly shocking how many people don't seem to realize that it's a benchmark.
This is honestly more of a problem with how online social spaces are organized these days. Everyone seems to want to come into one big community, and as 3D printing continues to grow, it means there will always be a huge number of newbies coming in. And because of the nature of the hobby, there's going to be a large number of people who exit. They get a shiny new hobby, or they realize that 3D printing isn't as easy as 2D printing and give up, or any number of other reasons.
Interesting take, and I don’t necessarily disagree. I think the gap is that, as 3D printers have become cheaper and more accessible, 3D modeling software and skills have not. I am a FreeCAD user, and it’s… not very good (but getting better). The commercial offerings are too expensive for hobbyists, or seemingly exist to capture users to expand their customer base - why else build a product like that?
Yeah, the lack of good open-source CAD is a problem, and I'm honestly surprised there isn't a better option in the field, especially given how much interest has been given to it thanks to 3D printing.
OpenSCAD is pretty great, but with that kind of workflow it's no surprise that layfolk aren't running towards it.
The good news is that there are two commercial software packages that are pretty great and are functionally free to average people - OnShape and Autodesk Fusion 360. But even those will be very confusing if you go in blind. I found it easier to get started with OpenSCAD, simply because it was easier to find quality written documentation for it.
I have also used OpenSCAD, and to be honest I think it’s pretty bad. It’s okay for meshing operations, and programmatically not bad - I especially appreciate that it can do convex hulls. It’s not really general CAD software though; it doesn’t have a solver and can only export meshes.
Oh for sure, it's terrible when compared to "real" CAD tools, but it does a good job for simple things.
If you have access to an EDU email address, you can often get Autodesk's full suite for free through their educational portal. Main caveat, or at least to be, is that you cannot use it for commercial ventures, but it a great resource for learning the professional tools. I, personally, use Autodesk Inventor as it is what I learned in high school as part of the Project Lead The Way program that a lot of public schools in the US have.
As for functional uses, I was able to replicate a plastic piece that used to be part of an iPad easel my mother used a lot, but had since cracked from years of use. Just took some measurements with calipers, drew it up on paper, entered it into Inventor and the part was ready to print within 20min. Granted, this is with knowing the workflow, but is it not too difficult to learn and do.
In fact, other than a single benchy I have not printed any other artsy piece as it is better to create functional uses rather than waste plastic on a glorified paperweight.
Most of the relevant Autodesk tools have been rolled into Fusion 360 (thus the name), so you can get everything you'll need with their free hobbyist license; no need for an EDU email address.
I’m in the same boat. When I got the printer, I thought I’d make fan stuff, and movie props.
Realizing it is all a waste, really, I’m designing and printing useful stuff almost exclusively (I just printed board game stuff for a friend)
I owned a 3D printer because I figured I could make things I found a need for, like a wheel for the dimmer that broke etc. Turns out dunning krueger wanted a word, so the only half useful thing I made was a pen holder (Julius Caesar stabbed in the back with pens, no less).
I ended up selling it after about a year. It took too much effort to learn how to create and not just clone.
How unfortunate! Modern CAD software (at least modern commercial CAD software) is actually fairly easy to use; the main problem is that there aren’t really good resources to learn how to use them.
Same. The amount of things people 3d print that does not at all require 3d printing is incredible.
I collect books. I have a 3500+ volume library built in a room of my house. Floor to ceiling bookcases and a back to back bookcase false wall. It is arranged into sections: Literature pre-1900, Literature post-1900, Sci-fi, Psychedelia, Science, Poetry and some other misc stuff. It is really my pride and joy and has taken years to put together with frequent trips to thrift stores, used bookstores and book sales. I keep a detailed catalog in a Google Doc's sheet so I can reference what I already have when out shopping. I'm having more and more to order from online used book sellers as I've nearly exhausted the supply of what you can find generally in the real world. Personal favourite book: The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
One of my friends gave me a few dozen books she didn't want anymore when she left for college out of state, I think she got most of them from the discount bin at the local Barnes n Noble. I discovered that she gave me a copy of The Brothers Karamozov when I bumped into my bookshelf and had to pick up a bunch of fallen books. Is it a book that you can pick up and read or do you need background knowledge for it to be relatable as a story?
Definitely not a book for beginners, the names in Russian literature can be especially challenging. Certainly not impossible if you up are up for a challenge!
That's an amazing collection.
I'd love to read more fiction, but it doesn't come to me easily like it did when I was a kid. I get distracted too easily with other things.
I just started reading Dune, so we'll see how that goes.
Geocaching. Long distance train travel. Gimmick rallyes.
I really want to do some more long distance train travel! I know trains are pretty lacking here in the US but going on like the California Zephyr or Texas Eagle sounds like a lot of fun honestly.
I also geocache! Same name over there if you want to add me as a friend! I’m going up to bodega bay this weekend for a caching trip.
I'm big into trains! I've spent countless hours just poking and prodding around Google Earth retracing former railway lines that have existed over the years
I'm not sure this would quite fit your interests, but I've found Hobo Shoestring videos to be pretty interesting.
I hadn't heard of him, but he looks pretty cool from a quick flick through. Thanks for the recco!
I should have asked this in my other response, but...
Have you been to many good train museums that you would recommend? The two most notable museums I've been to were the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, MD and the Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely, NV. Both were really great and well worth a visit if you're nearby. Ely, however, is about as far out of the way as you can get.
