I got myself involved with a nonprofit local group preserving local pioneer era apple trees. They've been DNA testing and cataloging the trees, and had all the info stashed away in google drive and onedrive folders. The founder was looking to step back so they asked me if I wanted to step up as project lead, which I did.
I took the info and organized it into a nice wiki-style site with maps and descriptions so everyone in the community can learn about the old orchards.
I've also learned how to prune and graft hundred year old apple trees and now have a couple dozen young grafted trees growing in my garage, all clones of local hundred year old trees, some of which genetically tested unique and are of currently unknown varieties.
Thats awesome! I'm doing apple stuff on the other side of the Cascades (Eugene), starting a cidery and trying to find rare varieties to graft. And doing little software projects like https://pomological.art/. Would love to get in touch if you want people to propagate these varieties you're finding and would potentially be interested in sharing some scion wood!
I'm in the middle of building out a similar big project that takes a different tack: looking through every period pomological text (e.g. Apple of New York, Fruits and Fruit Trees of America) and pulling the images, descriptions, etc for every heritage apple variety. Includes the watercolors too. I also pull in every scanned catalog from nurseries selling fruit trees in the PNW from the late 1800s.
The goal is a tool we can use to identify apples, and also have comprehensive info on every variety, using public domain period content.
I think we grafted ~90 scions this year. A lot of them we haven't actually DNA tested yet so no idea what they are. So many of these trees are on their last legs, so our priority is cloning them first, and then once the clones grow, DNA test those as funds are available.
I make my own cider too (though as a hobby). If we ever find ourselves in the same city I'd love to meet up and we can swap scions/cider/etc.
I love that idea, actually started something similar awhile back but didn't get far and ran out of time/energy. If you need any help/contributions I'd love to pitch in. And sounds great! I'll shoot you an email with my contact info
I have done similar grafting experiments, although at present I am navigating a change in motivation. I got into apples through cider, but gave up alcohol this year. (As an aside, this was a long time coming and absolutely worth some small sacrifices!)
While I’m interested in heritage apples, I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate. An apple that thrived over a century ago depended on conditions that are different today and are continuing to change.
> I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate.
The neat thing is that these tend to be self-selecting! These older orchards drop a lot of fruit and can self-propagate new seedlings. The ones that manage to survive are the ones well adapted to current local conditions.
Chuck Wendig's 2023 novel Black River Orchard has an apple historian as one of the protagonists. Lots of talk of scion wood and girdling and colonial era apple varieties. You may find this interesting.
We work with Dr Cameron Peace's lab at WSU. They send us test tubes, we send the tubes back with leaves in them, they run the DNA tests and compare against an apple ID database they've built. We pay ~$50 per test, which is what most of the groups budget goes towards.
This sounds like a cool mix of genetics and gardening, I like that.
Maybe I should ask some local non profits whether they need help with IT infra, because I don't exactly think "google drive and onedrive folders" is going to be an outlier.
also I came back here after three days, how did this get 713 comments all of a sudden???
A friend in Palouse has found several heritage apple trees and has spent at least a decade grafting and working with them. It’s an interesting hobby to watch him experiment with.
Apple trees are pretty easy to propagate if they're alive. Snip off a twig, graft it onto another tree, and away it goes.
Some poor-condition trees can certainly present a challenge in terms of finding ideal graftable wood, but even a poor-quality scion is a lot easier to propagate via grafting than trying to culture in a petri dish.
I've never done it but apparently if you graft branches of different varieties on one tree, you can produce a number of different varieties of apples on one tree. This would be especially good if you could get some of the tastiest heirloom varieties.
We haven't been doing that for now. The success rate doing so is somewhat less than directly grafting the whole top of the tree onto rootstock, for a few reasons. Since our primary goal is preservation and a lot of these trees have zero clones and could be wiped out by wildfire on any given year, our first priority is to get clones of every tree.
