What hobby was easier to get into than you thought?

ericbomb@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 252 points –

My two are:

Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I've been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren't super consistent because I don't have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they've all been tasty.

Drawing. I'm by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like... yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.

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Reading

Thanks to e-books and the Libby app you don't even have to physically go anywhere or pay anything to find a good book these days.

libby is such a game changer. i totally get why a lot of people want to only read physical books but for me, being able to read anywhere at any time instead of having to make a concious decision to find and bring a book with you means i read way way more than i used to

For me it’s that I have to think less about my choices. I don’t have a ton of time anymore so if I pick a book I am not vibing with I can just return it and pick another in a matter of seconds. It’s led me to taking chances on books I normally wouldn’t read.

Oh yeah!

I have a 75-page rule. If a book hasn't grabbed me by then, I move on.

I'm a mix of both. I generally read a book for the first time on Libby and then end up buying a physical copy for my home library.

I like physical books in a theoretical sense. Some hardcovers are beautiful and it's hard to resist the urge to collect them.

But I don't really like reading physical books. I really don't like the typesetting of 70-80 characters on a page. That leaves a lot of my books at maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page, and it's really hard to get into a flow that way. On an ereader I can control the layout, the font, and really get into a book.

(And that's on top of the fact that I can carry thousands of books around with me, borrow from the library, and take notes more effectively for nonfiction.)

What font/layout settings do you prefer that get you really into it?

I use roboto. I especially like how Moon+ reader renders it with antialiasing. Font size depends on the screen and reading distance, but the end result is generally 50-100% more per page. I don't feel like I'm spending all my time turning pages that way.

I still use PDFs for stuff with graphics, diagrams, code, etc. I don't think epub maintains the formatting well enough. But if a book is mostly prose, I find the ability to reflow the text helps me a lot.

And the too much detail follow up lol.

::: spoiler full page :::

That's roboto size 13 on a boox go color 7, on moon+ reader.

::: spoiler macro :::

And a macro shot of the text to show that the apparent sloppiness is really just the picture. But other apps without the smoothing don't always look the same. I've used different variations of the font on different apps to get the best result.

::: spoiler The actual hardcover :::

I'm a slow reader and get frustrated with how long books take. My "internal" reading speed is about as fast as reading aloud, so anything longer than a few hundred pages takes forever.

That can happen. My focus is weird, and I strongly zone-in to what I'm doing, so for me reading is a very engaging and fun thing to do.

Try audiobooks.

I listen to them while doing chores like the dishes or folding laundry. If you get distracted, just repeat the last few minutes.

Audiobooks are not a replacement for actual reading. It’s still nice to have, but your brain fires off different synapses. They are nice to have in the car.

Don't be such a book snob. I was answering to a person who has a hard time reading. Between making life harder on yourself, not reading or listening to audiobooks, the latter are a good alternative.

Read how you personally want (as do I), but don't judge others for their reading or not reading habits.

Playing older video games via emulation. The barrier to entry gets easier and easier as time marches on. And as long as you have disc space to download the games, you'll likely find a repository somewhere on the Internet.

Oh yeah some even let you play in browser now. Crazy how it takes seconds, and most peoples phones can even play most everything game cube and earlier.

That is a particularly handy feature for older computer games from DOS and C64.

Some even let you play in your browser now…

Makes me sad thinking about all the fun Flash based games we had access to maybe a decade ago.

I've been playing tons of GameCube games since Dolphin recently released RetroAchievement support. (Basically community made achievements for retro games, available for tons of games and consoles)

And if you don’t flash drives/micro SD cards are dirt cheap and stupid fast these days. May as well be external storage in an easy to loose stick or microSD card.

I’ve never had a problem playing my collection of old games I used to own externally.

Anbernic handheld consoles are awesome and inexpensive.

I recommend the RG35XXSP. It's shaped like a Gameboy Advance SP and plays lots of Dreamcast & N64 games plus everything below that.

$60 + Shipping Directly from Anbernic

or

$90 with free 1 or 2 day shipping from Amazon

Doom scrolling

Has anyone found a way to get out of this hobby? Asking for a friend.

Switching my phone screen to black and white actually does help, but the temptation to switch back is powerful.

For an honest answer: someone else on lemmy once said they just scroll down on the homepage and let it free-scroll for a while, then stop and work back up. When they get to the top they leave lemmy and move on with their day.

Quitting Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit (really all social media) really helped. Lemmy is nice because there are not nearly the amount of comments.

Honestly social media does nothing for us anymore. It’s no longer serving its original purpose and is now a derivative version if MK Ultra level shit to feed us rage and sell us crap.

Heck, even some clients have auto scroll, really really easy this hobby.

