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What are some interesting hobbies you can start for free and without leaving your home?
I'm looking for some good ideas for some hobbies to start. Bonus points if you can come up with anything that doesn't require the internet.
Programming! 100% free, can be a creative outlet, and very practical.
Also cooking! I guess you have to leave th house to get groceries, but it's really easy to get started, a great skill to have, and you get to play chemist and eat the results.
My two favourite things!
Well put! I like to play the mad scientist, sometimes I make great and unusual things, other times not so much...
Reading. I started reading more books recently and I'm passively learning a lot.
“'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one.'”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
That quote doesn't work too well in the modern world where almost every human is consuming fictional worlds every day.
Bonsai.
Oh, the purists insist you need fancy bowls and special scissors and all this other stuff. I had a bonsai'd maple tree in a dixie cup for several years, grown from a seed I collected in a park, and a couple other stupid little oddities, just for the lulz. I was kind of a bonsai troll, in a way; I'd read forums and websites, try to think of what the worst possible idea was, and then attempt to implement it. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can do some just fantastically stupid things, like train bonsai kudzu to climb your bonsai'd balsa tree. (Balsa trees typically get to be like a hundred feet tall, something ridiculous like that. Mine was... two.)
I gave it to a friend who still has it, but several years ago I saved seeds from apples I bought, planted them, and then grew an eighteen-inch-tall apple tree in a bucket. That, in and of itself, isn't too exciting. It has five main branches, and each one is a graft of a different variety of apple. I'm still kind of proud of that, lol.
Oh wait, you wanted interesting hobbies. Uh... Planking?
That apple tree sounds cool. I tried amateur bonsai once with a seedling tree I found, but I learned that I forget to water plants.
Got a picture?
I have never considered this as a hobby. Thanks for teaching me how to tree-troll?
Could you give a link for non-purist bonsai advice? I'm really curious how it works with like maple trees.
There are/used to be a couple of bonsai forae where people would talk about "redneck bonsai" or "poor man's bonsai", but I'm not sure if they're still around.
Honestly, though, the same basic advice applies to all bonsai-able plants. Japanese maples are super popular for "purist" bonsai, but all the instructions and advice for them applies equally well to a sugar maple, or whatever variety happens to grow in your part of the world. If you really get into it there's all this stuff about different forms and what they convey, and people do all this stuff with "training" bonsai with wire, that never really interested me. I was just, you know, "here's a tree... only smaller."
Thanks!
My father grows cacti.
Now I want to try bonsai. Thanks!
Writing. All you need is an imaginaiton, a pencil, and paper. It doesn't have to be good and no one but you ever has to read it, but it is a really great way to expend creative energy and you can do it almost anywhere
In the same vein: drawing.
A lot of people shy away from it because they feel they're not artistic, or good at drawing, but it is very much a skill that can be built up and improved upon with practice.
Indeed, no one begins art drawing masterpieces, we all start with shitty sketches.
Fitness. Look into bodyweight training - no equipment needed.
Here's my favorite routine. There's an app too.
Let me guess, Antranik? Yep... I use his routine too. He is great!
Picking up bodyweight training was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. It's fun and offers a wide variety of exercises. Get a pullup bar if youre serious about training, apart from that you don't need to buy anything. Train to some soundtracks of your favourite animes or boxing movies or train in silence and it's almost like meditating.
I started experimenting in the kitchen around ten years ago. The sheer money that can be saved and the delicious food you can treat yourself to makes it a hobby you won't drop. Internet is useful however.
THE single most important thing to remember when experimenting in the kitchen is, who cares if it doesn't taste that good.
It opens so many doors to experiment when you don't care if an idea you had pans out. Worst comes to worst you have to go get McDonald's because what ever you tried is impalatable: that's not the end of the world.
I had a little chuckle
It started out about 10% of my attempts were palatable, probably closer to 70% now I can instinctively tell which flavours match.
I know video games have a negative connotation when it comes with hobbies, but I feel they get unfairly treated as timewasters. Pick up a really deep and rich single player game like Mass Effect, Witcher, or God of War, and you can learn new things as well as experiencing amazing, novel-worthy stories. In fact, I wrote an English paper on Bioshock Infinite!
Now, this doesn't mean you should waste away thousands of hours on Call of Duty because that's not really productive, and is very much a timewaster.
So you're saying that playing games isn't just a timewaster, unless it's a game that you think is just a timewaster?
I mean to be fair, playing games with good stories is like reading an interactive book. I don't think most people care to much about the campaign mode in COD and just playing PvP only feels as though you're not really getting much out of it. It's the same reason I quit playing league of legends.