I started designing my own clothes. The insight was that I spend 80% money on suits that I wear 2 times a year, and the rest was low quality clothing I actually wore.
I flipped it, and made suits and pants that I could wear everyday.
The fast fashion stores were crap quality, my body is not a template size and I care about fabric and comfort.
The process was to learn how to sketch, to determine fabrics, colors and fit. I made pants that stay comfortable even after I eat food, I made suits that I can wear casually.
I don’t stitch myself, for that I worked with multiple workshops, until I found one that works for me.
Took me about 3 years to reach a point where all my wardrobe is designed by and for me.
There were multiple side effects on my confidence, my life, and the opportunities coming my way.
That's pretty neat, and we should talk. In my household we are currently producing about 75% of our clothing, mostly out of a desire to avoid using fabrics that generate a lot of microplastic waste + observing that newer clothes/fabrics wear out quickly.
OK, fairly specific question - how did You get to that pants silouhete? It seems from the pics You went for something like a straight leg plus some extra room and fairly fitted waist / butt. Is that a response to a trend (oversized work clothes seem to be the thing these past few years), or is there some practical reason too (mainly for the extra room in the leg shape)?
Two reasons: 1. My thighs are bigger than usual for my waist size, so I adapted. 2. Indians (Bharat) have a culture of wearing lose clothes, and I also like lose clothes. They are more comfortable.
The waist is fitted, but with elastic bands on the side for added comfort (my belly gets bigger during evening, when I sit down and after I eat).
This is super cool. I also find it hard to the right fit for me so I usually end up at a tailor or wear baggy clothes(which are in trend) however the comfort of having the clothes fit you right and you feeling really good about is missing and fast fashion sucks too lot of poorly designed clothes and cheap materials that becomes generic quite fast.
Kudos for living this lifestyle, those pants look really sick..
hell yeah, I have tailed my T-shirts before but nothing else, making my own sound like a nice challenge.
How do you source materials?
I'm usually very picky about the material, especially if it touches my skin, and usually the heavier the better.
The best T-shirts I ever owned was a military surplus made from organic cotton, and was more than twice the weight of my other T-shirts, but I couldn't find anything like it anywhere.
Fast fashion forces you to dress for the masses. Loose shirts, baggy pants and shallow pockets is not fashion, its cost optimisation for brands.
I didn't want to dress up like a boy. Me and my friend were in Paris when we got inspired by the floor(fashion_sense). I was already working on my clothing, but that day we promised each other that we will not be underdressed anymore.
He opted for off-the-shelf formal clothing: high quality shirts, and pants. I went all in.
First I found markets that sell cheap fabrics, so I can experiment. I travel a lot, so my clothing had to be designed for all weathers. I'm Indian (Bharat), but look racially ambiguous, so I also wanted my clothing to reflect my roots and culture, yet be modern enough for any room in the world.
I run a company, and write code, so comfort was paramount. But I also had meetings or presentations so I wanted to be presentable.
Started with pants, because I thought pants are easy to optimise, and I just need a black, gray and dark blue one. Over 5 iterations, I reached a design with elastic straps on the side (because when I eat food, my tummy bloats a little and its uncomfortable to sit down), and loose on the thighs. Imagine pyjamas, that look like pants.
Then next step was to experiment with jackets and shirts. I played with fabric, patterns, and finish (zippers, titch buttons, different cuff lengths and styles, different collars).
My friends started noticing, and I also consulted some clients. Then I gave a talk about it. This is one of my skills that I discovered by first principles. The best part is that I met my girlfriend because she noticed my aesthetics, and she told me that she makes her own clothes too.
Alternatively, one can create bespoke patterns. There is a lovely little open source community of pattern designers at https://seamly.io
I got myself a pattern drafting book and started working on shirts and pants. The neat thing is one can design the draft pieces to be completely parametric, so adapting the pattern to different persons is as simple as entering new measurements.