But you see, I wanna git gud immediately

  • Print one this, or something like this
  • Get a scale/ruler, a pencil and an eraser
  • Use the above to draw, first a this and then a this
  • Then imagine and draw stuff like this

The last one is not true isometric, but has a perspective. But you can make similar good looking stuff in isometric too.
To do perspective, you can't use the Printed isometric line/dot paper.
Instead, it has an additional step of choosing the infinity points and making your own lines for it.

I tried to find a good instructions page, but unfortunately, search engines just prefer YouTube videos (which I don't like to recommend).

Either way, this is one method that lets you git gud pretty fast, albeit in a different drawing form.

Another thing: The last example picture I showed, has circles and semi circles. Avoid those in your drawing at this stage. That requires you to learn an extra method.

/restofthefuckingowl

Nah, these instructions are pretty clear. It's just the same lines on a grid, but more and better arranged.

Essentially how that works.

At least in this case, you are using the same basics over and over again.
What to put where, is your imagination. The first 2 steps just explain how to put the stuff there. And since I recommended an eraser, I would expect you to know to use it when it comes to the point.
Since you desire to git gud at drawing, I would expect you to be good at imagining, which is the prerequisite.

So yeah. I this case, the rest of the owl is the same as the first circle and ellipse.

Oh and ignore the shadows. That comes in a completely different territory. You will need to learn shading, first. I'd never bother with that and just use a CAD software.

Highlighted dimension is not provided.

Drawing implosion imminent.

Ah right, I should have said that too: don't care about the dimensions. Just make a shape similar to that, which can be done using the vertices/dots in the provided paper (otherwise the print will be useless for the purpose of making the learning process easier).

You are just trying to learn how to draw nicely, right? You don't really need to care about properly matching some random example I casually picked off google images. You can change the dimensions at will as long as you understand what you are doing.

This was awhile ago, but playing dungeons and dragons! I showed up one night at the local gaming store, asked the group playing that night if they had space, and bam! I'm playing a terrifying monk in World's Largest Dungeon!

Blender. Not great at it, but there's so many fantastic tutorials on YouTube. I can use it good enough to design and 3d print simple things. Of course, there's may aspects / layers to it. It's both broad and deep. So it's good to kind of focus on one thing at the time, and then break that down even further.

Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn't grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn't "make sense".

I've found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it's easier for me to grasp "okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc" than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don't offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.

I totally get that. It's like finding a programming language or personal information manager app that you like. Have to try a bunch out to find something that works for you.

A long time ago I dabbled in script-generated ray tracing. That was fun, but I never got great at it.

I also learned PostScript for a while, because I wanted to create some very intricate printable forms. Using WYSIWG tools was just not cutting it. I ended up with some large 300dpi forms that I liked, whuch were perfect for the assignment.

Sometimes a different model or approach can make a huge difference to your work flow.

Blender tends to work better for organic shapes. I know because I suffer a LOT to make more parametric stuff with it. I really should learn how to properly use something like Solidworks, Fusion360 or something along those lines.

Try onshape. I learnt fusion last year though YT and playing around for 3D prints.

Its fine but a bit of overkill. Onshape has just enough support that a search for "how to do X" takes you to the wiki or official forum, and boom. Answer.

It also seems more initiative and just gets out of the way, compared to fusion.

No idea if its just coz I learnt fusion first though.

I tried solid works but nothing clicled for me with that.

I hear you on that. On the reverse, trying to make "smoothly flowing" curved shapes in Solidworks is a headache (similarly, I've suffered trying). They do offer a slicing tool so you can import your monkey head from Blender and convert it into parametric object(s).

FreeCAD is free and parametric. It's what I use after Fusion changed their subscriptions around. I don't need to be forced into a subscription once I put in the time to learn how software works, thank you very much.

What are your favorite tutorials about Blender specifically for 3D printing? Any channel recommendations?

I do resin printing. All models get sliced into 2d layers by the slicer program. Therefore, the geometry of the mesh isn't nearly as important as it would be for something you wanted to animate or use in a game. (Pro 3d modelers take great pains to keep their meshes very clean and smooth, made up of all triangles, etc. But if you're just going to convert the thing to a bunch of 2d slices, you don't need that level of discipline.)

You can basically overlap and tweak a bunch of primitive shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc) to build a complex shape for the thing you want. Then you can export that as an STL file and load it into your slicer. Once inside the slicer you can add any needed supports and then slice it.

In order to get to this pretty basic level of competence, I just watched several tutorial videos on the basics. Like how to add shapes, scale them, modify them, mirror them for perfect symmetry, etc. I have watched some videos on texturing, lighting, etc. out of curiosity but you don't need any of that for resin printing.

And once you export it as an STL it looks like one solid thing, so it's easy to rotate it around and so on in the slicer program.

"Blender Guru" is a really well done Blender tutorial channel, but he also covers a lot of things I don't really need. Early on, I learned a lot from the "tutor4u" channel.

Wholeheartedly agree! Nomad Sculpt ^(yo-ho!) via tablet & stylus is a great addition to this notion, and makes for far better modulation in post than creating in zBrush (multiple parts v. inseparable object).

