What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?
Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn't look like random static) by running pictures I've taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to "trick" the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn't get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.
On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people's eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture
Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can
Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn't look too bad
This one looks amazing
Thanks!
This belongs on the better call Saul intro
Ok now that's really cool
I do a lot of photography and I've been trying to find something that I could do with some of my more experimental shots that makes them more... more‡. If that makes sense?
You wouldn't happen to have more details on how to do it would you?
Edit: ‡ My more experimental shots are more done as like experimenting with how a shot is taken for like evoking a specific feeling or doing something strange in camera or really any number of reasons. Hell some of my experimental shots were accidentally taken pictures that are disorienting or confusing. I don't share them often, because IDK it just seems like really personal sometimes. Those experimental shots feel less like photography and more like painting with photos.
Absolutely!
I have a bookmark saved on my computer at home to an old forum with the instructions I followed when I started doing this, and I can send that link later.
There are two programs that I use, and both are free.
GIMP - image editing software
Audacity - audio editing software
Here is the basic process from that bookmarked forum post that I can remember off the top of my head. If something is wrong (especially the Audacity import settings, since I don't ever change them), I will fix it later.
In GIMP (or other software of your choice) convert the image to a bitmap (.bmp). This step is very important!
Use the option to import raw data as A-law with "little endian" (I have no idea what those setting do, but I assume it's for keeping the header intact)
Change the timeline in Audacity from time to samples and select everything after the 34th sample to edit and add effects (samples 1-34 are the information that tells your computer that this is a picture CHANGING ANYTHING IN THE HEADER WILL STOP YOU FROM OPENING THE IMAGE AFTER THE EDIT)
Export the audio using the raw data option, selecting A-law again. This should re-save the "audio" as a bitmap image as it will not add an audio file header to the data.
I believe the blue parking garage image uses reverb, or maybe a phasor... possible both to get that effect? But there are a lot of setting to mess with for each audio effect that can dramatically change the outcome. The trees picture was made by putting the original picture in the left audio channel, and putting a horizontally flipped copy of the image in the right audio channel. Delete the header from the flipped copy, and exporting the data smashes them together in this really strange mirror effect. Afterward, I would use GIMP for any color correcting, changing saturation/hue, simple stuff
Edit: spelling and formatting
Thank you so much, I'm going to have to give this a try when I get home from work
Here's the link to the forum post!
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/tutorial-editing-images-with-audacity.81959/
That's a name I haven't seen in a long time
Thank you so much, I'm so looking forward to giving this a shot (too much OT this week so far)
I've done experimental image editing (not like yours) and I appreciate the process.
I just wanna know how people even came up with data moshing. It blows my mind that there's a thought process that incorporates these steps, and ends with awesome (sometimes) results!
That's pretty cool and definitely falls under the category of a hobby that you do because you can, although I'm sure there are people in the world who would pay for art like that (not suggesting that you do).
I have had the thought about trying to make money off of this, and some friends have joked that I should be making album art or something like that.
However, I don't want to feel like I have to meet a deadline or feel the pressure of making something that someone else wants/likes. I just want to make something I like
Looks pretty good, like some Rorschach test. War sit a picture of trees?
It was! Taken during the winter so there were no leaves, and at night too
Do you have the original?
How much tinkering do they require to make the final product look like you want?
Most of the time I don't have a plan of what I want out of something. Sometimes I can get something that looks interesting or cool right away, other times I have hundreds of files trashed over a couple of days and there's not a single one that I personally liked
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I've just learned that my firearms lock...yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same "internet hacker" stigma so I avoid talking about it.
I miss lockpicking, it's so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
If you're familiar with the Lock Picking Lawyer, he has his own store and has some good kits.
https://covertinstruments.com/collections/lockpicks/products/learn-lockpicking-bundle
I'm not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it's designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
Covert Instruments sells a kit with a pick, rake, turning tool, and a practice lock for about $10
Covert Instruments FNG
I bought the Covert Instruments FNG (* new guy) set for $10. The Genesis set is $28 and is more full featured.
I've had this small 5 piece set in my backpack since before instructions for anything could be easily found on the internet. It had to have been $10 or less.
I got into it a bit during COVID and practiced a bit on a practice lock that I could repin myself. After being able to regularly open it without too much trouble, I decided to try my front door lock - thinking it would be a much harder challenge since it was a real lock.
Nope. Shit popped open almost instantly. It blew my mind! After watching Lock Picking Lawyer, I figured that a skilled attacker could get into most locks eventually, but I didn't realize that most house locks require virtually no skill to open. And it's literally easier (and significantly less attention grabbing) than breaking a window!
Sorry police officer, but the door was open ajar so hrem I just wanted to check if everything was alright you see?
Had a guy just being mind blown for the whole evening lock picking my way into my apartment, and then open some lock he had on his luggage (all very basic).
Saw him a year later when I had forgot about it and he still was startled about the evening 😁😅
Lol that just reminded me of something only vaguely related. Back in the day I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft with a friend. One day in the middle of a gaming session, he went "HOLY SHIT! There's a naked guy sleeping on my couch!"
A couple things to note:
My friend woke naked guy up, who was very drunk and confused. Apparently my friend kept his apartment door unlocked and naked guy stumbled in at some point, thinking it was his apartment, stripped down, and then passed out on the couch. Still don't know how long he was there for, but probably several hours before my friend noticed
So yeah, lock your doors people. They might not keep out a thief, but at least you won't have a random naked dude pass out on your furniture.
This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
I love lockpicking! It's got a really nice tactile click when the lock opens. Too bad there's not a lot of locks to practice on (legally, anyways)
And yeah, I agree - locks are really more of a psychological hindrance rather than an actual hindrance. Although, for what it's worth, I don't know of that many people who can lockpick, so in that sense, a lock at least decreases the number of people who can get through
I'm a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.
Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.