My hobby is organizing in-person meetups for random people to get together, chat and make friends. Barely structured, if at all. I've found this rewarding and ended up making friends this way.
You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning, kind and full of interesting insights and hobbies, although perhaps difficult to socialize with, at least until they get to know you're well-meaning too.
These challenges come with the territory. You end up talking to people you'd otherwise never meet in the normal course of your life, and it's neutral at worst and wonderful at best.
Almost everything you can do on your own is a "solved problem". Why go into woodworking if you can buy an Ikea stool? The point of hobbies isn't to solve problems - that's called a job - but to learn and have fun.
Find a niche where you can resist the temptation to constantly compare yourself to eight billion other people on the internet. Something where success isn't measured in Github stars, Youtube likes, or Reddit upvotes. Once you get in that mindset, almost anything goes. I know people who collect RPN calculators and are having a blast. All kinds of hands-on crafts are great too. I like making electronic music and I'm pretty bad at it.
Put it down over winter but just picking it back up.
Bat detection/identification with ultrasonic recordings. It's been fun building the data pipeline to manage the ~30GB+ of WAV files generated every night, run through some identification processes (currently using https://github.com/rdz-oss/BattyBirdNET-Analyzer) and build a UI (mostly vibe coded lol) to help with replay, cataloging, etc.
I'm using an AudioMoth currently (https://www.openacousticdevices.info/audiomoth), am thinking about extending it to do some of the preprocessing in the field to scale things up a bit.
I've been working on trying to help fill out the MeshCore network in our area for off-grid communications. Some of us are setting up solar powered, battery backed MeshCore nodes, they have no connection to power or Internet. You can use a small device (like a credit card or a small walkie-talkie) with a phone, or a blackberry-like device, to send/receive encrypted messages, chat on channels, or communicate on BBS-like "room servers".
It's interesting for if there were some sort of disaster impacting the cell network, or for use in the back woods where you have no cell contact. But it's extremely unreliable. My coworker who is into it, he lives 2-3 miles away but we can rarely communicate because he lives in a bit of a bowl that we don't have reachability into. Meanwhile I'm regularly getting messages from 30-70 miles away no problem.
It reminds me a lot of HAM radio, where there are other better ways to communicate, but if those ways broke it would be nice to have an alternative.
If you like to work with your hands and have space, build something physical: big and complex, and actually finish it. I built a single engine two seat kit airplane in my garage, did all the flight testing, and now have an interesting way to travel/commute as a result. The "finish it" part is the most important bit. Computer people spend too much time working on projects that don't have a "done" state. Change that up.
I started a few years back and have been doing it off and on since. It's challenging but a lot of fun.
I shoot a lot of older style "recurve" bows, but the main style I shoot are horsebows, that is, bows that were historically shot from horseback.
They're very lightweight and you can shoot much more rapidly than you can with a more modern/mechanical recurve or compound. Right now I shoot around 20-25 arrows a minute. Not amazing compared to experienced archers, but a lot of fun.
I have a number of bows, but here are my favorites:
I build Tiki Tube Amps - hifi stereos inside carved tiki heads. The tikis are carved from solid logs and hollowed out before I wire up all the circuitry inside. It's all analog vacuum-tube-driven circuits soldered point-to-point.
They're really difficult to make but super fun to listen to. When I'm carving I have to plan out how the circuit will be laid out, ensure there's enough space inside for the transformers, consider grounding schemes, etc. Plus mounting components and soldering inside a cramped log is not easy. But when they're done they have such personality. No other stereo listens to music _with_ you.
I love them because they combine many of my disparate interests - woodworking, tiki, electronics, soldering, music, vacuum tubes, metalworking. They're also an excuse to have friends over and throw parties.
I highly recommend getting into loudspeakers or audio reproduction in general! Without a doubt the most enjoyable, satisfying, and enriching hobby I've had so far.