There is a super cool railroad museum in Sacramento California US you could visit some time.
My second post in this thread. I take photos of the flowering “weeds” in my yard and nearby neighborhood. I suppose I could call this a hobby, or a micro hobby at least. I started doing this after realizing how many really neat flowers there are all around if you just kneel down and look close enough. A lot of the flowers in that link are just millimeters in diameter.
I just use my iPhone. I will take a look at the macro attachments because inability to focus on such small flowers has been a real frustration. As you saw in the photos posted, quite a few are blurry, and there are even more flowers that I didn't post because I wasn't able to get the camera to focus... Thanks for the tip!
Have you heard of the app iNaturalist? It's unbelievably fun for plant nerds like me (a d probably you) that want to know what the plants I find are called, as well as learning more about them and whether they're native or invasive.
Yes, I’ve been using that for a while and I find it very useful. Recently I’ve discovered PlantNet which is a different network but functionally pretty much the same. I flip between both because sometimes I get what I feel are more accurate identifications with one app or the other (probably just depending on how well they handle my bad photo taking).
Nice, I'll check out PlantNet next time I go out!
I am fortunate that a considerable amount of my educational background was in plant identification, something I take for granted when using apps like iNaturalist because it's really easy for me to kind of already know what I'm looking for (at least family-wise, sometimes genus) when I see something in the wild. Being able to at least recognize right away if something is an Aster, Mint, Clover or whatever is really helpful in narrowing down my searches.
I’m lacking in the plant education background, my appreciation for plants (mostly cacti and meadow flowers) only developed later in life. But I’m making up for lost time now and I rely on the “percentage confidence” rating these apps give to help me. It gets difficult when there are many very closely related types returned (I had no idea there were so many different types of Mulberry tree), so it’s always useful too when someone on the network confirms or corrects the identification.
Oh yeah, I have a few plants and animals posted there. I don't have the app installed so I often forget to use iNatualist but I do like it a lot and I should use it more to learn about some of my still-identified plants.
I have some educational background in plant identification, so it's really nice when I sort of already suspect what something is but want to confirm, or I am trying to differentiate between two species of the same genus.
I just love plants.
I do the same thing, and actually I suspect we live in a pretty similar area based on the flora I saw on your website!
I love just observing the nature around me and enjoying some of the things that most people tend to ignore. I'm thinking I might need to make a website for myself, I've been feeling like sharing a portfolio but not just making it a social media thing.
My more-common hobby of tabletop roleplaying games got me into a much more obscure hobby - being an amateur librarian! I started working with a nonprofit, traveling TTRPG library, indexing and inventorying books, helping with logistics to get the library to conventions, and, of course, running some games.
That sounds really awesome, and you get to run the games as well :)
I haven't seen anything remotely like the Library anywhere else, and I consider myself incredibly lucky I get to be a part of it!
This is very niche, but "not-quite-vintage" audio restoration/modding. I pick up various hi-fi components from the last 40 years, usually not working, usually not high in value, and do restorations with a critical ear. That sometimes includes modifications that are minor (parts upgrades) or more major (circuit layout changes).
There's no particular financial reward to it; who wants to spend money on, say, a 25 year old A/V receiver or disc player that audio enthusiasts always considered BPC (industry slang: "Black Plastic Crap"), regardless of how it might sound now, and who's going to believe that I even know what I'm doing? So I end up giving some away to friends or goodwill, and accumulating too many in my basement. But for several years, since a little before the pandemic, it's been my satisfying little waste of time.
Yeah, I used to do electronics tech work as my day job. Now I work in IT. If I were still an elec-tech for a living, this probably wouldn't be fun as a hobby.
This honestly sounds like a lot of fun.
It is a lot of fun. Did it myself multiple times in the last years!
Hey, if you ever come across any MiniDisc stuff you let me know ;)
making mental note
I bet there's a market for custom audio setups if you want to turn your hobby into a side hustle.
I do video synthesis and am into wacky analog stuff. If you ever come across anything weird (favorite recent acquisition was an 80s newsroom video mixer with weird built-in "effects"), happen to remember this post, and would like to sell it, hit me up!
Algorave. I'll let Alex McLean the author of the tidalcycles environment, explain it first, but it's pretty simple:
Music represented by code is changed dynamically on the fly in a practice called "livecoding." This is by and large enabled by SuperCollider's JITLib, which allows for real-time reloading and re-synthesis of appropriately selected chunks of code.
Tidalcycles is a haskell environment and is quite abstracted from actual functional programming, but haskell still works in it. Other systems are SonicPi, which is a Ruby environment and full IDE/package, and FoxDot a robust Python interface.
I've never done a live performance, but the theory is pretty simple: Rather than mixing tracks, you're coding a living piece of art that can influences the room, which influences you, which influences the music in an excellent feedback loop. Even jamming on my own I've done some stuff that felt great.
One thing I will say is you don't need to be particularly good at programming, as long as you can learn enough to set up the environment. Many people come into this from artistic/musical backgrounds rather than any sort of relevant technological background. As somebody who likes to play physical instruments and make electronic music, I think this is the best technique to bridge the gap.