I think it's fun, it's not something I can really chat with others about.
You're amazing and your students are lucky to have you. Thank you for being you!
If someone I knew made entire freaking games and didn't tell me about it I'd be pissed! That's really cool and you should wear it on your sleeve, imo.
How the hell is this not the only thing you talk to others about‽ This is fucking cool!
You are awesome. Thanks for being a good teacher and making math as interesting as it is for your students. And your hobby is fucking cool too.
I am a programmer (as in it's my job) and I can't really program anything in Godot. I've done the dodge the creeps tutorial and did some more tries, but I don't really get game dev. It's definitely a unique skill.
That's amazing! I am really impressed.
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that's it. (poor fish)
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I'm not even sure I owned a horse in the game.
Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don't have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don't even talk!
No idea why I am like this
I do the same! And you know, I think this is a hobby by itself. It's also very useful when talking with strangers if they tell you they practice one of the hobbies you've binged on. You can ask them more pointed, interesting questions and it makes for great conversations!
Ever been screened for ADHD by any chance? I do this same thing. I call myself a serial hobbyist because I just bounce from one thing to the next. I'm always glad when I lose interest before I spend any money.
Nah, I did well in school and it's almost impossible to get that diagnosis as a adult around here. I do find the adhd memes relatable tho lol.
Same situation here. Never got diagnosed as a kid because I did well in school. Then going through the process for my own kid, it all clicked.
I also keep acquiring hobbies and also have ADHD but spend way too much on it all.
I do this too! I love watching like videos where people make jewelry or phone cases using resin. It requires a ventilated area though and I live in an apartment with no patio so I couldn't do it even if I wanted to.
I also watch nail polish videos cause nail painting is an amazing artform that is really difficult to do because its painting with material that hardens when exposed to oxygen or UV lighting. It also takes a ton of skill to get really good at it and people use all kinds interesting methods to get different results or looks. But yeah, I don't have the patience to learn that beyond just painting my own nails and maybe some decals but that's all I could handle.
I know it doesn't have to be, but that sounds like what world builders or authors do, dive very deep into a topic for research.
Well I guess you are acquiring knowledge, and that too is a hobby :-)
Found it hard to parse, and my mind immediately went with “Yeah, of course people have written fanfics about book binding,” foolishly extending rule 34 to cover it. Of course, there might have been that one fanfic about bookbinding.
But yeah, of course people have printed and bookbinded (bookbound[ed]?) fanfics. But for that to have a community? That's unexpected.
Model trains. I don't bring it up because it's obscure, but I've definitely found there's a stigma. "Oh he's the guy who plays with trains". Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it's not the first thing I bring up either
Let’s see those train pics, my dude! Let that conductor-freak flag fly here.
Not quite ready unfortunately, still in the "lots of pink fiberboard and paper mache" phase, but oh I will when we're done. We're probably too small for a model trains community, but I'll probably be hanging out in !trains@lemmy.ml
Sounds silly but there's definitely an audience for steps of the process as well as the final product
So when you're ready to share the final results I know (at least me) some people who would love to see progress shots too
Train gang needs no justification
As a grown man who still likes Pokemon, I understand. I’m sure lots of people assume you’re in a state of arrested development.
Ha, and judging by the avatar you play video games with trains too! I adore Satisfactory
Most hours in a game by far, I think I'm closing in on 2 thousand. I'm slowly trying to kickstart !satisfactorygame@lemmy.ml again, come and join us!
My dad has been into model trains since before I was born. We built a train layout in the early 2000s when I was in middle school or so. Working on that project helped get me into electronics as we made PCBs for signals and control circuits. Now, 20 some years later, I work in software engineering. My dad wanted to get back into working on the layout and I'm helping him with Arduino programming and Raspberry Pi stuff. He built a stepper motor controller for the turntable and then we built some turnout and light control boards that interface with DCC. We set up JMRI on a Raspberry Pi to drive trains from phones and automate stuff. I also got him into 3D printing and he's printed a ton of new scenery for the layout after buying his own Ender 3 after using mine quite a bit. We've learned various CAD/modeling programs to make 3D prints.
I also finally got to do something I always wanted to do as a kid, which is to drive the trains from a first-person view. We have gone through a bunch of different variations of putting a Raspberry Pi Zero and camera module on an HO scale railcar. We did some different designs. Our latest design uses an SG-90 micro servo to control the camera angle so you can look left and right. I also 3D printed an enclosure for a regulator, battery charger, and battery that takes track power and powers the Pi.
It's pretty fun to be able to sit on the couch with a phone, watching the view on the TV, and drive the train from the other room including operating turnouts. Haven't yet tried to drive the trains over the Internet yet but I want to, since I live a state away from my parents where the layout is.
Edit: Here's a video of the camera car in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls-Rg1TlDOA
For me it's coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like "that's not a hobby".
You're being too broad. Gotta specify what you're doing with coffee at that point, and a slight expansion.
Basically, when bringing it up make it sound more interesting and mysterious, with the potential of a follow-up story.
For instance, people often ask me what brought me to Los Angeles. I tell them, "it's lady Gaga's fault". Hooks 'em every time.
It's absolutely a hobby and a huge money pit.
^Askmehowiknow
Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I'm going to fix it today because something doesn't work the way it should.
Also, I learn Japanese. 日本語が大好き！
Messing around with my server is so much fun! I'm always on the lookout for something new to self-host.
Learning Greek is (very casually) one of my hobbies I wanted to try, because it has a different alphabet.
I've spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.
You'll be that guy that records old shows on VHS and when he died the only record of old shows was donated to an archive/museum. A priceless contribution to humanity.
If you don't mind, archive.org has a place where you can upload them.
you should upload them to archive.org!
Do you have these online somewhere?
Starting and abandoning hobbies.
OK but you didn't have to call me out like that in front of everyone.
I used to hate this about myself until I briefly took up photography.