What sort of resin printing do you do, and what part of the world, if you don't mind me asking?

I have an Anycubic 4k resin printer. I'm in the US. Most of the time I am printing miniatures for tabletop gaming using STL files I find online. However, sometimes I want to customize them. And more than once I've needed to repair some broken household object and needed to print a part for it. I've also made a few original gifts for people from scratch. I'm not a very good sculptor, but I can make funny / cute things and put their name on it, stuff like that. I can also copy stuff pretty well if I have enough photos of it from enough 90-degree angles. It's a very fun hobby, I wish I had more time for it!

Oh, for sure. I feel ya there. Some days, I almost wish it was still just a hobby for me, heh. But, the hours are decent, and I absolutely love the creative aspect as well as the personalized service of most prints I make for others. I certainly had no idea that the "Satanic" pastimes I was up to in the early days would somehow build into a bonafide job, that's for sure. 🤣🤓

You actually succeeded in the quest from hobbies to career. Well done!

As someone who also prints with resin, let me tell you that a decent mesh is crucial for bigger pieces that you need to make hollow. More often than not, objects are an amalgamation of smaller things cobbled together, but without vertices connecting them. When you try to hollow such a piece, it won't work "the right way", so you can end up with hollowed pieces that have no holes and will leak, break or fail somehow after fully printed.

Years ago, I also had to deal with an object that had some 50k loose vertices, invisible to the naked eye because they didn't make any edges or faces, but chitubox sliced as if it had a million faces covering the entire build plate.

Another thing I do, mostly to help with stopping chitubox from crashing, is reducing the face count of models (Modifiers -> Decimate). Yes, 4 million faces, lots of detail, etc etc, but if it's a 32-40mm tall mini, it's extremely unlikely you'll notice any differences between that original and a version with ~600k faces, both printed together.

Thank you for adding this to the discussion. I should have specified that I only print smaller things, maybe 10cm tall at the most. Most things I print are much shorter than that. I have only printed one hollowed print (out of hundreds of objects). For my modest needs, the savings on resin is usually not worth the hassle of cleaning / curing the interior cavities. I can definitely see how having bad geometry could foul up a large, complex and/or hollowed print!

I mostly print miniatures as well, but sometimes it's miniature vehicles, or other sorts of big miniatures that, if hollowed out, can drop from ~35g to ~15g of resin needed. When a typical 36mm tall mini will usually take 5g with supports, that's a big difference.

I remember I gave up printing a chibi Duran (from Trials of Mana), roughly 8cm tall, because each piece of the hair was a separate object, thus impossible to hollow "as is". The hair alone was probably more than half of the total resin needed for the piece.

I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.

However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.

I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.

Not sure exactly what you consider 'expensive', but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.

Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.

That’s absolutely reasonable, but I’m not a student. Is that required by the license agreement?

Easily fixable. What you do is go to the Titans of CNC Academy and sign up. Congratulations; you are now technically a student! When purchasing the Student Edition from Dassault, you'll be asked what your educational institution is; "Titans of CNC Academy" is an accepted answer.

Then you can head over to Titans' sales page and pick up an annual student license. (Make sure you're getting the Student version and not the cruddy "3DExperience for Makers". That's Solidworks' cloud-based software, and is a hot mess.)

The major downside to this is that files created in the student edition are watermarked as such, and will open with a warning if you try on a professional-licensed version of SW. You should be able to still 3D print for personal hobby purposes, but it is against the license to make money off of it.

Programming.

I first realized that I loved it at the age of 11. It's easy to get into but programming itself can be difficult or easy depending on what you are aiming to do and how. I love it both as a hobby and as a high school subject (hopefully as a job in the next few years as well)

Game Mastering for TTRPGs. Set up can take some work, but it's a great creative outlet and, once you find the right group, soooo much fun. I personally started off with Paranoia XP and moved from there to a couple different systems before landing on D&D 5e. There are some great rules-light systems like Kids on Bikes/ Kids on Brooms or Paranoia Perfect Edition if the behemoth of D&D (with its multiple text-book sized rule books) seems daunting.

ETA: there's also entire libraries of advice on GMing out there for assistance if you need it.

Cooking. A lot of really delicious foods have extremely simple recipes and as an amateur you have time on your side. You don't have to rush anything for most recipes. A lot of times I measure and cut everything before I even turn on the stove and this makes cooking super easy. Sure it takes a while to cook when you are just starting out but you can just go at your own pace. I really feel like anyone can cook almost anything. You don't even need fancy tools. I got started with a $12 wok and a wooden spatula. These days there's a huge amount of resources to teach you how to make just about everything. It's also really rewarding since you get to eat what you make and you get to make things you want to eat. Needless to say it's also a very important skill.

Cooking is much easier than it looks. Recipes are just suggestions and after looking at enough of them the commonalities to play around with it

Except baking. Unless you exactly know what each ingredient does.