A couple years ago I decided to build a pair of synergy horns (look them up!) which included all kinds of interesting stuff! For example, I had to learn CAD, the principles of CNC and how to create toolpaths, what a waveguide is, general woodworking, and lots more. There's also lots of interesting "subhobbies" one may dwelve into such as psychoacoustics, signal processing, LEM/BEM simulations, the optimization of horn geometries (look up AKABAK or Ath4 and their respective DiyAudio threads), analog crossovers, or acoustically treating a room to reduce reverb.
Building speakers and experimenting with bracing and lining/damping have been rewarding for me as determining wether I prefer A or B really requires me to _listen_ in a different way from say, listening to a conversation (or even to music!). It feels very grounding and meditative in a way, and at least in my case, indirectly trains one to notice and appreciate more sounds in everyday life.
A big bonus is that it becomes really easy to throw outdoor parties out in the woods when one doesn't have to rent gear. Loudspeakers and bringing people together is a damn good and rewarding combo.
I was into woodworking, then I got into building fly fishing rods from bamboo.
Fly fishing has been around for a long time. They used to build rods by hand out of bamboo - a specific species of bamboo native to southern China - before factories started making them out of graphite, fiberglass, etc. for cheap.
Modern fly rods are a few hundred bucks. If you try to buy a bamboo rod in a store, they run $2K-$5K. They take a lot of time and meticulous work to build, and the result is a functional work of art.
Woodworking is a ton of fun, and challenging. Bamboo rod making is a niche within a niche, and there are not a whole lot of people who still do it ... mostly retired guys with a lot of time. It's a great tradition, and it's about as far away from computers and technology as I can get.
I didn't even know how to fly fish until I built my first bamboo rod.
I got into HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) fencing last year through a club in my little town. Olympic/sport fencing is fun, but imagine (safely) swinging a 4lbs. steel longsword with two hands at your opponent instead. It's a ton of fun, a great workout (I burn ~1500 calories per class), and competitive so it keeps my interest.
Then there's the whole nerd layer of reading all the original sources from the 15th century, attempting to retain the historical character of the techniques while engaging in real combat, etc. It's both intellectually and physically stimulating.
I got into fig (and since then, more broadly, fruit) cultivation. Figs have a rich history, lots of variety, and there are very active online (and in-person) communities where you can buy or exchange plants and cuttings, advice, and fruit. This grew out of an initial interest in gardening, and the long-term goal is to create a food/fruit forest around our house where me, family, friends, and neighbors can walk around, spend time, and eat the absolute best fruit possible.
So far I've got about 40 fig trees in containers (~30 varieties), am focusing a bit more on blackberries this year (4 varieties that were planted last year), and we also have strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, as well as a more standard annual garden with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc as well as some wild edibles: mulberries, wineberries, and black raspberries.
There's a lot of interesting angles to this hobby: fruit selection, cultivation, harvesting, pest management (annoying but still interesting), landscape design, etc. Planning cycles are months at a minimum, and but more often you have to keep in mind what you want the landscape and experience to be like years from now.
It makes it more enjoyable to spend time outside doing physical things when the weather is warm, and I mostly take a break from it (or switch to planning) during the winters here.
They're essentially a combination of a plane, spoke-shave, draw-knife and gouge but all in a one handed tool. They were primarily used by Native Americans to build things like canoes, snowshoes, baskets etc. I first found about them from reading John McPhee's Survival of the Bark Canoe [1] but there are lots of uses of them on video on the website below (which I created).
If you want to get into woodworking but want only a few tools and/or a very portable tool, highly recommend.
e.g. in theory you could build an entire canoe with an axe, crooked knife and 3 or 4 sided awl (and a lot of time, patience and materials)
Railway preservation (full size, not model). It looks crowded when a steam train is running and the moths gather around. The reality, when the trains are not running, is typically quite different, with a small dedicated group. If a place looks too crowded, pick a smaller museum.