"I have to take 100 pictures to find 1 i like!" I lamented. "Just like my hobbies!"
Then it clicked. Im not abandoning all my hobbies. Im auditioning them for the role.
Me too! Let's start a club!
Don't worry you don't have to show up to the meetings. I won't.
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain "It's Wikipedia, but a map" or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren't worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
I also started this recently, it's quite a relaxing way to contribute to a very useful project, often in a way that is unique to your local area meaning that your contribution has quite some value despite it's small size.
Edit: That's what he said
In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested "ah" IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as "watching YT without ads", people often don't care.
There was a time that I thought people didn't understand the consequences. Now I realize that most people are just entirely apathetic.
Programming... Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn't make for good conversation
At the date...
See I think this would be awesome. Finally an interesting conversation
Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They're basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today's android games and there's a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.
The god of war phone game was a pretty solid metroidvania. I really liked the elder scrolls one too.
What are you emulating them on?
An emulator called j2me loader on android. The best website to download such games is dedomil.net (recommended), mobiles24.co and phoneky.com.
Use the 240x320 resolution and the sony erricsson k800i (recommended), the Nokia N9X, the Nokia 6xxx varients for the best graphics, quality and emulation stability on j2me loader.
For touchscreens use the 360x640 resolution.
I have a hobby that I can't even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.
However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as "Japanese Street Fashion" and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.
They're just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.
I'm not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it's a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don't fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.
I'm currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.
I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.
Hi fellow lolita! It's such a pain trying to discuss the fashion with people who aren't already into Japanese fashion. I feel weird every time I try to mention it because of the book. Also it's so much deeper than people on the outside think! There's tons of nuance in the brands and sub-styles and it all sounds so pedantic to outsiders. Have you been watching Tyler's new videos?
I've never let it stop me, but:
ethical philosophy
social dance, especially contra and square
chromosomal / genetic inheritance simulations
Very cool, just be careful not to become that "I am very smart" type guy who just wants to impress their friends. It's a fine line to walk, nobody likes that guy, but everyone likes the guy who actually genuinely likes their hobbies
Oh believe me, the more you get to know me the less impressive I am.
That depends on your dance skills
I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it's hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.
Vi ne estas sola, mi lernis iom da esperanto, sed estas malfacile lerni, cxar gxi sentas sin… senutila?
That's interesting! A few friends of mine and I tried to get a hold of it during the last school year. But we were greatly annoyed that there was no good free/open source resource in our language. Everything that could be good material was basically "Pay for the course" or just buy the book for 50€. That demotivated us quite a bit. I get why you would like to make a buck for your work and yes learning languages in groups is more fun but besides badly formatted vocab sheets there was no resource that was a proper introduction to the language.
That's not an issue anymore. There is an Duolingo course, tons of Anki vocabulary decks, the app Drops supports Esperanto and the website lernu.net has a pretty good free course to learn Esperanto grammar.
Knitting - if you find the right audience, you can chat for hours, but it can also lead to blank looks or lots of assumption.
I'm into macro photography: Just taking pictures of tiny stuff.
Not micro-photography?
Nope, they're called macro.
I find pointless bugs in video games. I can spend hours trying to platform in a single spot the game doesn’t expect, like jumping from a fence to a windowsill to lamp post to a canopy to a roof.
I used to be a speedrunner and still have some of that blood in me, but I refuse to skip content in casual playthroughs. So the crazy part is if I find a way to skip an entire level, cool, time to go back and do it normally.
I loved to do that in Everquest.
Started on my mage who could summon a ring that instantly cast levitate on you.
So we had games getting up to, and jumping off of, really tall structures and playing chicken with the ground lol.
On my bard, the combination of raw movement speed and a Lev meant getting into places not designed for players, though I will say they did a good job of making sure you didn't die out of bounds, back when you had to recover your gear from your corpse.
I only had to petition a GM once to get me unstuck, lol.
They just teleported me to the current expansion at the time "hub city."
Never got into speed running though, and I don't think my attention span would allow for it. Respect and all, its impressive what some people can do, just not my thing.
Retro tech. It's not too obscure, especially nowadays. I could talk long hours about how mind fucking blowing was the Amiga and then still how it went down on the drain... tho I just see on the other people that this isn't really the topic that will kickstart (heheh) the party.
I need to find more friends...
Retro computing love is lonely irl but thriving online. So yeah definitely a topic we don't really bring unless you want to get a slice "back in my day" geezer action. Which honestly I'm leaning into these days.
I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.
The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.
The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.
You do realize this reads like the prolog for a serial killer novel. Innocent couple with a slightly odd hobby attracts the attention of a league of serial killers?
Video games. Even with how popular they are, it's not something easily brought up in a casual conversation. I hardly ever run into people my age who even play games. :/
I'm starting a new job tmrw and I said to my wife earlier that I really hope someone there plays video games like me so I can finally talk to someone about them in rl lmao
I've worked with call of duty/NBA2k normies for the past 3 years and I'd like to talk to someone about Baldurs Gate or some shit
Man I'm even farther into the weeds than that. I play shit like Satisfactory and Factorio. Subnautica is as "normie" as I get. Even among my friends, many of whom are avid gamers, I'm just alone. There are big communities around these games. Lots of people play Factorio. Never met one in person.
You haven’t met them in person because they are at home busy.. playing factorio.
The question is what are you doing outside?
This comment makes me incredibly curious about what age you are.
I'm a 34 year old game developer. I always get an "oh, that must be fun" then they move on. Like I'm a kid making toys instead of an adult making art for a living. It's like I said I was a YouTuber.
Absolutely. I play a huge variety of games and genres, I adore it as an art form, and love delving into the development and theory of it all.
"Hi, I like video games"
"OH LIKE COD AND FIFA ON XBOX?"
"No..."
"Oh..."