It seems silly to assume that everyone else feels the same way, though.
Yes
Such unabashed self-contradiction is a rarity. How do those two ideas mesh?
EDIT: This came off as more condescending than I intended. I'll leave it for posterity, but please excuse the tone.
I think I worded my original post wrong. Playing video games in general is a good hobby, but you don't learn anything from playing COD multiplayer all day. Just like how reading is a good hobby, but you don't see schools advocating tabloids to children. Not saying tabloids aren't fun, but they aren't enriching.
Also, I think you really have to work on how you reply to people. I see your edit, but it just seems way more condescending than what you claim to have intended.
It's something I need to work on. Sometimes I reflexively go into defensive-posting mode in anticipation of Reddit's signature brand of tomfoolery.
Yeah no worries! I think you should incorporate some more "I' statements within your comments that involve other users, just a thought.
I did not just see you claim God of War was a deep and rich game.
Everybody go try Baldur's Gate. It's 75% off right now.
I'm with you except for the "timewasters" thing. If you had fun, it wasn't wasted. Personally, I don't really care for CoD, but if that's what you have fun doing, go all out! Obviously, don't neglect your responsibilities, but that goes for all hobbies.
Also pick up a quirky indie game once in a while. FEZ or Thomas was alone for example.
*Programming
*Drawing
*Playing an instrument
*Brewing
*Dancing
*Lots of stuff, really
Brewing you say? I thought you'd need quite a lot of equipment for that. I once tried making kvass in a glass jar and it got everywhere and my dog licked it up. Do you have any information as for how to get into brewing a bit of beer or something similar?
First I'd make sure brewing is legal in your area.
The very short of it is yeast eats sugar and poops out alcohol(fermentation), depending what ingredients you use determines the flavor.
It's not too hard but the essential parts are sanitizing and temperature, you're basically pouring food( any form of sugar which the yeast eats), water and yeast. The source of sugar varies for what you're making:
cider = applejuice, yeast
mead = honey, water, yeast
beer = sugar, water + (hops or wheat or grain)
I won't go in to depth the exact instructions because there's plenty on the internet but the essentials are:
make sure everything that touches the brew has been sanitized, that means every thing you stir it with, the inside of the barrel, the inside of the lid, the airlock, everything. It's not that hard to do, but it's easy to forget and grab a spoon from the drawer without sanitizing it first, BAM ruined.
The reason is because you're going to let those ingredients sit at a nice warm temperature for the yeast to breed, if there's anything more than traces** of other bacteria/wild-yeast in there then that will breed and you'll know you messed up because it'll smell and taste awful. Like rotten eggs or vinegar, for example.
**There's always traces of bacteria and wild-yeast but your brewing yeast will get a head-start and conquer everything else in there.
The other thing is temperature, you need to keep it within the right temperature range. Too low/too-high and the yeast will stop feeding, if you got way too high you kill all the yeast. The temperature depends on what brewing. This isn't that hard either, you have 20-30°C range for cider for example(ideal being 15°C).
My dad would keep his at the right temperature by putting the barrel in a wooden box with a lightbulb for warmth and a blanket. The yeast generates warmth as it ferments too.
It's all pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Patience is the hardest part while you wait, I suggest you start with something that has a short fermentation time, say 4 weeks, that way you soon know if you did everything right.
For an easy example you can buy beer making kits like this which have the ingredients, but you still need the sugar and equipment:
http://www.beersofeurope.co.uk/coopers-australian-pale-ale-home-brew-kit
Not sure if they sell them in your area.
Thank you very much! question: is there a difference between the regular yeast used for baking (the lump or the dry stuff) and brewing yeast?
Also do you know of any places i can find a suitable container for brewing in? Could i theoretically just go buy a big plastic bucket with a lid, or would that be a very bad thing to do?
There's different sorts of yeasts so you wouldn't want to use bread yeast, not sure how that would turn out. When I was looking at cider(didn't end up making some) someone recommended champagne yeast.
Theoretically a big plastic bucket will work provided:
it seals airtight,
that you drill a hole in the lid to put an airlock https://i.imgur.com/L344xoJ.jpg, water goes in the middle of it and lets air out and stops bacteria getting in. The fermentation gives off carbon dioxide so you need this to let the gas escape.
you also want a tap in the side near the bottom.
http://img.hisupplier.com/var/userImages/2015-01/12/162852393_s.jpg
You don't want it right at the bottom because the bottom inch or so of the brew is a layer of 'crud'(not tasty) , so when you're done fermenting you slowly poor it out without disturbing the crud at the bottom.
if it's legal in your area there will no doubt be a brewing shop who will sell you everything and give you advice.