Baking is about ratios. You absolutely can mess around with baking even if you don’t really know what to do, you just can’t mess up the ratios - and I mean liquids/wet ingredients, dry ingredients like flour, then eggs and of course the important baking soda/powder.

Like regular cooking, once you get a good feel, you can do a lot.

It won’t let you make your own recipe, though. That does take a level of knowledge above just substituting or changing an ingredient or two.

Gathering, cutting, measuring all the ingredients before cooking is actually a very well regarded French method called mis en place so you're basically already classically trained 😜

Sewing! My girlfriend is into it and had some machines already. It's way easier and more fun than I expected.

Any resources to pick this up that you can share?

YouTube, and forums for questions. Many popular patterns have videos.

I think places like apostrophe patterns are good for beginner patterns because they do fully custom patterns based on your measurements.

For a starter machine, definitely do research, because shitty sewing machines suck to use soooo much and pull any fun out of sewing. People online seem to really like Juki. My girlfriend has a brother, and it definitely feels kinda cheap and has trouble with thick stuff sometimes.

If you're really into sewing, a serger is totally worth it, A cover stitch is nice to have.

making mead:

honey, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock (fancy cork), wait two weeks.

wine making:

juice, sugar, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock, wait two weeks.

No camden tablets for sterilization?

I've never found them necessary.

I use a baking soda/water combo to clean out carboys between uses, and ill dip the airlock stopper in boiling water before attaching it, any cloth i use to wipe things down is boiled beforehand.

as long as everything is clean before the carboy is sealed, you're good.

I've never lost a batch.

knock on wood.

Kayaking was easy. Get one you can afford on FB Marketplace and go. Cheap paddles are just fine to start as are $3 thrift life vests, grab a whistle while you're shopping. Next thing you know, you're scanning Google Maps for water and new adventures.

houseplants and especially ferns: It all started with a gift: a bird's-nest fern and a blue-star fern. i was already into cultivating offshoots, but the bird's-nest fern does not generate those, and the internet said you can not divide a single plant into multiples. but how do they propagate then? the use spores and the internet said it is not easy to get new plants this way, but i gave it a try. and it was not that difficult...

currently i have about 12 nest-ferns of all sizes and fear the winter when i have to bring all plants into the small flat.

funny enough: the blue-star fern is easy to propagate via offshoots, but its even easier with spores: as soon as you have a medium moist pot near such a fern you get fresh ferns for free. they grow quite slow, but still look beautiful.

if your interested and German based, write me a PM and i can send you a letter with some spores to bootstrap your new hobby!

The bizarre culture (pun intended) around sourdough is maddening. The obsession over the "ear," bannetons, lames, daily feeding: all bro club bullshit. This is the bread humans have been making for millennia; the only tools you need are one hot rock and one not-hot rock.

Lul reminds me of the coffee bros. With their 3.4 sec at 666 degrees vs 8.9 sec at 69 degrees pour or whatever they call it.

It's the exact same phenomenon. Surely astroturf bullshit started by whomever is selling the useless tools.

That and I think there's a fair bit of elitism as well. Everyone is always trying to one up each other and since you can only go so expensive with the beans and equipment the next step is to be pretentious with the prep.

There is a point of diminishing returns with coffee brewing, and you can quickly spend obscene amounts of money for infinitesimally small increases in quality of the brew.

However, a few hundred dollars worth of investment in a grinder and basic equipment, and you'll never again be able to choke down the sour, burnt tar they attempt to pass off as coffee in stores and restaurants.

There are some serious differences between a badly made loaf and a well done one though. You never stop learning. But yeah, it's easy to get something passable.

None of the differences have anything to do with the Bro Method.

Uh, I must admit I don't know about that bro method.

Sword fighting. I joined an armored combat gym and just went consistently. They provide the equipment, at least til you get to the point you want your own armor and weapon. Good fun, good exercise.

What kind of sword fighting?

Armored MMA! Cage fights in authentic armor, with historically accurate weapons. I've yet to get in armor, just soft kit sparring and pell work with the real weapons.

Fly fishing

Got yelled at as a kid for playing with your pole too much? Then it’s the hobby for you. Can practice in your backyard and it’s fun just to whip shit around

The cost barrier of entry is decently high though. Fly fishing is a huge rabbit hole for sure. I’ve never been but one of my coworkers goes almost weekly.

You can buy like $50 kits or go on Craigslist and look for someone selling their impulse bought gear.

Add in a license fee and even then it’s not too bad for time killing hobby.

I think when I first got into it I was put off thinking I’d need like the finest $3k in orvis gear and I’d need to buy $10 flies at my local shops.

Like there’s a weird bougie-classist feeling I think a lot of people have which turns them off of trying to get into the sport.

Painting miniatures. Anyone can do it and make their board games look way nicer.