I guess some solid listening recommendations would be in order. Eulerroom who host all sorts of events, from specific venues to global streaming events. Kindohm who works heavily in Tidalcycles, sequencing SuperCollider and various bits of other software/hardware. Yaxu, Alex McLean's handle/music alias. I'll leave with A simple tutorial on doing this in SuperCollider which helped me learn how to do purely JITLib livecoding.
I’m just getting back into this myself. I messed around with all the various environments a few years ago, and just started meeting up with some local people getting into it. Hoping we’ll get some kind of performances / dance party going eventually.
Definitely agree on the environment setup front. There’s a good neovim plugin for supercollider, but the available tidalcycles plugin I’ve seen needs a little work, so I’ll probably have to fork the one that I found or just write one myself.
I've seen Sam Aaron, the creator of SonicPi, do a livecoding session at ElixirConf EU last year, and was amazed at how well everything managed to flow together for over an hour or so. It got me interested enough to actually try it out for a bit before life distracted me with a move to another continent.
I should pick it up again sometime.
Sonic Pi was my first stop after I initially couldn't get into Supercollider and he does an amazing job driving the project as well as performing with it.
With Strudel, you don't even need to setup your environment, but can start experimenting right out of your browser environment:
https://strudel.tidalcycles.org/
It is under active development, so there may be breaking changes, but if you just want to get started without installing anything, this is the way!
It is immensly fun, although I am humbled yet again that I do not have a musical bone in my body.
I'll look into it, I like learning new systems, but they can be weird to install so an online one sounds fun. I was considering Vector which is Tidalcycles in Python but will definitely check Strudel out. It looks sort of like FoxDot which was a Python livecoding system that borrowed a few ideas from Tidalcycles (and is easy to install with pip).
I have an interest in airships--their history, technology, and potential future. I collect artwork that features them.
Do you know any good YouTubers about your hobbie? :)
Although I don't know about any channels devoted to airships, search for "The Flying Carriers" for an interesting bit of stuff about the US Naval Airships Akron and Macon.
Edit: Part 1 - https://yewtu.be/watch?v=QvGlUJfrNPw
Collecting Minidisc players / Blanks.
It's a super niche hobby but it intersects geek / hacking tech (as so many people keep hacking and extending the life of these now 20-25 year old players), music (obviously) weird Japanese advertising from the 90s, and forgotten formats, all things I love!
I still have one somewhere, though not sure if it’s still functional after 20 years. Minidisc was really a wild format. All of mine were blanks that I recorded cds to, and then hand wrote the labels, so even at the time, it felt retro like tapes and floppy discs.
I remember being really impressed with the compression when Sony's ATRAC3plus came out. I never owned a MiniDisk player but I did have a CD Player that supported the format, and I remember being impressed at being able to get my entire music library at the time squeezed into a single CD at "listenable" quality.
That being said, all proprietary media formats are inherently crappy by the simple nature of not being able to encode/play them everywhere.
Here's someone after my own heart! Although I never got into Minidisc, I have a soft spot for the traditional cassette format and have restored and collected a few too many decks to make practical sense.
I don't get to do it nearly as often as I used to, but I used to love hunting for sea glass. It's one of those funny things where you can go out and not find anything and then you find one piece and suddenly you spot pieces all over.
A new hobby I've been researching is taking vintage radios that no longer work and converting them to bluetooth/AirPlay speakers.
I collect playing cards. There is a wide variety within the medium that makes for many interesting and varied reasons for collecting. Some people collect vintage cards/decks for the historical provenance. Others collect to use in magic or cardistry. Still others collect a singular type, such as only decks from a particular manufacturer, or only decks of a certain color or theme. And then you have collectors like me who's collecting habits boil down to "I like this".
There are a surprising number of designers who work within the community to produce some truly amazing pieces of art, using the template of a basic deck of cards. Popular deck themes include history, literature, other hobbies, animals, and pop culture, though you can find decks themed after almost anything. I personally have decks of cards themed after: the planet Mars, Japanese yokai, the year 2020, deuterium, and two decks with built-in puzzles to solve.
At the end of the day, I like it because I find cards fascinating. The sheer creativity within the space is wonderful, and I love to show off some of these decks to friends when they visit. Everyone understands what a deck of cards is, but there aren't that many that appreciate just what a deck of cards can truly be.
I am open to questions, if you have any. It probably more of a curse than a blessing to find myself passionate about something so obscure. :P
This was a hobby of mine for a while in my youth. My most valuable (to me) "score" was two decks of Vietnam war-era plane spotter cards, but then I stopped going to antique shows with my parents and started grabbing crummy decks because I thought they were "neat". Then, once I got married, my wife kept asking, "do we really need all of these decks of cards?" Most of the crummy ones were gone pretty shortly thereafter.
I found some pre-revolutionary French cards (face cards of each suit, mounted and framed separately) once that I was very interested in... until I saw the price.
That's really cool! I don't own anything quite so rare, but I do have a one-of-a-kind deck my best friend had printed for me as a birthday gift. However, I do own a complete set of recreation decks of the Cotta's Almanac series, the first transformation decks ever printed, and those are quite the historical tidbit.
I do like how accessible playing cards are as a collectible; even the plane-spotter cards weren't very expensive when I bought them (probably around $10 for both). Some of the mass-produced modern decks are still pretty cool, though I now avoid the myriad Bicycle special editions that I would have picked up in the past (to preserve my wife's sanity).