"Nice weather... "
I genuinely like to engage with video games as an art form and I think some of them are among the actual best works of art there is.
It lands like absolutely nowhere. EIther people see you as a capital G gamer, but even the capital G gamers hate you because they want to enjoy product, not art
What games you like? I do like indie artsy games but my favorites are games with it's medium in mind. Things like Undertale or oneshot, Or games that blend their motif wi incredibly well like the binding of Isaac.Or just extremely good ga like ultrakill and Skullgirls.
It's a sort of you know it when you see it (play it) thing. Something along the lines of becoming more than the sum of their parts and also using the interactivity that the medium provides.
When I played TLOU I enjoyed it but I kept thinking "this might as well be a TV show and lose nothing for it". It's a well made story, presented with technical prowess in an interesting setting, then it's also a sort of well made stealth cover shooter but it just doesn't come together. That's not to denigrate the individual efforts and art made there, I'm not saying it's shit, but there's just so much potential left on the table there. If you can 1:1 translate your game into a TV Show, like TLOU, why was it ever a video game to begin with, if you come at it from an art standpoint.
I don't know if you played Gothic or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., those are quite similar in how it's a great setting, well made (well, bar eurojank), the story is serviceable at best and for stalker especially veers off into nonsense at the end but crucially neither games would work as a book, or a film, or a visual novel. You could use the setting, sure, the art design and lore and stuff is solid enough to carry lots of interesting stories and have been used as such but it'd lose such a tremendous amount of what makes it great that it just doesn't work. The first episode of Gothic (TV Show) is a man who walks into a city after pullign some beets and buying his way in. Or possibly sneaking in. Or maybe he murders someone and steals the uniform. Sure, that can be well made, but the point of Gothic is that you have all these options, go nuts. Fuck, transform into a raptor and cause mayhem then revert to human in the confusion, game will let you, but that's the sort of thing that can't be translated to other mediums well.
I'm currently playing through Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, that certainly goes more the indie artsy route, and I love it because again, doesn't work in another medium. What makes it great is that it hits the line between the trash collection being tedious and frustrating, but still engaging enough, that it conveys the feeling the little sanidrone would have through interactivity. It sucks, but it is your only hope. And then the rest of it is also just very well made.
I really enjoy getting the most out of a computer/mobile device that I have. I love trying out different OSes, messing with a video game to squeeze as much as performance possible etc.
I feel like this is a lost art that was huge in the late 90's. Everyone wanted to see how many fps they could get out of their toaster. Now, it's not just the users but even the developers don't care about optimization anymore.
Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics... Nothing is outside of my interest.
On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.
Could you elaborate a bit? Or post some pictures of mods you made?
I really got into steve1989s mre videos. So I collect vintage military rations.
...1989..."vintage"...[cries in GenX]
Some of the rations he reviews are as old as from during the Civil War. I think 1989 has to do with the channel creator's birth.
Looking for that "nice hiss"...
I install and set up operating systems. It's something I do to my own computer regularly, but I'll cheerfully do for someone else because it's fun.
Linux is my favorite, but I can do Windows, Free/Open/Dragonfly BSD, Haiku, and given time to research others as well. I keep meaning to give NetBSD a shot...
It gives me a focused task with a specific end goal that requires some technical knowledge, but mostly preparation, research, and troubleshooting skills. The activity can sometimes lift me out of a depressive episode for a while.
Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Usually gets an, "oh" and a sideways look
I actually came here to say it USED to be D&D, but now it seems like every time I bring it up it's followed by a full conversation about either them playing as well, them wanting to play, or questions they've always had about the game. It's a stark difference from what it was just 5 or so years ago.
It's also hilarious every now and then you'll get somebody that drank the whole pitcher of 70s anti-D&D koolaide and thinks it's for devil worshiping or some shit like that...while their favorite movies are Lord of the Rings like that isn't the same subject matter through a different medium.
Oh, that's safe. Try being into a more obscure ttrpgs like Mage The Ascension or worse, niche Powered by the Apocalypse games like Legacy.
I can't even talk about them to people already into ttrpgs.
I used to make porn gifs.
I make corn gifs which have a really niche audience.
I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.
I'm old enough to remember when shorthand was a required course for women in secretarial schools. I always though it was black magic and very cool.
Wow. How old are you?
In my 60's. According to Internet sources, shorthand was taught in schools until the 1990's. It's likely that shorthand use declined as PCs became common in offices.
I think it was still taught to business students up until the mid-90's in my country. That's also how I got my hands on an old Gregg shorthand textbook. That, and typing (via a typewriter) which was the one I learned when I was in high school.
Had I had a choice, I would have chosen to learn shorthand instead.
My mom grew up in the 80s and I remember her telling me I needed to learn it too in the 90's so I could be a waitress someday if needed.
I took a typing class instead! Worked great for me lol
I still dabble with orthic shorthand - it's kind of like seeing language from a different perspective.
I only know about it because of my fountain pen hobby; back in the mid 20th C, Esterbrook made fountain pens with replaceable nibs and offered a wide variety including a Gregg shorthand nib. I guess the Gregg shorthand people licensed the name for marketing. It was basically a normal non, but branded.
Is that how Gregg's remember which are steak bakes, and which are chicken bakes?
Hey! Someone left an old Gregg Shorthand textbook (anniversary edition, if I remember it correctly) in our house back when I was a child, and I tried learning it. Still kinda interested in it up until now.
Tried learning it again back during the lockdown days, but it went nowhere unfortunately.
I train in swordfighting. It's good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.
The funniest part is it's actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body
You mean the weird deviation of a swordfight called fencing, or real, actual swordfighting?
Because the latter is really, really cool and I would talk to you about that over a beer any time.