Think of all the jobs that have to be done to run a railway and you will be able to find a museum that does it: heavy maintenance, boiler work, fitting and turning, blacksmithing, woodwork, upholstering, painting, catering, engine driving, fireman, signalling, customer service, ...
It's a great way to meet people, learn new skills and work with physical things.
My wife & I are Scottish Country dancers. It's a social dance form (it's traditional to swap partners for every dance so nobody has to bring a partner, though not required). Pretty good cardio, there are groups all over the world, so it's often not that difficult to find a class.
Other similar social dance forms from the UK are Contra dancing, English Country dancing, and Ceilidh dancing. Square dancing in the US developed out of these forms. Many other cultures have their own social dance forms, with varying levels of formalization.
Meaningful contribution is easy: these groups always benefit from more participants. Scottish Country dance has a formalized teaching certificate program, roughly equivalent to a Master's degree worth of work (and if you're a UK resident it qualifies to teach PE in UK schools).
Not sure if it is niche, but focused on one South Asian music genre -- been working on this personal project to compile, and collect resources from reliable sources along with mapping lineages of people. Also, I archive a lot of music for this genre from different sources before it vanishes from internet!
EDIT: I have one more page but that is not in navigation yet for people not familiar with the genre. The site is still work in progress -- if you have any feedback, please do leave it here, on the website if you can. The content curation is the most tedious part!
https://www.qavvali.com/tradition/
I got into designing my own knitting patterns. I enjoy that I can customize everything — the yarn material, color (including marling, helix knitting, double knitting), yarn weight, needle size (e.g., resulting in "airy" vs "packed" textures), knit textures (e.g., stockinette, linen, miss, etc.), construction process (e.g., can I figure out a way to knit in the round vs flat?), cables, gradual increases/decreases, selvedge/cord, desired ease, etc..
It's something I got into a few years ago and has been a real eye-opener into the world of perfumery and our wonderful olfactory senses. Strangely, though I suspect is the case with many other hobbies, there is crossover with programming albeit somewhat abstractly.
Often it's about building abstractions and reusable components. For example let's say you wish to create an apple note (typically referred to as an accord). You're not tasked with creating the scent of an actual apple but rather the illusion of apple. This is done by mixing ingredients (usually referred to as raw materials) which are generally split into two categories, synthetic and natural, where a synthetic material if often just an isolated molecule and a natural material may be an oil extracted from nature or a tincture, among other kinds. Once you have mixed the raw materials and are happy with the result, you've essentially created a formula which is a reusable component that can then be used in one or many of your creations.
Aside from the creative process of making the actual perfume, you've then got a ton of applications in which to use it such as a fine fragrance, a candle, room spray, shower gel, shampoo, laundry detergent to name just a few.
With new raw materials becoming available all the time there are just endless possibilities as to what you can create and it, for me, has been a lot of fun both learning the craft and creating actual perfumes that I myself now wear.
Synthesizers! I like it because it's tactile and immediate, and you're not glued to a screen, but can create fun-sounding beats.
Nowadays there are nice, cheapish groove boxes that are perfect for noodling on the couch. I started with the Novation Circuit Tracks, and also really enjoy the Teenage Engineering EP-133. Not to say that I am any good at this, but it's an enjoyable hobby! Bonus if you are friends who are also into it and you can jam together :)
Consider mathematics. If you already know enough math to derive the quadratic equation, you might make a small change, like adding X^3 or X^4. See where your own techniques take you before looking up the answer. With just a few pen strokes, you will be playing with an equation for which there is no general solution, or no known solution. In mathematics it will take you very little time to start playing at the boundaries of human knowledge, and it's relatively easy to memorize a few starting points that many hours of passenger travel fly by.