Some modern "neat" decks I'll still grab, though. For example, I have a deck of Animal Crossing cards that Nintendo released as a My Nintendo physical bonus, and a deck of cards I found at IKEA one time. Neither are terribly special, and both were inexpensive, but they're different-looking enough that I hang onto them. I also ask friends who travel to Europe to bring me decks as souvenirs, since some countries use different suits and I find that history interesting.
Grabbing a bunch of cheap decks over the years did leave an impression on me; I'm pretty snobby about the quality of the cards I buy to play now. If it were up to me, I would only play with narrow-width Bee decks, blue back.
Being snobby about what decks you buy is pretty normal. It's a sign that your tastes are locked in on what you like. Why bother buying something that isn't in your wheelhouse, when there are so many others out there to look at? Admittedly, my own tastes are a bit broader, as I don't stick with a single brand, designer, color scheme, or theme, but when I see something I like, I know it's what I want.
Now I'm curious to know how you feel about decks intended for magic tricks. I find marked and gaffed decks interesting, but I know that only a portion of card collectors are into them. I think my fascination has something to do with a lifelong love of things like secret codes that I never quite grew out of. The whole "I know a secret and you don't" thing, though that's a bit of a gross oversimplification. Plus, the design of marked decks tend to be more intricate to obfuscate the marking system, and I love an intricate back design.
To wrap up, I will say that I love that larger retailers have decks available from companies like Theory11. It's so easy to get your hands on customized decks, and there's likely something out there to satisfy most peoples tastes. I've gotten to the point where I believe everyone should have a nice deck of cards, and it's easier than ever for me to make that happen for my friends and loved ones. It's a good time to be in this hobby!
I dabbled in sleight-of-hand magic when I was younger, but I never got into card magic. I practiced a lot of card manipulation, though, and that's part of why I grew to like Bee; they're stiff enough to put up with some abuse, and they're smooth enough to not catch when you're manipulating a card all the way around the deck. Also, for as big a guy as I am, my fingers are somewhat stubby, so it was easier for me to use the Bridge-width decks. The general availability of Bee (or Bicycle as a second choice) cemented my preferences.
At about the time I was manipulating cards, I took a left turn into actually playing cards, specifically Euchre. At that point, anything beyond being able shuffle well and quickly was just showing off, so I really went no further with card magic. With Euchre being a somewhat fast game with much shuffling, sturdier and readily available / inexpensive cards became my go-to choice.
I get it. Why practice moves you don't use, right? Though I recently taught myself how to cut a deck of cards with one hand, so I'm not exactly in a position to talk.
It's been years since I played Euchre, but I remember enjoying it when I played. Do you have a favorite deck you like to play with? Is it Bee or something else entirely?
Pre-pandemic, I was playing a few times a week, for a couple hours at a time. This tends to wear the cards out pretty quickly, so, yes, I preferred Bee because I didn't have to buy new decks quite as often. Bicycle was a close second choice.
Purely a practical consideration.
My family and I play Euchre on vacations. In fact, we’ve played so much when the whole deck is in the box together you tell which cards are used in Euchre because they’re noticeably dirtier along the top.
It miiiiight be time for a new deck... Just saying. ;)
I always forget until we pull them out. I have tried to change decks a few times in the past, but the symbols, numbers or just the cards themselves have been too small for my dad who’s eyes are getting worse and has massive hands.
One of my favorite card retailers has a sizable selection of decks with jumbo indices.
The variety, from souvenir decks to nicer decks, is what I love most about cards in general!
I agree, however, when I'm playing cards, I'm often playing enough hands to wear out the cards reasonably quickly.
I prefer the nicer card stock and relative affordability of brands like Bee simply as a practical matter. For decks I buy because I like the looks, cardstock and finish quality never sway me one way or the other.
Have you been to United Cardists?
Also Portfolio52 is a great user-driven playing card database.
I am not in UC at this time, though I am well aware of it. Up til now, I've enjoyed spending time on r/playingcards. but I've avoided delving too deeply into other sites. But, with Reddit's future uncertain, I'm considering branching out to other platforms.
I do have a P52 account, but I haven't put in nearly as much work into it as I should. As above, I might be changing that sooner rather than later.
I have too many hobbies I hop between, but a more obscure one is finding ways to upcycle old fabrics (fabric scraps and old clothes) into other (hopefully more useful) things. Fabric into rope with which I use crochet to turn into baskets, rugs, floor pouf, etc.
That's super cool. Got any before and after photos?
I don't have that many before photos but just imagine a heap of those free t-shirts, or jeans, or off-cuts of fabric (ie. <1yd pieces), I have a collection of zippers, buttons and hardware I cut out from clothes/old bags before throwing away. I rarely buy new supplies as I've been
hoardingcollecting usable fabric/clothes/hardware for years...and well the point is to avoid new materials.Anyway it feels weird to link back to posts on reddit, so here's a short compilation of stuff I've made over the last several years.
Currently figuring out what to do about these denim squares I quilted together. Thought it could work as a rug, but it does not look great in that direction so I'll have to pivot on that.
Your basketwork is so neat! I've tried it and it's very difficult to keep it looking so tidy.
Do you have throw pillows? The jean squares might make a fun cushion cover.
Thanks! I find that upcycling in general is a difficult balance of trying to make the untidy into something presentable.