Actual swordfighting lol I train specifically in German longsword techniques and I agree that fencing is nowhere near actual swordsmanship
I make music, but it's not really music anyone would want to put on at a party, so I don't tell anyone about it. There's nothing more awkward than standing there trying to explain to someone that what they're listening to is a chord progression played with each note slightly out of phase such that rather than distinct chord changes, you just get an overall impression of it as time progresses while they screw up their face in confusion and disgust. Not that everything I make is a conceptual experiment, but that's inevitably what someone will put on if they discover my music.
Damn bro are you me?? Haha but seriously, BoC is probably my biggest influence ever and I hear quite a bit of their influence in your stuff. I hardly ever tell anyone about my music because I feel that most people just won't "get" it.
I have a perfectly accurate 1:1 scale lightsaber replica of Luke Skywalker. It turns on, it’s really bright, it reacts accordingly to how I swing it, can deflect blasters and makes tons of cool sounds…
I don’t bring it up in conversation, but when people find out they get really excited (well, boys mostly)
what do you mean it can deflect blasters? When does that come up for you??
What, you don't defend the universe from the sith about once every 2 years in VHS or DVD?
Geocaching used to be really big but now is pretty low key and niche.
A lot of people I talk to have no clue what it is, and the rest know what it is but have some wildly wrong preconceived notions about it. Stuff like "It's only for hikers" (no it isn't) or how the geocaches are only in the woods. I had a friend who literally did not trust me to go geocaching with her because apparently she thought somebody would be waiting at the location of the geocache to murder us. I had to sit her down and show her that a large majority of geocaches are located in bustling cities and on the sides of major roads.
Sucks that a lot of people also just did not understand it. I once told a friend that there's no monetary reward and they looked at me slackjawed. Like yes you just go find things and then when you find it you have the satisfaction of having found it and shared your find with your friends online. You don't make money doing it lol.
I used to work with the "king" of geocaching in our area. If a new cache went up, he was always the first to get it. I figured out it was him from comments he had made online, not from talking to him. I often thought about ways I could mess with him, like making a new cache and waiting for him.
I don't have such a strange hobby, more that the subject for that hobby is strange. There's nothing weird about fixing up a 35 year old sports car or truck or something.
But I've been working on what I thought was a well-known model of 4x4, but now that it's running it draws a crowd of onlookers when I take it somewhere, and many people, even adults, don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is and have never seen one before.
I think you have to be part of the greater car community, at least, to know much about one, but probably a smaller niche of people looking for practical vehicles that are fun to know about the samurai.
I love the first gen RX7, and while far more well known (the FD anyhow), than the samurai, there is a LOT of confusion and misinformation out there about my car and the rotary engine in general. I feel your pain.
They're fun and pocket sized, almost edc. My neighbour had one and we used to make fun trips with it. Love it
Weather watching (not the extreme kind) - I basically note down the current weather and interpret my own forecast then later see if I'm right.
Lockpicking - it's basically a tiny little puzzle and I can buy different solutions for a few bucks at any store.
Gardening - this is less obscure/quirky and more that I don't want people to think that I'm bragging about how many tomatoes I have because I will in fact brag about how many tomatoes I have.
How correct are you usually with your forecasts?
Are your forecasts just based on life experience or some weather research or some kind?
Also talking about your garden in any positive way just automatically sounds like bragging. For example my beans are monsters and are growing so tall and tying to take over the whole garden. I didn't really do much, they just are.
Not that having a lot of tomatoes is a bad thing but it seems every beginner gardener's first mistake is planting too many tomato plants
No no, you misunderstand. The plants have so many tomatoes that the cages are bending. There are so many tomatoes.
I read tarot cards and I'm considering doing it professionally so I can rip off the gullible petty bourgeoisie.
Yes, Sarah. All the planets in our solar system has aligned just to give you a promotion. Now give me 20 bucks.
They seem like fun story prompts honestly. Could be a blast just doing it for fun with friends.
I read cards as well. It's a lot of fun to be able to do at a gathering, and I like collecting decks because for like $20 I get an artist's variation on 78 different themes.
I also follow a guy on youtube, dude was a student at Harvard Medical School, now he's a psychologist and teaches there. He likes tarot and other divination systems too. He says that the process of trying to wrap your reality around what the cards say can force you into new perspectives, and that even the act of asking the question forces you to focus on something that you're uncertain about, which can help you identify issues in your life that are holding you back.
Now give me
2080 bucks.Also tell them they can improve their fortune by buying your homemade candles for $150 each.
I've been playing Second Life for almost half of my life. I used to run a blog about it and often spend a few hours every day online chatting with people. Mentioning that I know anything about it inevitably triggers people to either ask "wait that still exists?" or "isn't that a sex game?"
I have to admit, I am surprised that still exists, and also a little surprised it's not considered at least a little bit of a sex game (I mean, every MMO has ERPers, but in my head, I pictured Second Life as a bit more common for that kinda thing).
Masturbating to hentai bondage.
Nude hiking. I mean I wouldn't care if someone I knew saw me, but I wouldn't be talking about it in most conversations.
Fountain pens. Honestly, most people look at me more weirdly when I mention a nib's feedback than when I mention the means of production.
Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them
Yeah we believe you. But where do you store them?
Shelves in my bedroom, not hidden if that's what you mean
I love fixing up classic iPods, and as much as I enjoy it, any mention of it comes with "but why?", then the person asking refuses to understand why I still like using iPods even in this time of streaming music.
I hate depending on an Internet connection and listening to ads (even as a paid customer), so local media is the only solution for me. And it's getting so hard to find phones with SD cards that I might have to start carrying around an MP3 player too.
I have a couple iPod classics, one has a dead battery but the other runs just fine. What all are the options for keeping these alive?
Stand-up comedy. I love doing it and I'm a HUGE nerd about it.
It's not that I wanna hide myself, I'm just tired of all the "tell me a joke" or "let me tell you a joke" conversation that follows. If you wanna hear my jokes come see me on Friday and I've probably already heard your joke many many times and told 10 times better than you do.
