Tell us why we should unexpectedly come to love your hobby.
Self Hosting. I love optimizing my securing my life while improving my family’s privacy. Nextcloud to store and backup media, contacts, and knowledge base. Hosting a free remote VPN on OCI, remote encrypted backups to a fellow enthusiast’s server…I love that while my data is local, if my house was to burn down, the years of pictures and precious memories will still be available. I also like being able to use this tech to help people close to me, doing backups for them, sharing ISO’s, etc.
Film photography. With smartphones having taken over the roll of point and shoots and covering the majority of people’s photography needs, it’s quite a different experience breaking out a half century old camera. Everything is more tactile, your shots are finite, and the result is a 100% determined by your decisions. Different films produce different results, and if you get into developing your own film you get to play mad chemist in the bathroom.
There’s a learning curve, but if you’re already into photography and understand the basics it’s really not that hard. Labs still exist to develop for you if you’d rather not go down that rabbit hole. The results may surprise you!
I mostly shoot with a DSLR (or did, the pandemic has apparently killed a lot of my enthusiasm for that particular hobby). But I have occasionally picked up a film camera just to play around. It always takes me about half the roll to stop checking the results on the display on the back of the camera…
It’s like the odd time I drive an automatic after decades with a manual … always mashing the floor and popping it in neutral by accident.
Home Automation. It can be as simple as buying a hub and some devices. But, I went the self-hosted route using Home Assistant to give me more control of what it can do.
I have some automations that turn on a certain set of lights on when the sun sets and off when it rises. It’s pretty simple, but saves electricity because I used to leave my front porch light on 24/7.
I just set up an automation last night that sends me a discord notification when the laundry machine finishes and the same for the dryer. I can’t hear the beeping because I am always too far from the laundry room. This one has me so excited!
I’ve seen people automate gardens which seems really neat. Really, your only limit is your imagination. I also just really like having an app on my phone to toggle power to random lights and fans around my house. It helps me get out of bed because I can turn the fan off when I’m cold in bed.
My favourite one I’ve done so far: I put a motion sensor near where my cat goes every morning when she wants to look outside. This then opens the blinds enough for her to see.
This works better than a simple timer because the blinds are loud enough to wake us up sometimes and she doesn’t want to necessarily look outside every day.
Shit gets so crazy, I wish I had the tenacity to self host.
I think it’s a lot more intimidating than it is actually hard. You could get a Raspberry Pi, Alternative, or a Home Assistant Yellow. Then there guides that can get you going in minutes. It’s actually a pretty good time with the latest update introducing better onboarding.
I am not trying to convince you. But, I don’t want to see anyone scared out either.
hardware hacking, it feels like you are trying to solve a weird puzzle in which sometimes even the dumbest things may work, and at the end you have a device you can do whatever you want with.
i can see though why people may find it tedious.
If you haven’t been tainted by the mechanical keyboard hobby, be aware.
I started with a TKL with Outemu blue switches just to see what the hype was about, then moved to Anne Pro 2 with Gat browns.
Ortholinear made sense so I got an XD75 followed my a Planck after getting curious about 40% boards.
Now I make my own from printed PCBs and soldering, custom programmable firmware, and my own custom key map.
I now use a split column staggered 34 key board with hand dyed keycaps and custom aftermarket switches.
I own 7 boards now and have plans for at least 2 more and a partial split for gaming.
I’m sincerely confused as to why you would want more than one keyboard. To me it sounds like owning more than one printer, but even less convenient. Can you explain it to me?
I think for others it’s having different switches and keycaps for different feeling when typing. For me it’s trying to find what I think is the most optimal typing experience and the least amount of strains on my hands while typing.
That’s why I’ve gone from row stagger and qwerty to Ortholinear. I switched to that because it makes sense to me that your fingers move up and down better than they move laterally. Lateral movement like in a row stagger layout is more strain since you have to stretch to reach keys. Qwerty also never made sense to me since alphas aren’t optimized based on location but rather purposefully unoptimized as a hold over from the typewriter days in order to slow down typists to help stop keys from jamming.
When I was on my Ortho boards I learned about layer switching that allows for keys that are further away to be moved under my fingers by activating a second layer. This was when I moved from my 60% Ortho to my 40% Ortho.