As for the squares I do already have throw pillows... Even if I used up a couple, there's quite a stack of them, so ideally would like to use them for a larger project all at once. Just will have to sit on them for a bit.
Recently, I've been experimenting with painting wood using wood stains. Here are two images I made: a snake and a wombat in its den. (Please forgive the glossiness; they are really shiny and hard to photograph well.)
It has been an interesting learning experience. I have been using little sampler bottles of Feast Watson Prooftint spirit-based stains and applying them with watercolor brushes. They behave fairly similarly to watercolors, but the colors are especially intense and fast-staining, and they also wick through the grain in a way that's hard to control. After drying, I protect the wood with a coat or two of neutral-colored oil, like tung oil.
I have found that using a little pyrography around the color blocks helps contain the stain and create a crisper edge where I want it (although, in some cases, I actually like the wicking effect, like soil in the wombat's background).
I'm hoping to do more experiments to figure out how to bend this medium to my will. Ideally, I would like to slightly dilute the intensity and also give it a slightly thicker consistency, so it behaves a little closer to watercolor paint. I think that filling the pyrography lines with a dark putty might also give the final pieces a more matte, natural-looking finish (I don't like the shiny linework), but I'll need to think about how to remove the excess putty without damaging the stained areas; for example, if I applied the putty after the pyrography but before the staining, would it still curb wicking?
It's pretty fun and I'm excited to do more.
I know nothing about painting wood with wood stains but just wanted to say those images you created look great. I love hobbies that producing things that you can showcase or gift!
Aw, thank you!
I think hardly anyone knows about it! I've had a hard time finding any resources online about how to do it. Most of what I see online involves padding the stain on using a cloth, which creates a kind of airbrushed effect, which is very cool but not quite what I'm after.
Sounds like an opportunity for you to master and teach if you wanted 👀
Hello
I make my own languages! My current project is a collaborative one with a friend, we are making our own personal sign language. I know my way around linguistics a lot better and have prior experience in language construction (though I’ve never worked on a signed one before), so for me it is an excuse to review the literature and look at how other languages express various ideas, then present the ones to my friend that I think could work well in the framework we already have. Then we make the final decisions together, with me mostly letting her have the final say. In addition, we both come up with words. We’ve gotten to the point where we can recount what happened to us during the day or ask simple questions.
Perhaps some more information on the hobby as a whole is desired. In essence I’d say there’s three main reasons people construct languages:
For me personally, it’s a mix of the first two. I’ve dabbled in creating an auxiliary language before, and have found it dreadfully boring (I also find the whole idea somewhere between unrealistic and straight up silly), but I love playing around with new things I learn — language construction gives me the perfect tools to learn more about linguistics and test it out in practice in my own sandbox. In the past I’ve mostly attached my languages to some fictional culture and incorporated worldbuilding into the construction process, but at the moment I find myself much more drawn to experimental side. Our personal sign language is actually very different from natural signs like ASL in that it’s spoken with only one hand, using only hand shape, orientation and relative movements; natural sign languages are usually two-handed and also make use of position relative to the body, simultaneous signs and facial expressions, all of which we have elected to throw out in the hopes of being able to use the language covertly.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the hobby is that it’s basically impossible to share your achievements with anyone. Unless they are themselves familiar with linguistics, your documentation is mostly going to be a lot of unreadable technical terminology, and any examples you can make might as well be random strings of noises or letters, and it’s going to be very difficult to explain why what you did is cool.
Not sure if it's that obscure, but i make my own soap. Started doing it because my skin is pretty sensitive and it got pretty bad one particular winter. Still have scars from all the scratching...
Do you make it from scratch or do you mold those soap bricks you can get online into usable human-proportioned soap pieces? I have negative memories from when my mother decided to try making laundry soap from lye with some random ass recipe she found online, so in my mind the scratch route sounds like a lot of trouble.
I make it from scratch, mixing my own lye.
There are reputable calculators available so you can double check that the random ass recipe you might have found is fit for human use and doesn't turn into some kind of industrial grade degreaser. You should obviously wear suitable protective equipment as well, but for me that's second nature since i work at a petrochemical plant where we have to wear all kinds of equipment to protect ourselves.
I homebrew beer, sometimes I brew some historical styles.
I tried my hand at some homebrewing (well, probably more like "homebrewing," since it was Mr. Beer kits). None of them ever turned out—for one reason or another—before I lost interest but I really enjoyed all of the time I spent learning about the processes, ingredients, and the differences between different kinds of beer.
Tell us about the favorite batch you've brewed, and the batch you botched the worst. :)
Good question! I think my favorite batch to date was a Tropical Stout, from grain to glass everything was brewed 100% right, and even got a medal. I lagered it and it was smooth, good mouthfeel with some alcohol kick. Underated style in my opinion.
Worse to date it is still my first batch, my first and only batch was extract, did a mess on my parents kitchen, one bottle exploded because it was over primed and at the end it was infected with lacto (sour flavor). Those were fun times.
I have tried some English historical styles from Ron Pattinson book vintage beers. One beer I am liking to brew is a British Dark Lager, you can say is the British try of a dark lager similar to Dunkel or Czech Tmave, with British grain bill and Carlsberg lager strain.