I'd also make sure your bucket is 'food grade' plastic, for obvious reasons.
It's not a dirt cheap hobby but it doesn't cost much.
You can use bread yeast for alcohol (and I did one time in college), but it makes for a disgusting product, at least for wine. I would assume that the same would be true for brewer's yeast.
I've never made beer; I think the tolerances are much tighter in that arena. But I think that as long as you wash it really well, a plastic bucket and a lid would work fine for starting out. The stuff you get at the brewing stores is basically the same thing. Just make sure it's food-grade plastic.
The crazy thing about fermentation is that it's really forgiving ... until it isn't. I've done all sorts of crazy things (mostly forgetting about the mother in the fridge for a really long time) with other ferments, and they've turned out fine. Just always check your brew, and if it looks weird, or really smells weird, toss it. You can always try again.
Hey, if you want to make kvass in a jar, here's how I do it.
I cut bread into cubes and dry them in the oven until they start to turn black (that gives it a very nice bitter taste). Then you put some in a jar, add a little yeast, a little sugar, fill it with water, put a towel over the opening and place it on a sunny window.
In a day, it should start to ferment. Let it sit there for a while (like a day or longer), then you can pour it out. Just leave some kvass and bread in the jar, add some more bread and sugar and fill it with water. You don't need to add yeast this time, it will ferment as is.
It's doesn't have a lot of alcohol in it, but it's a very nice and refreshing drink, it's great cold in the summer.
All that work, and at the end you just have kvass.
:^)
I was at a Russian history museum about a year ago and bought a can of kvass to try. The gift shop attendant was surprised to be selling one. Then I tried it. The flavor was one of my childhood, but not one I was yearning to have again. It tastes just like Malta Goya, available in so many NYC bodegas.
I suggest starting with mead. It can be a ~3 ingredient beverage and there are a few very bare bones starting recipes out there. I moderate/created the mead community on That Other Site and we have a lot of getting started help on our wiki. I also recently viewed a Modern Rogue episode, How to Make Your Own Mead that did a nice job of talking basics and giving a nugget of what comes later.
I wish I could answer that, but I've only had friends who did this, I never did it myself
One of them was a graduated chemist which had all sort of cool equipments he used for brewing. But the other one was a friend who used exclusively improvised equipment he had at home, he even built an improvised alembic out of hose and a pressure cooker (pressure cooker are super common and relatively cheap in my country)
Along the lines of playing an instrument, there are also some great apps that are free or less than $10 (much less than almost any instrument) that can be used to make music. GarageBand if you have an Apple device and Soundcamp for Samsung (can all Android access it? I don't know) are both awesome. There's plenty of info online or on YouTube that you can use to get started learning how to use a DAW. Then there are also free sites like flat.io where you can compose sheet music, it'll convert that to midi and play it back for you. And again, there's tons of free info out there on how to get started reading/writing sheet music, and music in general.
So even if you have no funds and no access to physical instruments, but want to create music, there are a lot of good options.
Edit: DAE to DAW
Thanks for the flat.io link. Totally random, but I was looking at an old 19c songbook that included sheet music the other day, and wondered what some of the more obscure melodies sounded like. Seems like that could be a relatively easy way to find out...
Yeah, it'd be great for that. You don't even really need to know how to read the sheet music all that well. Just some basics. Pretty. Much just copy down what you see. It's a fairly intuitive UI once you get going with it.
If you don't mind, you can post a link here to any interesting ones you find.
Also, if you have trouble with it, you could always post a picture of the sheet music and I could help. I could even get up with you on discord or something to prevent unnecessary clutter here.
What other things do you do in your daily life? You'll probably enjoy a hobby more if it allows you to do things that you don't get a chance to in your work/family life, and without the stresses/requirements of the same.
Free software! Tweaking and configuring a Linux system can be an enjoyable and educational use of time.
Chess is always fun. I got back into it recently (not super good but it's fun). If you do have internet, lichess.org is a good site. It's run on donations like tildes.
Along the same lines, I found it enjoyable to get into go, the old white and black stones game that predates chess. I originally saw it in movies like Pi and A Beautiful Mind, bought a go set, read some beginners books, and found a local go club. Theres lots of online resources, apps, and go servers for live games. And a decent community on r/baduk (Korean name for the same game).
Paper craft. Origami is cool, but just one small aspect of what can be done. You can create books entirely from paper. You can modify existing books. You can create desk toys from paper. There are lots of downloadable PDFs. You can make collages from catalogs that come in the mail.
http://origamitutorials.com/
http://www.lisakokin.com/book-art-altered-two.html
http://www.paperfoldables.com/
https://www.care2.com/greenliving/junk-mail.html
Are these hobbies for you? Are you wishing for ones appropriate for smaller life forms? Is there a budget? Oops. I've hosted too many workshops...