All you have to do is avoid paying New-In-Box GW prices, and avoid/minimize GW paints and the cost of the hobby drops through the floor.

Tons of skirmish games in all settings are around, many of them with free rules. Battletech is cheap because it basically needs skirmish game amounts of minis. Even playing 40k is cheap(er) embracing third party and scratchbuilding.

Can you recommend good paints to get? I'm interested in getting into model making but all the options are kind of overwhelming and reviews are all over the place.

90% of my paints are Vallejo Model Color. Good value for the price, never had any quality control issues.

Vallejo Game Color is their newer line where they've focused on brighter and more saturated colors for the 40k audience. Same company and quality.

I supplement my Vallejo Model Colors with some Duncan Two Thin Coats paints when I want super saturated colors. This line also has pretty decent metallics which I now use, since I can't find Vallejo Mecha Color anymore.

I do still use Citadel Nuln Oil and Agrax. I have the old formula bottles, and I don't use wash that often or much, so it will be a while until I buy new ones.

A few random products from Tamiya, MIG, and AK. All are speciality things like rust effect washes. Not really needed for starting out.

I also have a collection of cheap Applebarrel paint from WalMart. These are great for painting bases, doing low importance areas of vehicles, painting terrain, and being drybrush paints for vehicles. Much more cost effective than using hobby paints for this purpose.

I managed to sidestep Games Workshop pretty neatly. I'm huge on Battletech and pretty much exclusively use Army Painter paints. I also have a lot of board games like Scythe or Betrayal that have plain gray minis that I'm working on.

Whittling

Just buy a knife kit and some wood blanks, surprisingly affordable.

And, it only takes a few trips to the ER to find out how shite you are at it! Win! Time for another hobby that requires only a few fingers! 🤩🤌🏽

Yeah I should have added the cut proof gloves and thumb protectors

Cycling

I started biking to work after we moved closer and next thing I know I'm into mountain biking and have built 2 bikes

Tying fishing flies

Looks really hard. Not terribly hard to make some respectable flies with a little bit of instruction.

Photography. Cost of a used high quality DSLR + batteries + storage cards + cheap tripod = $500-ish. Lessons = free thanks to piracy and YouTube.

Then in a few years you'll be gassing for those 3k lenses a 5k camera and a carbon fibre tripod, a few flashguns etc.

I've been in it for 10 years now and I largely use the same gear. My camera is 16 years old and my lens is about 12 years old. I use a Neewer tripod and sometimes swap lenses with someone I know who has a nice 70-200 mm.

Last year I went from a 10 year old Nikon D7100 with 17-55 f/2.8 to a Nikon Z6 with 24-70 f/4 and holy moly there is an insane difference in quality. I was absolutely blown away. If you can afford it I highly recommend getting something newer. It really breathed fresh air in to my photography and got me excited that I can get really sharp photos, even at high ISOs with good tracking.

I have access to a higher end DSLR if I want, I just prefer using an older camera. It gets boring when the camera does 99% of the work and puts out an image so clean it's almost sterile. Until my camera breaks, I'll keep using it.

Sigma has this beauty for only 26 grand.

You can definitely spend money on the stuff that's for actual professionals who need every shot to count, but you can get really good stuff that just misses more shots or has some more quirks at much more reasonable prices, especially used. I've still spent probably a little over a grand on the stuff I use regularly (unless you count $400 more on a DJI Action 4 to play with throwing in water), but I also have some lenses that I got for free (they were throw-ins on someone else's goodwill order that they didn't have a use for) that really aren't bad.

Its so much fun! I buy used SLR cameras and equipment from estate sales on the cheap (always below $30) and develop my film at home instead of paying $10 a roll to have it processed in a lab (chemicals cost $24 for 24 rolls of developing ) about to start bulk rolling my film for the cost of $6 a roll as opposed to spending $10-$16 per roll from the photography shop near me. Brining the cost down to shoot and develop the film from $26 per roll to $7 per roll.

Woodworking! Yes, you can obviously spend lots of money on equipment, but you'd be surprised by how nice furniture you can build with just a track saw and a trim router.

Only thing that sucks about woodworking is unless you have a house of your own, it's very difficult because of how much dust and noise is produced. Woodworking in an apartment is very frustrating.

Also even if you have the tools lumber is not cheap.

My stupid ass thought I could maybe get into wood carving on a small scale... Checked the price of wood and noooope.

I reckon you can still do it. Buying lumps of sawn hardwood is expensive, but if you start looking for what people throw away you can do it. You can find hardwood that is completely illegal to cut and sell these days if you look for mid century furniture that’s getting thrown out. Or softwoods. You’re not stupid, and you can carve if you want to.

I get that. In my city there are at least 2 makerspaces and 1 communal workshop where you can use all their tools at any time, for a monthly membership fee. I would totally use that option if I didn't have my own house. Not sure how common that is around the world though.