I cull old nickel coins from canadian circulation, I have about $300 face value sitting in my drawer, only the nickels are worth more than face, but I cull the quarters and dimes too, in fact dimes are themajority of the stash, every week or two I pick up a box of coins, either dimes, nickels or quarters, and I take out all the nickel and silver and send the rest back to the bank
I've written/am writing my own chess engine. Nowhere near being a super strong engine, but it can beat most people asides from titled players, i.e. in the 2200-2300 rating range.
It's one of those things that I've ended up working on for longer than I ever expected. It takes a while to get something that actually works, and then when you do, there are always things you can change to try and improve the performance.
I like to collect interesting websites. Mostly personal websites, or small game and software websites that I like.
Most websites are ephemeral. Sometimes the owner stops renewing the hosting or domain name, or as is often the case of free hosts, they run out of money and just delete everyone's stuff. I'd occasionally go looking for cool websites I saw years ago and never be able to find them because they were gone.
So I started downloading websites whenever I saw one I liked and thought it might disappear someday.
Most recently was an obscure MMO that I played many years ago. When it announced that it was shutting down forever, I downloaded whatever I could. My archive is an incomplete mess of broken links that I need to figure out how to clean up at some point, but I've at least got most of the wiki and forum content to peruse whenever I want to reminisce.
I think my website archive is currently around 2 GB. Websites are mostly just text.
I also collect YouTube channels, and that archive is around 2 TB.
I don't share my archives. It's kind of like my own personal museum of cool content I've enjoyed over the years.
This site has a few nifty links if you haven't some across it before: theinternetthatdoesntsuck
That sounds really neat! I know you said you don't share your archives, but are there any sites you found that you find particularly unique and interesting? What's the most niche topic you've come across?
Great question!
One of my favourite archives is aiforge.net, and it's probably also the most niche one. AI Forge used to host a big list of programming games. I was really interested in programming games like Core War as a kid. Although I was never any good at them, I spent a lot of time downloading and trying out the games on this list. One of my favourites was RoboCom, since it had a great GUI.
Most of my archives are relating to video games, and especially MMOs, that I enjoyed when I was younger. For example, I've got an archive of Mud Connector from 2011. This site was one of the biggest directories of MUDs (essentially text-only MMORPGs) until it unexpectedly shut down a few years ago.
I also like to archive websites and material relating to unusual (to me) religions and spiritual practices. For example, I've got a handful of archives relating to the Process Church of the Final Judgment.
If you see something really interesting and niche, you've got to archive it while you can. Niche websites tend to be driven by a single, passionate person. If they ever stop or pass away, there's rarely anybody else to keep the website going in their place.
I like to listen to air traffic control radio. For fun. Would always ask the flight attendant to ask the captain to put the ATC on the inflight radio when I was a kid. Probably 9? 10? Something about the real-time, cryptic but structured transmissions fascinated me.
I also do Krav Maga.
If you ever get the chance, listening to ATC at AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI is always somewhat entertaining. I went in 2021 and listened while a bunch of the homebuilt and ultralight aircraft were coming in. It was insane hearing a different plane calling in every 10-15 seconds.
Fly tying. As a fly fisherman it’s crazy satisfying catching fish on flies of your own creation. It’s also super therapeutic having an outlet for my creative side while also being directly tied to my favorite hobby.
Me too. Had an amazing day a few weeks ago using a my own variation of a pattern. When you make up your own pattern, or twist and it works out, I love that!
I don't know if this counts as a traditional hobby, but I've been trying to make friends with my local crows, which is surprisingly challenging.
They are incredibly smart, problem solvers, and exhibit a lot of "human" characteristics. They are also super aware and wary of humans. Studies have been conducted proving they can recognize individual human faces, and pass information about people on to other crows. They're also known to leave gifts for people, which is interesting.
I've set up a platform feeder in my backyard (seems to be the only type of feeder they will eat from) with peanuts and I've been slowly building their trust over the past few months. Mostly just by providing a safe place and safe food. I'm hoping to eventually be able to approach them and maybe hand feed them.
Thwarting squirrels from decimating the peanut supply has become a recurring event. Maybe that's the actual hobby?
I recently discovered there is a small but very dedicated "Crowtok" community dedicated to the hobby, as well as a subreddit /r/crowbro. I guess there really are communities for everything.
I'm a big fan of bridge. There is an infinity of things to learn, so its something you can play your whole life. An actual game takes about ~7 minutes, so if you don't like one hand you're dealt, wait for the next one. And duplicate bridge basically eliminates the luck. It's a shame more people aren't into it, but I guess the steep learning curve keeps people away.
I listen to a bunch of old time radio. Sometimes it's for white noise while driving, studying and falling asleep, sometimes because it's kind of interesting to compare cultures and insights with what was considered entertaining back then, and sometimes it's for X Minus One.
Do you have a favorite radio show you listen to? When my Dad rides with me, I typically put on Gunsmoke
X Minus One is a pretty good show, to the point where it should be brought back as a podcast if we're already bringing back everything. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar is good pulp, basically everything on Relic Radio or the Late Late Horror Show is good eating.
I love Johnny Dollar! Boston Blackie is also good
I used to listen to tons of OTR shows that I'd download from the Internet Archive and put on a no-frills USB-stick MP3 player. That was about 15 years ago.
Some of my favorites included X Minus One (and the similar Dimension X), the Jack Benny Show, Spike Jones and the City Slickers' radio show, Command Performance, and more.