I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.
Same! If you wanna talk about niche, I make games that are blind accessible. I'm quirky and obscure even for a hobbyist game dev.
I dabbled in a bit of neography (creating your own writing system) and a hint of conlanging (creating your own language). I think I've managed to create a fairly decent writing system for myself, but the conlang went nowhere fast as I underestimated the effort required to even get started with it. I also attempted making fantasy maps, but it was all in paper and quite a while ago.
That's it, I suppose: neography, conlanging, and fantasy mapping.
I also spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at maps and making virtual road trips via Google street view, but that's way more mainstream.
3d printing
In general most people have a total misunderstanding about the whole process and it's boring explaining the basics
Is that so? I have a coworker who's into 3D printing and he basically created a whole keynote explaining the process and it got me planning to draft a proposal for my SO so I can get a printer.
Guns. People assume I'm a Republican
Naw, left leaning gun owners exist..there are literally dozens of us!
We definitely exist, but to the average American, a lefty gun owner is a unicorn.
You're really not.
Join a John Brown Gun Club near you!
I'm a member of the SRA. I'm not saying lefty gun owners don't exist. I'm just saying a lot of people don't see them.
Fountain pens! And inks.
And quality paper.
playing in a symphonic orchestra. sure, it sounds cool, but most people don't know much about the topic and feel intimidated by it, so the conversation is just me attempting to convince them that it's not just for rich nerds and you can be casual about classical music.
I like collecting old 2000s handhelds. PDAs and the likes! Even daily driving a real beauty, a Sony Clié PEG-UX50 (catchy name as always, Sony!)
Model Railroading. I went several decades without a layout. Then for whatever reason, I just recently started building an N scale railroad. I'm having fun remembering oops skills and learning new techniques.
This is totally fascinating reading all the replies.
I love making bleeps and bloops using VCV rack and Mirack on iOS. The flexibility of modular synths in the digital realm is so much fun! And no one can do 5 minutes of conversation about it. Admittedly it’s pretty dense.
I absolutely love working on photocopiers, even though it's my job.
My friends say I'm a hoot in the discord!
Those things amaze me. The way they manage to route just one sheet of paper through such an intricate and precise maze, I consider it next to miraculous that they don't jam on every second operation.
I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.
For a second I thought you were implying that you embedded programming into the rest of that list and I was trying hard to think of what you'd program into a fountain pen
Pretty much all of them at this point, I'm in the construction industry. Video games, reading, computer repair, anime, dungeons and dragons, miniature painting, watch making, chess... There are a few brave exceptions, but most people give me that glazed over look when I bring it up.
I just posted a similar response but I think the issue, at least for me, is how deep into the weeds I get with each subject. Anyone can be into coffee for example, but it's the ones who do the research and watch the videos about the subject in their free time, that make a simple thing such as coffee become more of an obscure thing. 🤷♂️
Technology, open source software, operating systems, retro technology, furries
Could have just said you were a furry :P
I play Mahjong. If I try talking to most Americans about it, they'll think I'm talking about Shanghai, or Mahjong Solitaire.
I actually play 3 forms of it:
Riichi: Standard Japanese rules. This is what you typically see in anime and mahjong games from Japan.
CSM: Competition rules for Chinese Mahjong. This what you'll typically see played in tournaments outside of Japan
American Mah-jongg: A ruleset with a lot of unique features. An AMJ set contains jokers that can act as any tile in the set. The game is played without being able to call "chow"(taking a sequence of 3 pieces), You "Charleston" for the pieces you need before the round begins (pass pieces to the right, left, and across from you), and the standard hands you can make change on a yearly basis. This is the version you often see played by the American Jewish community.
I love playing all three, but it's hard to play them in person, because you need to find at least 4 people who can play by the same rule set.
Riichi is easy enough in Japan, but it's seen as kinda a sketchy game here, and most places you can play it are at expensive and seedy mahjong parlors. Luckily there are a flood of video games based around it that make it more accessible.
Chinese Mahjong is very regional, and each area can have its own variation on the rules, scoring, accepted hands etc. When playing with Chinese friends, I just kinda roll with whatever variation they're playing.
For American Mah-jongg, because the standard hands change year to year, you have to buy a new card from the National Mah Jongg League yearly in order to keep up with it, so it's the only mahjong game with a subscription cost built in. Also as mentioned, the game is very community specific, but also the majority of players are often senior aged women, usually making me the youngest at the table by far.
I love playing all three, but it's hard enough finding someone else who also likes Mahjong, let alone find someone who doesn't confuse it for the solitaire game. I'm not saying Mahjong solitaire ruined my life, but if I could Thanos snap a game out of existence...
I need to find an offline hobby, something that doesn't involve a screen
Fiber arts! They're for everyone, not just grandmas. Knitting, crochet, weaving, embroidery, sewing. The act of creating art lowers stress, and it really helps manage anxiety and depression. A lot of them also a mathematical or engineering approach, so if you find those things rewarding, you'll probably enjoy fiber arts. And you get something warm or useful in the end..
I've got a shit ton of hobbies thanks to my ADHD, but I think my most obscure one is Reef-keeping. Also the most expensive.......
I can relate to too many hobbies. I wished I could find more ADHD people with too many hobbies to talk about weird hobbies with lol
Jacking off. I'm really good at it and have a lot to share, but every time I've tried the police get called.
I play bagpipes semi-professionally. The overwhelming majority of people do not like bagpipe music, and even if they do, they don't want to hear much about my bagpiping antics. One good thing is that I will never struggle to answer the dreaded "what's one interesting fact about yourself" icebreaker.
Bagpipes are sweet and I could listen to some bagpipe antics for sure. What's the best one you would share if you could find someone to care about it?