Making chainmail. All you need are a decent pair of flat pliers and some rings. A basic 4 in 1 weave is super easy to learn. There's more complex stuff of course, but starting out is ridiculously simple. I made a dice bag with probably a dollar or two worth of galvanized steel rings, leather string, and a plastic drawstring clasp.

This would never have crossed my mind as a thing to do. What else does a person make besides a shirt / armor?

Beanies? Cast iron pan scrubbers? Novelty blankets?

Haha, personally I've made dice bags and nifty bracelets. Chainmail bikinis are also a thing that's more popular than you'd think.

Novelty blankets?

I've heard of people who made chainmail blankets not as a novelty but as essentially a weighted blanket for when it's warm. I don't know how well it would work in practice because I'd imagine it'd pinch hairs all over you body pretty often but it still seemed like a pretty neat idea.

If you sleep in pyjamas or have a thin sheet between you and the chainmail, then perhaps the hair pinching would be less of an issue.

The chainmail creators for tge Lord of the Rings movies made so much chainmail that they were their fingerprints completely off.

Drumming! Buy an electronic kit, have tons of fun playing Rock Band, watch videos for technique, download a few practice books. You can at least play along with easy songs and it makes you feel badass! :D

Clone Hero is great for E-drumming (have to set it to Pro Drums because regular Drums works with old Rock Band and GH kits). I also paid for a year of Melodics and learned a lot from it.

Yeah I've heard about Clone Hero! Just kind of holding off for now because it's supposed to be better than Rock Band, so I already know it's going to be this whole "thing" for me once I get into it (trying to juggle a bunch of hobbies, as is my tendency lol).

Photography. Always stayed away because people told me it would be expensive (it definitely can be) but you can have a ton of fun with a 20-year-old camera off eBay and lenses from garage sales.

Making desert coffee at home. I got a French press because i drink one cup of coffee a day at most and I wanted make sweeter more rich coffee.

I now can use all cream line milk or oat milk, soak my fresh ground beans (and chickary root sometimes), add sweeteners to taste.

Blame better coffee than most coffee shops (for me). No 1000 dollar machine

I got tired of paying $20 for affogato out, so i bought a moca pot for like $20 online and some preground espresso. Now I can make it whenever i want and it tastes basically the same. Fully automatic espresso machines are overrated.

Sorry, I'm european.

Do you mean the little conical pot with the long handle you use to make mokka?

Or an italian bialetti ?

Because mokka and espresso are quite different.
If you mean a bialetti, I absolutely agree and I recommend to buy an original 'bialetti' brand, because they will last you several lifetimes. It's worth it. I'd find it a bit weird that you call it moca pot, when it makes espresso.

Turkish or Greek mokka is also awesome, but you need to know how to poor the coffee so you don't have your mouth full of coffee grounds. I never mastered this.
I'd find it a bit weird that you use mokka to make affogato, but that might be a question of taste...

Don't let an Italian catch you calling a Bialetti coffee an espresso.

If I'm understanding though it is closer to espresso because of the higher pressure, right?

It comes out dark and flavorful enough for my affagato, that's all i care about. 😆

What's your recipe, ratios and wait times. I use a press to do cold brew. Every time I try it for a hot cup it tastes a bit "dirty" or earthy to me, plus by the time it steeps its not as hot as I'd like.

I take my coffee cup fill it full of whole milk, microwave at 60% power for ~3 min. Fill the bottom of my press with a layer of course ground bean, sprinkle in the chickory (maybe a whole layer), another layer of bean, power the hot milk in, wait 5-10 min, press and pour.

If I'm making some for guests I just add their cups of milk as well and a little thicker layers.

Oddly cold brew has that dirty flavor to me, so I never, despite wanting to, got into it.

I never thought to do a French press with milk instead of water.

For cold brew I filter it though a pour over after pressing. 1:7.2 ratio, 18 hours.

Soak grounds in milk? Then just press the milk with no water or anything? Never heard of doing this.

Yeah! I started it because I partner wanted a more latte like drink, and I like a very creamy coffee.

I will say contrary to what I expected, I had to lower my soak time because it gets bitter faster, but I still prefer it.

Foraging. Don't eat random shit from the wild without IDing it (intelligently, not just with AI apps), but also don't listen to the scary stories and harsh warnings. Dying by plant (or mushroom) poisoning is very rare, most bad eats will give you the trots and you'll be fine a day later. It's easy to find good foods without stress, and while a professional guide can help, there are SO many books that have virtually the same info. Start with local, easy foods like leafy greens, nibble small amounts and wait 24 hours, and you'll start seeing how simple and attainable forging is.

My first thought was sourdough too, and making fermented foods in general. I wanted to get into making my own sourdough bread for a while, but every time I started researching I just gave up. A lot of recipes out there make it look so intimidating and honestly, most of the steps are just not necessary for a basic loaf. Been making simple bread in loaf pans for months now and loving it.