After that I got interested in ColemakDh since it fixed a lot of what is wrong with qwerty. So I decided to learn it. Then I got real into column stagger and wanted to try my hand at soldering. I ordered the parts to make a board called a Cantor Remix. I had enough parts to build 2 and did that. Building my own keyboard from basically parts and programming was a lot of fun and I got bit by the bug.
It’s a dumb argument since most people don’t care but I believe that something like a column staggered layout and something like Colemak or Canary should be the standard keyboard format. It’s hard to relearn typing all over again as an adult so the default is an archaic row stagger that feels unnatural and a very unoptimized alpha layout. I know most people just don’t care and I hyper focus on stuff so it’s just something I don’t bother telling most people, unless they ask of course.
I don’t think everyone needs a bunch of keyboards but I’m on this weird journey to find what feels the most optimized for me. I’m deep in the rabbit hole lol.
Recently joined an on-road RC racing club.
Gets a lot deeper than I ever thought it could. The mechanics of making a car go around turns better/faster gets very in depth. Lots of trial and error. Race every 2 weeks so tons of time to experiment with adjustments between race days.
Ages range from near 80 to 10… everyone out just having a good time and helping each other for a few hours. During winter, Florida busy season, we have 50+ people racing 5-6 different classes in a public parking lot.
Started with a used off the shelf car for $75 from a club memeber 5 months ago… now building competition grade kits and put up shelves in the bedroom for all 7 of my cars. Almost all used for VERY cheap that just needed a bit of love to be competitive again.
etymology
Ham radio.
On the surface, it just sounds like listening to a bunch of old farts babbling on about their enlarged prostates, and tbf, there is a bit of that if you never go any deeper than 2M/70cm voice modes.
But there’s just SOOOO much you can do.
Want to see how far you can bounce a signal off a mirror laying on the surface of the moon? Yup. You can do that.
Want to launch and communicate with your own satellite? Yup. It’s a thing.
Want to remotely control devices from hundreds of miles away without using the internet? Yup.
Want to gps track your car at all times, even when there’s no cell phone service? That’s called APRS.
Want to have a conversation with astronauts on the ISS as it flies overhead? They’ve got ham equipment on board.
You can even play with broadcasting and/or receiving “secret” tv and radio stations - that is, they’re on alternate frequencies that regular TVs and radios don’t pick up.
It just goes so deep.
Woah, woah, woah. You had me at babbling prostates…
yoyos.
So competitions are just a guy with a yoyo?
1A, one yoyo, typically unresponsive for loose tricks
2A for two-handed, looping tricks with responsive yoyos
3A for two-handed unresponsive yoyos
4A for off string (yoyo not tethered)
5A for Freehand (string tethered to a counterweight)
AP for artistic performances, regardless of the competitive style.
bonus trivia: Steve Brown, the creator of 5A, was on an episode of Wifeswap.
Plastic scale modelling.
Trust me, it gets deep and expensive. The almost irresistible desire to increase the size of one’s “stash” by buying models you’ll never get around to building. The need to have the exact shade of paint used on a 1942 tropical BF109. The need for at least 3 airbrushes. The obsession with the tools.
HELP!
But it’s really quite enjoyable and once you accept that if what you’ve built gives you pleasure and that you’re happy with it, you’ve got it beat.
I am a designer, so for me anything anyhow connected with visual aspects.
Someone already posted about old coins and film photography so I will add:
· Watching Movies — at least once for the story and overall feeling, then for the story again and visuals, colors etc., later for techniques, ideas, framing, music, rhythm, cuts and so on.
· Stamps (Philately) — what more can I say, sometimes I forget about my unsegregated albums, but when I reopen them or find something to add, I am gone.
· Collecting well designed magazines and other printed materials — this one was a big one for me, for a long, looong time. Still, from time to time I will find a great business card or a catalogue, as they are becoming scarce now, or in the ocean of very poor design — it always feels like finding a real treasure.
This was a relatively short-term thing, but I think it counts loosely as hobbyish… in my 20s, I was determined to find the best bloody mary in town. I went to every single bar, restaurant, etc. and tried each one in turn.
Which sounds boring, I know, but I had so many great conversations and met so many interesting people.
And to answer your likely question: Surprisingly, Red Lobster, which made its own mix from real tomato juice and didn’t use some crappy bloody mary mix. This was in the 90s, so I can’t endorse their current bloody mary.