Maybe it isn’t particular obscure, but I enjoy pre-computer writing instuments of all kinds. So I have a small collection of dip pens, fountain pens, and typewriters. Also way more ink than I could ever use.
II’m also a horrific self-editor in my personal fiction writing, so I often draft things on the typewriter first as there is no undo feature in a typewriter.
I am kinda in the camp that a lot of the fancy pens are pretty overrated. I have a couple of $200 pens, and in front of me as my daily driver pens are...
Of my fancier pens, the only one I feel like is remotely worth the price is the Sailor Pro Gear Slim I have.
I actually have really enjoyed buying some of the cheapos and playing around with learning how to tune them for fun. Any pen that writes good for you is a good pen, and price doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. Of course, if you find an expensive that calls out to you and makes you enjoy writing more, totally go for it.
I guess I just wanted to convey that cheap pens are just as fun and legitimate a part of the hobby as expensive pens, and that when and if you go for more expensive pens, really go for a pen that really calls out to you. Don't be dummy like me and pick up a gold-nib pen because you feel you ought to and want to know what the fuss is all about. I still like all the pens I have (with the exception of the Vanishing point - worst pen I have), but if I could go back I probably would just get the one I really love writing with (the sailor).
Also - it's weird, but fountain pens seem to attract the nicest people. It's a good hobby to get into, I hope you have fun!
Tunning is adjusting the flow of ink in a pen or fixing small issues like misaligned tines. In my view, a fountain pen should write under its own weight - just lean a pen against your hand, and let it drag across the page. If the line is good, then you have enough flow. If its not, it probably needs a little tunning.
You can mess up a nib doing tuning, so its best to learn on expendable pens. The best way to learn a feel for it is by buying some cheap Jinhaos (usually like $2-3 a pop, and in my experience, always too dry. Is ink a precious commodity in China?) then you can watch some youtube videos and play around. It's really not much more than that. It's just kinda fun to play around and rewarding to get a pen to write exactly how you want it to.
There are some nice tuning tools - you'll almost certainly want a decent jeweler's loupe. Brass sheets and spreaders are also nice. There are also things like mylar sheets and other fine-grain materials that can help you smooth out nibs, if you find something too scratchy. Again though, this is stuff that can mess up your pen, so its best to throw sacrificial pens at it until you got it down.
After that we get into the wonderful world of nib grinding. But I haven't gotten there yet. I don't really have the space to get a grinder, but one day!
I enjoy making racing circuits. If I get a spare five minutes at work or am bored during my breaks, I’ll either open up Google Maps or Circuit Map Builder and just make circuits that I think would be fun to drive in real life. Google Maps is great for making street circuits because it has a the measure tool, so you can make it conform to the requirements of a specific series, like pit lane length and track width and whatnot. I find it really fun to turn streets into racing tracks. Race Track Builder is more for building permanent-style circuits, and is really great at nailing the style that F1 uses.
My brother and I have been trying to crack how F1 could host a Chicago Grand Prix that would actually use famous Chicago streets. Give me F1 cars on Lake Shore Drive!
Not sure if this counts as “obscure” enough, but I’m really into mechanical watches!
Unfortunately it’s one of those hobbies that’s really depends on income, so I don’t own any watches yet. However, I’ve been saving up for a while and am planning on buying myself a watch to celebrate graduation (expected in 2 years).
But even though I can’t actually own any cool watches, I really enjoy learning about the movements and design process. It’s just absolutely fascinating how we can make insanely accurate timepieces with just gears and springs.
Watches are so cool. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of scratching up any watch Ive owned so I’ve never gotten a nice one. Do you know what watch you want to get when you graduate?
Yeah damage is something that really do worry about, especially since at the prices that “good mechanical watches” sit at, I really want mine to be a lifetime purchase.
Currently I’m looking at the Sinn 556 A rs for a sort of sports/flieger type watch, or of course a seiko 5 or Christopher ward gmt. All seem like great watches at a fairly reasonable price point with movements that are easy to service.
A long term goal would be to own one of the Oris 400 caliber watches, but those are out of my price range for now…
Wow!
Wow
Oh man, I got into mechanical watches for a while and found that you have to be really careful not to spend a lot of money. I really like reading about the history of watch mechanisms. I modded a few watches and then started drifting off into elementary watch repair for a while before realizing this was going to take way more time than I should be spending. I've backed way off by now, but I still sometimes think about getting one of those build-your-own mechanical watch kits.
Yeah the modding community seems so interesting, but like you said this hobby can really suck away time and money. I’m just going to stick to observing for now, but I really want to either mod a used Seiko or try one of those build your own kits.
Do you have any recommendations for diy kits that you liked? I know that Certina has the DS+ but I don’t think that’s truly a “build your own” like what you mentioned.
I don't have any specific recommendations but I know that Esslinger used to sell kits, and I just saw now there is a company called Rotate Watches. These looks like they don't involve any more than dropping in a pre-assembled movement. I may be wrong, but I swear there used to be kits that let you do move with movement assembly (and maybe I'm also just nuts because that would obviously be an order of magnitude more difficult).
Seikos were the main watches that I modded too. They're easy to work on and, importantly, you can find a lot of places selling custom parts like hands and crystals for them.
Does washing dishes count as an enjoyed hobby?
I just really enjoy it. If I see a sink full of dishes I want to get in there and get it done.