Same! Some of the recipes make it sound like you need 6 special tools and a climate controlled area. Freaking internet blogs trying to justify their existence by over complicating things.

Wine. Not making it, but just enjoying it. Trips to wineries, wine clubs, tasting rooms. All it requires is money.

I don’t even like red wine, but the hobby aspect of it all is very simple.

3d printing and even designing my own basic parts/items. Seems daunting as all hell to get right but honestly it wasn't that bad to figure out. Fusion360 was a dream to learn. I've been trying to make the switch to freecad and struggling though. :(

Some things in fusion are just so much easier than in anything else I've tried.
I've spent 15 minutes in freecad trying to make a simple chamfer on a 90dg corner to overhang so that the model wouldn't nees supports, and it just would. Not. Work. The same took 4 clicks in fusion.

I like FOS, but I'm not a masochist.

Speedcubing. There are good cubes for < $10 now and beginner’s method is easy to learn. There are many resources online and can be learned within minutes. Then you start improving and getting faster quickly.

In my case I then went to a local competition and just amazed at how quick and how young these kids are.

When I got my first Rubik's cube, I never thought I'd ever be able to solve it in under a minute. I still can't, because it turns like garbage, but I got a 30 second solve on my MoYu cube recently.

I think the tricky part about getting people into speedcubing is them realizing that they shouldn’t buy Rubik’s cubes. I got one and just left it sitting for years because of how bad it is to turn. It wasn’t until I watched random YouTube videos before I realized I could enjoy it if I got a different puzzle

I agree with sourdough, I didn't even buy a starter just made one from unbleached white flour and water, it been going strong or more than 15 years now. Other home fermentation projects too, many don't really involve any special equipment. But the secret people don't realize about sourdough is its EASIER to work with, than commercial yeast. Less fussy, less sticky, more robust, just slower. And slower is easier.

Gardening there was some cost involved for me but I have been consistently shocked because I used to kill plants but the food garden is doing great. Not idyllic, sometimes bugs eat all of something, or birds do, or this year my dogs are the late season watermelon (bitches!) but in general it doesn't take a lot of knowledge, I look for sturdy heat tolerant hybrids or plants native to hot wet places, and have gotten fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, okra, collard greens, mustard greens, jalapenos, different lettuces, a few other veggies and the watermelon all this food for not much cost beyond what we are already paying to have a house with a backyard.

Yeah I tried making a sour dough starter twice from scratch and it didn't have any oomph to it.

So I just bought one and suddenly boom, perfect XD

Ham radio. The license is now just a multiple choice quiz--no morse code needed. There are apps that go through the questions in a flashcard style, and if you go through that for 30 minutes a day for a month, you'll pass no problem.

Entry level radios have gotten cheap, too. $25 Bafangs are the butt of jokes around ham radio, and yet everyone seems to have at least one. The older models had harmonic transmission issues that violated FCC requirements, but there's newer ones that clean it up and cost about the same.

no Morse code

Found the American, even before you mentioned the FCC. I've been wondering how much of an effect the different amateur radio licensing requirements have had on the airwaves. For myself, the main thing holding me back is my lack of confidence in passing the analogue electronics portion of the exam.

Any specific drawing advice? I've always wanted to draw and to paint and have had such difficulty getting off the ground

I mean I'm not great in any way, but the way I did that I found very satisfying was find a tutorial where the end product is something you like and will take under an hour, or heck 10 minutes, idc.

Then follow it. The first time it'll probably come out garbage. That's okay! Think about which parts you did wrong.

Then the next day, follow the tutorial again. Then the next day, again. Each day try things differently to get closer to what the tutorial wants you to do.

After about a month I was super happy with what I drew and realized that if you just draw, you'll get better.

This is great advice btw. I know amateurs and pros who swear by the "paint/draw one small piece every day" approach.

Oh happy to hear that it's valid advice! I got it from a speaker at a video game making thing I went to years ago that stuck with me.

Talking about it I suddenly have the urge to do it again xD It was very satisfying to compare last weeks drawing to this weeks, and the first drawing in the book to the last one. I can only imagine how satisfying it would be if I stuck with it for a year XD

This is why I joined a track-a-week music challenge this year! I've been dabbling for 5 years and still have no idea what I'm doing musically (no theory or anything) but I figured cranking out a finished song every week throughout 2024 would force me to get better and it's really working!

I mean, I'm still cranking out garbage, but now it's higher quality garbage and I can make decisions faster, let go of ideas that aren't working without a second thought, and learn from other people taking the challenge.

As far as art goes, I've been drawing live caricatures for 15 years and I'm WAY better than even a few years ago. Definitely stick with it. Be too stubborn to give up. Keep doing the thing. Skill will develop the more you persevere.

I love this advice. I found someone on YouTube and poorly copied them on a MTG card (just altering it). It was fantastic, and I really am looking forward to the next one already

The most important part is starting. The second is not quitting at the first failure.