Also, does semi pro mean you play for money? Last year I learned from a former co-worker that you can actually play marching band instruments for money. I thought the only musician folks making $ were in a band doing gigs, or in an orchestra style gig.
I collect lewd anime figures. They sadly have tonspend their existense in a closet.
It's probably for the best
I like making things. I'm mainly into making costume props and decorations. Basically I'm into making interesting things exactly once, learning a bunch of lessons on what to not do, but never do it again. I'm not a skilled wood worker or metal worker. But! I bound a book myself, coffee stained it, and made the cover out of sewn together leather scraps. It's a Necronomicon. I made a lightsaber almost entirely out of junk from ReStore (mostly plumbing parts). I made an EL wire tree with a dried tree branch about 6ft tall, a spool of decent gauge metal wire, and 50 10ft EL strands. Sanded and painted toy guns. Made a James Webb looking wall decoration out of black foam board, gold hexagons, and an NFC tag. Semi related, I modified an IKEA table to be a vaulted board game table where the tops mount on the wall via French cleat and it has cup holders to keep drinks out and away from spilling on the inside of the table. I have 3D printed some minor costume bits. Made a bunch of wizards wands out of paint, hot glue, and chopsticks. Made a float lamp (tie a bunch of annoying knots around a sphere). Currently trying to modify toy Poke Balls to have a functioning LED button but I really hate soldering.
I'm a programmer by trade so I also tinker with Home Assistant far too much. I have a jellyfish lamp with an RGB bulb that tells me the weather when I wake up. Just made an LCARS (Star Trek UI) dashboard for decoration.
i used to be really really into fingerboarding / fingerskating. made my own wooden decks and stuff
Making gaming terrain out of household junk. Hey, wanna hear about the combat tiles I'm making out of cardboard and hot glue? No? No, I completely understand...
Seems like every hobby is too obscure for most to care at the level I do. Sim racing, rtlsdr, self hosting, ANY kind of motorsports, home automation, blogging, DND, video games... At the surface these are not too obscure but I find very few people in my day to day life that care about them in detailed way
Damn we could talk for hours. So hard to find people into cool shit in real life.
Knot Tying. Sure, there's an International Guild of Knot Tyers, but it's a rather small group.
You might even say tight knit?
I have quite a few obscure hobbies due to ADHD...
I'm super into collecting vintage analog music equipment. Old analog synthesizers and reel-to-reel tape machines to be exact. I also make music on them, but to be honest that's kind of a secondary thing haha.
I play a little bit of everything. Drums, guitar, keyboard, bass, etc. I'm probably best at drums though and have been playing for the better part of 25 years. Currently in a punk band and a desert rock band.
I'm into programming (web dev is my career) and embedded systems. I make a ton of various things with arduinos/raspberry pis. Often I'll try to combine the two and make midi/cv controllers for my synths.
I got into 3d printing a couple years back and have since been going down the rabbit hole of CAD with fusion 360/blender/etc.
I also got really into making video games for a bit in Unity. Started work on a VR game and have been meaning to get back to it.
Speaking of VR, I'm not a huge gamer but definitely love playing Beat Saber and Pistol Whip (both VR). I'm in the top 1000 or so in beat saber, but I was #1 globally in pistol whip for quite a while. I imagine I'm probably still top 10 at least.
And probably my most obscure hobby: Poi
Most people have no idea what it even is, and once they find out, just assume I'm a rave kiddie. I mean, I kind of am, but I legit love the art of poi.
Buying keyboards... I just had a moment where I made an impulse decision where I spent 200$ usd on one. It's my 7th keyboard and I know it's not gonna be the last. I'm not even a touch typer... Something weird is going on
Open-source virtual reality, usually just any VR works too lmao but especially FOSS VR
Be vewwy vewwy quiet. We're hunting cell towers.
"You know Pokémon Go? It's like that."
Tell me more, how can I get into it? I want to hunt cell towers in my town too.
Wow that's oddly interesting, I can actually see which towers in my area belong to which provider and the exact specs of each cell
Marxism
Fixing small things. My friends or family need something fixed that doesn't require a professional. I like figuring out how to fix things or at least providing a temporary solution. I do it because I'm helping someone, also I'm building my skill set. A basic search of answers and videos teaching me how to do it properly most times is easy to find. If not I find a way to create a safe temporary solution until they can have one come in. Very fulfilling, especially if you like a challenge.
I collect wrist watches and intend on learning watch repair soon ish
I am something of a skills collector: Bicycles (roadie/former amateur racer), cars (mods/engines/paint), composite prototyping, metal machining, home foundry metal casting, embedded programming, analog and digital electronics design, reverse engineering, KiCAD, PCB etching, motor controls, python, CPP, Forth, woodworking, Linux desktop, Linux kernel deep dives, computing hardware, open source software, Dune, Asimov, SciFi, astronomy, telescopes, designing and building optics, 3D printing, CAD design, FreeCAD, Blender, cooking better than the best restaurant foods, Asian cuisine, psychology
I am a generalist, but a swiss army knife, I know about and do a lot, but I am like the worst scissors you've ever attempted to carry and use. I can get the job done, but am well aware I am not a master of any of these.
Hah, I like your hobby actually.
I've actually managed to upgrade Cistercian Numerals from decimal to hexadecimal, while still being backwards compatible.
https://youtu.be/9p55Qgt7Ciw
In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.
Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.
I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.
I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.
Sim racing.
It’s difficult to talk about it without people dismissing it as just a video game with a steering wheel.
I build and optimize molecules using computational chemistry software for fun.
Sim racing isn't necessarily too quirky or obscure but I do it to maintain some sort of maybe possibly ADHD. Doing laps around a track really helps with getting myself used to focusing.
It's especially helpful because each lap around a race track tends to be only 1 - 2 minutes, which is a relatively easy amount of time to keep focus at any one point in time, but keeping it up for consecutive laps and remaining consistent as time builds up in small increments is a different kind of joy to me.