Not sure if you're into 40s music, but there's a little known instrument called a theatre organ. It was conceived when silent films were taking off, and theaters needed some form of background music. Paying an organist was much cheaper than hiring a whole orchestra, so a lot of theaters opted to get an organ as a cost saving measure (imagine, lol). Anyways, a few have survived, and I learned the basics of playing one. It's an absolutely incredible instrument, in terms of the sheer amount of sounds you can make with it. Someone played the star wars overture for example[1]. It also has one of the most flexible interfaces, with the tabs, second touch, and sustenuno pedal on the volume foot controls. It's inspired a lot of my own tinkering with custom sound synthesis too.
The demoscene, while not unknown, is still quite niche amongst technologists and digital artists in the most of the world. It has a pretty thriving scene with dozens of get togethers worldwide (mostly in Europe) each year, is creative, communal, artistic, competitive, multidisciplinary, highly influential, and has a near infinite number of ways to engage with it. It has a long running internal culture, but is welcoming of outsiders willing to learn, and is kind of a "third way" to think about software and technology that can often radically change how you think about computing.
It's also a recognized UNESCO recognized intangible cultural heritage in at least half a dozen countries.
Every couple of months the family and I will book out some long weekend to just go to an Airbnb in some random town with some copy paper and just go around trying to draw what we think is around us. Inevitably the lines collide and we have to ask some local passerby for help, and if they know any interesting places nearby, and before you know it they're following along with a colored pencil and some copy paper against a hardcover book too.
Animal tracking. I picked it up in college and it has been a real source of joy and a true challenge. It's also something you can do almost anywhere: urban, suburban, rural, out in "the wild."
A lot of people think of it as looking for paw/hoof marks in the mud, but tracking can actually be quite involved, requiring you to understand the environment and ecology as a whole.
For example, tracking birds is outrageously difficult and when I first started out I didn't think it was possible. But the more I learned about birds, their habits (per species), their environment, I started to see signs everywhere. It really got my eyes open and I started seeing the same old places in completely new ways!
And in terms of contributing something, there are all sorts of apps/organization that can help you identify different species and in turn you give them data in the form of pictures, location, etc. I use iNaturalist myself, but there are others.
My strange hobby was going on what I called "leak walks".
I lived in a town where on any sunny day I could go for a walk and be almost guaranteed to spot a water mains leak I hadn't seen before, which I'd then report and see how long it would be before it was fixed.
My niche hobbies is carving wooden spoons and I think it balance very well with any work behind a computer.
It’s surprisingly deep for something that looks so simple. You can start with almost nothing: a small axe to split the wood and a knife to shape it. That’s enough to make your first spoon. From there, it can become as technical or as artistic as you want, depending on how far you go.
There’s also a whole international community around it. People organize small gatherings and larger meetups where they carve together, share techniques, compare tools, and pass down very specific bits of knowledge. There is a whole series of videos about this on youtube on a channel named "zed outdoors".
This hobby also had me look around for wood everywhere, when walking or driving and you can do it almost everywhere as long as you have a small knife with you.
Also, using a spoon you made yourself is genuinely satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain. It changes the relationship you have with a very ordinary object.
It looks like a quiet craft, but you can go very far with it.
Despite AI starting to crowd this space, I've been spending all of my free time learning music production (doing it the old fashion way without AI). It's a great mix of technical and creative problem solving. Mostly focusing on dark ambient/cinematic composition, playing around hardware synths (Prophet 6, Subsequent 37, modular / eurorack, Digitone II).
I’m obsessed with powerlifting. Not only because big numbers get bigger but also the physical changes that occur with a healthy dose of lifting each week. It’s also easy to track lifting stats and there are tons of analysis tools out there if data analysis is something you enjoy.
Also, I’m trying to learn guitar - right now following the Justinguitar.com lessons
I’m a paraglider pilot and powered paraglider recently. Totally recommended, you get to connect with nature in a meaningful way. Also people who practice this kind of sports are nice. From a tech perspective there are a lot of data generated on each flight you can create your own way to capture that data or use already existing apps.