All of the above are really fun. How about juggling? Carving? Slight of hand? Star gazing? Plaiting cords and knots? Compass work for orienteering. Finger weaving. Collecting, either items or digital images. I collected interesting bus stops for a while... XD
I'd like to see your interesting bus stops.
Here you go. These are the ones I can find from where I used to live. As I pass by new ones or find more dredging in my archives, I'll add them. :)
If anyone else wants to find interesting bus stops, post them up!
You did a nice job with the photography. I particularly like the pavilion ones.
Find an instrument for cheap on craigslist or something and maybe a beginners lesson book. (I know this breaks the rule of "free", but you can also find a free instrument from someone who has something they don't use anymore). I picked up the guitar at age 13 not knowing a damn thing about it. I lived in the middle of nowhere. Every time I learned some new chords or could play a new song, it was a tremendous feeling of joy and accomplishment. I'm now 48 and the music just flows out easier than speaking. I still haven't taken a lesson, although, if I'd learned music theory, I'd actually understand more about what I'm playing as far as keys, scales, etc. I'm self-taught, and I've found since that many things in life can be self-taught.
Also, drawing can be another good creative outlet. Sometimes I just take a pencil and paper and draw something I can see near me or use a picture of something as a guide. Of my various creative skills, drawing is probably the one I'm least good at because I do it so infrequently. However, it's a great way to just lose myself in something for a bit.
Writing is another great hobby. Learning different ways to express the same thought, finding different words that convey the meaning you want...breaking the rules to evoke more intense emotions or vivid landscapes. Words can be engrossing to explore. There are so many ways to write, as well. Poetry, short stories, odd, random thoughts, rants, journaling, and entire books. While there are "rules", grammar nazis can be ignored. As long as the reader understands what you are trying to say, you did it right.
You can also create your own forms of art by building things out of other things. Glue together a bunch of lighters to make a robot. Carve candles into different shapes. Make a small drumset out of empty pill bottles. I used to take old magazines and I'd find one larger picture and then cut out little bits from other pictures and affix them with Scotch tape to make a little scene.
Whatever you choose, just remember, you will suck at first, and probably for quite a while. Don't expect to be good, only to learn and to progress and to enjoy it! If you enjoy it, then when you get good, the compliments will become unexpected and pleasant surprises!
I'll refer you to a comment I made on a previous, similar thread:
I've just started composting in a big plastic tub in the back yard -- I thought "greens" and "browns" was just about the color, and I didn't know the right ratio. Thanks for correcting that for me! I'm really looking forward to having some good dirt in a couple of weeks.
Getting more specific with the hobbies, reading/writing fanfiction is a great way to get into the habit of reading/writing stories. It's much more familiar since there is a created universe to work around with and it's a great way to use your imagination!
What fandom are you in?
I'm mostly in the Harry Potter fandom because there is so much variety in the fanfic. I also like Avatar the Last Airbender, and some amount of Hunger Games/Percy Jackson.
Yeah, I definitely like my YA lit
Use recycling materials to build models of old space probes or other retro-technology. I really like this hobby because it teaches you to look "through" your material world to think about what it is made of, as you're thinking about the component parts that can be repurposed for building things. It is sort of an inverted take on René Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" -- e.g. this old printer is not a printer, it is a bunch of parts that could be used for many things.
Do you have an album of these spaceprobes cause that sounds awesome and I'd like to see.
I don't; I haven't kept all of them* and the ones I still have aren't really Internet photo worthy. But I can do even better: I am just starting on a Venera 8 and I'll take photos of the build process to post here when done.
Please do, you and I can't be the only space nerds on ~
Just seconding what @EngiNerd has said, I would love to see your build process!
Meditation. Breathe in, breathe out. No Internet, no equipment required. If you can breathe, you can do it.
Learning a new language! There are TONS of free resources online for just about any language you could want to learn. Heck, a big part of starting to learn a new language is just trying out the stuff available to you and seeing what works and what you enjoy.
drawing and solving mazes.
Retro Computing.
In the 80's and 90's I was an Amiga owner and ran a BBS. About three years ago, I found out about the WinUAE Amiga Emulator and started playing around with the AmigaOS and games. Then I discovered that Dan Fitzgerald had bought up all the rights to the Amiga BBS software called C-Net Amiga, and has been actively developing it since. So I started up my CNet BBS again! You can find this software at http://www.cnetbbs.net/
The retro BBS scene is again growing like crazy.