I’ve tried all the gadgets; the ones that hold washing liquid in the handle, silicone sponges, scrubbers that shoot washing liquid out when you squeeze them like a Turkey baster. Nothing beats a good sponge.
I particularly enjoy an uninterrupted session with headphones in and a podcast on. The meditative power of mundane activity plus a good story is not to be in-considered. (Is that good English? Someone let me know)
An anecdote: I recently met my friends mom who shares the same joy. She has little sensitivity in her hands so she enjoys the feeling of the hot water, plus the movement of doing the scrubbing helps stimulate feeling.
I would argue that there's a difference between a hobby and a fun chore. Hobbies in my mind are something you seek out.
A good distinction and I do agree.
I'm not sure if that's quuite a hobby per se, but I have to agree with you that washing dishes can be rather meditative, and having your hands in a basin of warm water is always nice.
I don't know if these hobbies are obscure, but I dump a ton of time into cycling and skiing. I've skied since I've been able to stand and put in about 50-70 days a year skiing. At one point I was a PSIA II instructor. Now, I just do it for fun with my family. I absolutely love it.
I've had an on again and off again relationship with cycling. There were years where I put in 40 miles a day commuting to and from work. There were years where I put in 12 miles per day five days a week to get back into shape. I had kids and went five years without touching a bike. I've purchased a new to me road bike and caught the bug again.
I enjoy singing and listening to filk, a tradition of music originating in scifi and fantasy conventions, usually about media or topics popular at those conventions. It's becoming a bit scarcer these days but there's some truly excellent songs out there. I'd consider it a solid example of a modern oral tradition, often sung in small groups at cons (or, recently, over zoom calls) and spread person to person. One of my favorite recent filk memories was hearing a song on a recording and writing down the lyrics to sing at a circle, with no idea of the origins, only to cause a major debate to errupt in the zoom call over who exactly wrote the variation I sang.
I collect poker chips! A weird niche hobby I originally fell into a few years ago when I started playing cube rail board games and picked up some games that came with no current components and just assumed you had something to use with the game. This led down a rabbit hole that landed me on The Poker Chip Forum which has been a phenomenal community to be a part of the last few years.
There’s a lot of different ways to engage in the hobby. Some people collect “singles”, individual chips from different casinos, usually with some theme (ex. all white chips from a certain manufacturer or all fractional value chips from Missouri). Others build playable sets they use for hosting home games. These can be all from a single open or closed casino or any variation of a mix of things.
Lastly, there’s a lot of custom designing. Either by working with one or a scant few manufacturers that will do custom chips or by taking chips from a casino and “murdering” them, taking off the inlay and designing your own.
I’m fascinated by the intersection of useful tools and art. One of the reasons this has so caught my attention (I have bought and sold many thousands of chips in the last few years) is that I love being able to interact so closely with the art. I keep several stacks of chips on my desk that I shuffle throughout the day and getting into designing custom chips has been such a cool creativity outlet.
The set I love most and pour the most of my energy into is a “rat rod set,” which for each denomination has a mix of unique chips from different casinos. For my set I am using only inlaid chips made by Paulson and used at real casinos and I’m using white $1s, red $5s, green $25s, and black $100s (with variants allowed on the colors like light grey or beige $1s).
I have almost managed to collect 200 unique $1s which has been a real cool project and challenge as there are only roughly 220 eligible chips.
Here’s a pick of the set from a few months back: https://imgur.com/a/nre9WZy
I love delving deep into the lore of the movies, TV series, or games I'm engaged with, regardless of whether or not I find the gameplay/episode/movie enjoyable.
3D printing is still an obscure hobby but I love it. It pairs so well with other hobbies too
I also recently got into rose gardening
What have you printed for other hobbies?
Many things! Some examples that come to mind:
and more. Some stuff I design and model myself, others I download from printables or thingiverse. I’m getting my third printer soon and I’m pretty excited about it lol
Printing stuff for hobbies is awesome!
I started printing stuff for archery.
then others at the club became aware of that.
Just printed a case for arduino controller for a “bow cinema setup” , i’m printing a kind of pipe to go through a foam target to hang it, and designing end-caps for a friend’s two part bow.
And much more to come…
Late to the thread but stoked to see 3D printing mentioned.
I combine 3D printing with toy collecting. From replacing lost accessories to making my own, as well as using it to make original custom action figures. Getting a 3D printer changed my life!
So are you the Japanese guy on YouTube who makes knives out of smoke, chocolate, milk, seaweed, cardboard, meat, candle, Jello, etc?
Link for the uninitiated. It's an extremely interesting hobby indeed!
Bookbinding. It's quite fun and relaxing and a good opportunity for creativity, too. It's a lot easier than you'd think, as well. Also birthed my bad habit of buying packs of decorative papers that I definitely don't need! Biggest issue is that you never want to use a notebook you've made...
I also enjoy worldbuilding and creature design. I have a world I've made full of sentient animal creatures which I love a lot.
I like turtles!!!
Disc golf and home automation stuff. Haven't been playing quite as much disc golf since moving to the Netherlands, but still love to get out there. Something about chucking spinning plastic is so much fun.
Got into home automation with https://www.home-assistant.io/ after buying a house. Really fun to automate things and tinker with different sensors/logic. Combined with Esphome and building your own little circuit boards has been a blast for some side projects.