What I rarely read about as hobby but I really enjoy is touch! Taking massage/therapy classes, like lomi-lomi, craniosacral, acupressure, shiatsu, etc. -- plenty of great courses available. They're typically aimed at professionals since it is "under-explored" as a hobby, but well worth it as self experience. Not only the receiving but also the giving during the training(s), plus all the chances to give nice touch experiences to your friends and family! How many bodies have you deeply touched in your life?
Another niche hobby of mine is constellations groups: you meet with others to simulate and explore a problem somebody within the group is facing; a bit like impro theatre but real-life issues. Very interesting and doesn't require any skills, you just "do". I often just go and participate as a viewer: Better than cinema!
I also like NVC (non-violent communication) classes and trainings. It's a hobby but a bit more effort, you spend time with other likeminded people, learn something about the inner functioning of others, plus it improves my communication and conflict skills, both in personal and business areas.
Social dancer here -- without hyperbole this was a lifechanging hobby for the better, and while I haven't been able to "meaningfully contribute to" as a criteria, I am a much better person for it.
I'm primarily a salsa dancer (~18 years), but spent a few years doing a buncha other dances to get an understanding of the music and movement so I'm pretty much beginner-intermediate in a buncha other dances (equiv of 1-2 year level dancer) -- Bachata, West Coast Swing, Fusion, and a splash of a ton of other dances.
The best I can explain to most people is that dance is a conversation to a topic (music) through the language of motion instead of sound, and that just like rewarding conversations we can have through verbal language and text, some of the most resonant conversations can be had through connection and touch.
For the subset of folks who happen to be gamers here, this is a massively multiplayer co-op music game with a very high skill curve.
I started dancing due to taking a popular social dance series at college by Richard Powers, and that was the gateway for my lifelong dance practice. It allowed me to indulge in another side of collaborative music, gave me a good relationship with interpersonal connection and physical touch, and provided me with a fairly active and healthy hobby for my life.
Can't say enough good things about it, just that the skill curve for beginners is high -- the first year is known as beginner's hell, but once you establish a basic vocabulary in the dance it becomes so much more artistic and creative.
I don't think chess engines are a solved problem for some use cases. Yes you can make something strong, maybe even the strongest, but can you create a chess engine perfectly tuned to actually teaching a player? Instead of superhuman perfect lines and inscrutable long-horizon strategy, can you teach nearly optimal human play in a way that's actionable, modular and memorable? Can you improve on tournament prep for players against particular opponents or within a particular metagame?
Also, obviously it's your life, and we're here on Earth to fart around, but I have spent a good portion of my life dipping into one hobby after another, as my dad did before me, so I'm half speaking to myself when I ask this: why do you think you can't meaningfully contribute to any of these realms, even now? To me that sounds like some deep seated fear or doubt, some aversion to competition, some overriding bitterness. I'm slightly worried you'll just be back here in another couple of years trying to find another new hobby, unsullied by the efforts and achievements of others. You won't find that! I would actually suggest a particularly expensive hobby: going to therapy. Try that, and learn that you're already enough, and if your contributions are meaningful to you, that's all that matters. Happy to be way off the mark here though.
Walking and finding history if your location has such history to offer to find.
People pay vast accruing cumulative sums over time to go to the gym and my exercise pays me with every single walk. Some of that modern human history I have found dates back hundreds of years in the form of coins and bottles while some of the native human history I have found dates back 10 thousand years. I cannot neglect the fossils either as the oldest I have found reviewed by an expert is said to be Paleozoic tabulate coral being over 251 million years aged.
Thanks to gravity everything lost in the past is under our feet and as digitalization has taken over our global society, created by some of those reading this here, there are not many folks walking let alone looking. I found my first item over 14 years ago now and while my partner HATES the aggregate volume of the things I have collected she cannot neglect the uniqueness, rarity and value of some of those items. Every single walk inspires real motivation however one needs their health first to take that walk.