Consistency is the most important aspect for learning to draw (and any other skill, really)

Don't bother with spending lots of money early on. Buy some printer paper (cheap&plentiful), pencils, eraser and cheap hydrographic fineliner pens.

Draw something you want, something you'd like to do, then train a bit, or vice-versa. When starting, use references. Most kids start by drawing characters from shows they enjoy, you can do that, too. Have a reference close by so you're constantly eyeing it and put it to paper.

Draw for fun first. If you still have some energy afterwards, do some exercises to better your line consistency, straight lines, perspective, etc. It's important to have drawing as an activity that makes you feel good first before you start "taking it seriously", training before doing the fun part.

I just wanna say that your comment (and the few others here) got me to whip out my mini paints for the first time in a while and paint a MTG card. I'm stoked with how it came out, even though it's not "good" and I think I might invest in a few colors/a pallet (using cardboard now)

Just do it every day, and i a couple of months you'll get an itch if you are not doing it :-)

Great for listening in on boring meetings too if you have to.

I appreciate it! I actually painted a little today, while I probably should've been working. It was delightful

Hypnosis. Pretty much 100% of what the average person thinks about how hypnosis works is wrong: there's no mysticism, no magnetism, no magic, no Freud, no "clash of willpower", no "permanent side effects", no "mind control", no risk of "never coming back".

You simply have to put a convincing act that you, the hypnotist, have "the power", and nearly everything you say will work. You play with people's expectations. There's no "recipe" for a surefire way to hypnotize someone, because it doesn't "work" with everyone and even on the people it works, it's not the same experience.

Ironically, I have difficulty being hypnotized myself, which sucks. Or maybe I have too high expectations of how I should feel while being hypnotized.

To get good at being hypnotized practice guided meditation. It’s the same thing, but guided meditation is often easier as it tends to exclusively be aiming at getting you into trance and taking you out.

Fantastic trick for getting young kids to sleep - at least, until they get freaked out that someone has the power to induce sleep and fight the technique. Which, in hindsight, fair I guess.

Tried passing on the trick from a self-hypnosis perspective after that point but it just didn't take. Interesting stuff though - makes me wonder if I should look into hypnosis from a hobbyist perspective again.

Edit: Of course, there was also the time I did it with my then girlfriend to induce an a super vivid but otherwise undefined imaginary scene, and butted right against some repressed trauma I was not equipped to handle, aside from lots of hugs and "You're ok"s. Soooo... this is what I get for hypnotizing people armed only with the experience of being hypnotized once, a self-hypnosis book I played around with as a teen, and a pretty detailed scene from an underground fiction novel, I suppose.

Magic The Gathering. At first I liked the Artworks and then I liked the Game. Expsensive tho.

I dunno man, used to be pretty good back in the early days.

I tried to get back into it now, and it's a HELL of a lot more complicated wit commanders and about 20 new card attributes with terrible descriptors.

Old magic was simple, anyone could pick it up in 20 mins. Modern magic is the product of decades of powercreep and Hasbro's greed.

Combat Sports.

I got bored of the gym, so I decided to take BJJ. Grappling is really fucking hard, as in you have no clue what you're doing, and no idea how to stop someone from fucking you up on the ground. It's one of those sports that you can spend six months doing and barely get a feel of wtf is going on.

Two years later, I was somewhat capable, and got my blue belt. I then noticed that I was actually pretty good compared to the white belts. Things started to make sense, and while I got absolutely fucked up by everyone else, the positions made sense. I'm now a purple belt, and the other day I did an iminari roll and a rolling guillotine on a white belt during a spar, just because I could.

In the middle of this, I started doing MMA. Striking is also hard, especially when you mix with wrestling/grappling. I came in as the guy that was fucking useless with striking, but when we took 45 mins to do some grappling the coach was wondering why the new thirty-something idiot was tapping everyone. Eventually we found my level, and he gave me some solid pointers on how to work on my striking to bring it up to level with my grappling.

All in all, combat sports seem pretty scary, but getting into it is just a matter of turning up and giving it a try. You'll feel like a useless idiot for months, but before you know it people will be asking you wtf you just did to them...right after you had had the same conversation with the person that's better than you.

Weaving. I though I'd have to get a huge-ass loom and all that, until I found a guide for making a small cardboard thingy with notches for the warp threads to get started, and later got one of those small kids' looms.

“Easy” being relative… 3d printing. Especially with modern printers. Leather working is easier than i thought although i won’t say I’m awesome at it. Probably the easiest thing i’ve learned is homebrewing. 90% is cleaning. Outside of that if you can boil water you can brew. Extract kits make it super easy. From there you can go all grain or stick ti extracts. Or if you want super easy, go mead. Honey, water, yeast. That’s it.

Yeah, homebrew from extract is pretty simple. I compare it to making a big pot of tea. I haven't graduated to full grain, lack the space and time, but there are plenty of styles you can do with extract without much issue.