Handspinning. I do a lot of fiber crafts.
Lockpicking tends to be my most misunderstood hobby/interest.
Similar to another reply about shorthand, I practice with my own steno-typing keyboard I 3D printed as a hobby. I'm steno-typing this very message! (Very slowly)
I'll say me writting my homebrew DnD world. It goes in pair with me using ObsidianMD, I love the tool i'm using and i'm having fun specifically in the making of polical cities more than in the making of combat senarios. My mom knows about it and sometimes asks, Dad finds it stupid, and I don't talk about it with anyone I used to atlk about what I write to two friends, but they are coming to my session in september so now I have no one esle to bring it up
Writing fanfiction
Running. Ok, I know it's not obscure, however, if you say you're a runner, or that it's a hobby, you're frequently met with hostility, or people trying to talk you out of it. The amount of times people have said "running is bad for you, you need to stop" is insane.
I love plushies. I have an ever growing collection and love just browsing plushies of all sorts when I'm online. I just really like cute things. But as a 28 year old man with a beard, it's safe to say I'm not exactly the spiting image of a plushie collector, and most people are definitely not interested in talking at length about it with me.
listening to number stations
I like to play with dos. Every once in a while I start looking for games and programs trying to recreate the computer my parents used to have. I've also gotten into randomizers recently. Currently in the middle of a 3-person multiworld playthrough of Stardew Valley.
!micromobility@lemmy.world is my latest obsession: Friends, family, and colleagues are tired of hearing me talk about ebikes.
I race RC cars.
Seems simple enough but there’s always follow up questions that inevitably take the conversation from interesting to ‘in the weeds’.
Video Games... And i mean all of it. If you try to talk with me about videogames in a casual way, I need to do my best to not hit you with a history lesson. Did you know that Miyamoto used to Smoke in the Star Fox office and startet talking about trees? Well now you know...
I repair and upgrade classic video game consoles. RGB modding NES, Adding HDMI output to a PS1 etc. Sometimes in the case of some NEC consoles like the Turbo Duo R, I'll buy ones that are totally hopeless (capacitors in these thing leak like crazy) and pick away at it for months, I've had some janky looking consoles but I've brought them back from the dead. Always satisfying when then work again.
I’ve recently returned to wanting to get into guitar amplifier repair and design.
I have a pair of amps that i want to diagnose some particular problems and perhaps design a new pcb for or build out whole new ones
I genuinely love brass band. It is a not terribly known form in pop culture (even among "classically" trained musicians) but that shit is awesome.
Not me, but my wife. She collects kpop cards. Apparently the bands have a random card of one of the members in the albums. Theres a whole trading and selling market for them.
I don't think it's super obscure, but I home brew beer and it's a hobby where you can really go deep into the technicalities of tweaking recipes, building equipment, and just the overall process in a way that would probably bore the average non-brewer to death.
For me, probably insects. I've been fascinated by insects when I was little, and honestly I feel like I've been getting back into it recently. I started keeping a mealworm colony recently so that I wouldn't need to buy mealworms for my frog (it was really more of a practical decision than an interest in having a colony, but mealworms are pretty cool nonetheless)
I've been considering getting a mantis and/or some rhinoceros beetles, but I'm not really sure where I would be able to get the materials required to set up terrarium for them
Software-Defined Radio. Pretty cheap entry and fun to screw with. I recently moved to the sticks and now there is nothing to find, sadly.
Recently started writing niche essays on video games but haven't had the best time coming up with more ideas and have 0 ability to advertise my own work.
I also have this weird thing wear I take pictures of the cats on cat-product packaging because I'm afraid they'll be forgotten.
I make stuff in video games
Messing with CRT shaders, designing custom aperture grills and dot masks that never existed.
I like to wonder around the forest singing.
That and rock climbing but like traditional and aid climbing in the alpine. Most people lose interest when I start talking about various knots and their attributes in different situations.
Playing terminal.
I love troubleshooting, even though I complain a lot about it, I still do it.
That doesn't mean that I use systems that require high maintenance like Arch Linux, but openSUSE doesn't have the same support as other known Linux distributions, so I sometimes have to adapt to the options I have, like using containers or compiling for my system.
I also like to provide support for people and help family/friends with whatever they need, tech-related or not.
It may sound silly, but a lot of family (whom I try to avoid) always tell me to charge for the things I do, but I like to help and even donate a lot of things when I can. I also have been trying to give back to the FOSS community. To me it's like a hobby, and money isn't everything.
I like fleshlights. I have quite a collection of them.
Yeah I'm going to need to know more about your hobby.
I've done research on ciphers and cryptography a little bit, so based on my understanding I made up some operations you can do on paper (not needing a computer) to transform text into something seemingly random, but also it has to be reversible with a key. I try to make it so that it doesn't fall into the common traps that some older ciphers fell into like double letters are the same like with simple substitution ciphers. Also I wanted it to be reusable unlike with a one-time pad, in my case I like when the key is hidden in the encrypted message.
I haven't found anyone to test out any ciphers yet, but I also haven't looked too hard. I'm sure some people enjoy deciphering for fun (I don't have the smarts or at least the time for that).
I always thought "high altitude ballooning" would be a cool ass hobby.. but living in PA.. would make it difficult to track down payloads once back to earth 😀
Each quirky hobby mentioned here, deserves its own Lemmy community!
Diecast collecting and diecast photography. That and building excel sheet forms to auto-math things I need for infrequent tasks.
I collect and know a lot about weed vaporizers. Weed is still not legal where I live and other users, who even also use vaporizers, are happy with their device and don't wanna know about the benefits of my other dozens
I like cars, but specifically boring old cars. Supercars don't do anything for me, I think normal "enthusiast" cars are pretty boring, and the communities around them can kinda suck. But I will totally nerd out about your grandma's bingo-mobile she bought new in the 80s.