I think a really underrated hobby is amateur Microscopy, I don't know why its not more popular.
Looking at moss, pond water, microbes, tardigrades, paramecia, cells, plants, crystals, stuff around the house
You can get a decent microscope for like $250 and just get a smartphone mount to take high quality pictures/videos.
I feel like with astronomy/telescopes you spend a ton of money just to see a blurry blob whereas microscopes are way more bang-for-buck in terms of how much cool science stuff you can see for cheap.
I absolutely love my ancient machines, and I use them to explore period applications, much more than games.
I also love to restore and preserve them. There’s something magical about a Sun workstation Solaris 2 a Frog Design Trinitron monitor. or a Microvax running VMS and DECWindows. Or a multi-user Altair Z80. I think it’s sad a lot of software was lost and some platforms were denied the documentation that’d enable their preservation (looking at you, IBM - document the AS/400 and release old OS to hobbyists).
My niche hobby is exploring patterns in Islamic Geometry and trying to re create them. It is an art of creating pleasing and aesthetic geometric patterns (from intersecting circles mostly). The art form is very popular in decorating Mosques and other Islamic monuments as human/animal representation is forbidden.
[Edit] The thing that I find the most fascinating is that all the complex design you see, are done with only using a pair of compass and rulers.
I build weird experimental instruments and then play them at the local electronic music open mic nights.
My main instrument is the electroduochord, a stereo two-stringed instrument played with a drone motor rotary magnetic bow.
https://youtu.be/G1ftvw-Y6pk
I've also hooked up audio jacks to small solar panels to convert vibrations in light into sound.
https://youtu.be/ZF2Rn5YfBC8
Watchmaker in training here - after 20 years in startups I am now in my first semester of watchmaking school. It is one of the hardest things I've done in my 47 years, and I am loving every minute of it. It is training my brain, hands, and eyes to see and do things I never thought possible.
Repairing a watch feels similar to dealing with code to me:
- observing to see how/why certain watch components/chunks of code work and interact with each other
- analyzing performance
- disassembling and cleaning parts/"cleaning" code
- troubleshooting why something isn't working
- repairing faults caused by the previous watchmaker/developer
I highly recommend it to anyone needing something physical to do after a day spent staring at a screen. Stare at a watch instead!
I've been playing exclusively CRPGs for the last 12 months or so, which was kinda a niche genre before the success of BG3. There are tons of way to beat those games and optimizing how you build your party and characters (what players call "min-maxing") while following a highly narrative story is a lot of fun. Most of them are quite old and often on sales for like 5 bucks on Steam, for which you get hundreds of hours of gameplay. A few recommendations: Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Owlcat's Pathfinders & W40K Rogue Trader, Larian's Divinity 1, 2 & BG3, Bioware's BG1 & BG2, etc…
It's a great time to get into programming languages stuff: designing domain-specific languages, building new tools/abstractions and, especially, formal verification. If you're mathematically oriented, you can explore formalizing mathematical proofs in Lean.
LLMs have really revitalized interest in these areas. AI can really help navigate the initial learning curve, can do a surprising amount of "heavy lifting" and can make tedious but useful work much easier. Do you want your little language to have a language server and nice editor-specific syntax highlighting? Do you need to write a parser with decent error messages? Do you need to prove a bunch of largely straightforward lemmas to get to the proof you actually care about? All of these things are easier (and, hopefully, more fun) than they were a few years ago. But, at the same time, there is still a lot of room for human insight and design in this process. There are a lot of areas that AI can't handle (or, at least, can't handle well) and, of course, nothing stops you from doing the fun stuff by hand even if you could hand it off to Claude.
And, of course, all this PL stuff was fun before LLMs. It's even more fun now even if you don't want to use AI yourself, because more people are doing and talking about PL stuff online, and there are more tools and libraries you can use yourself.
FDM 3d printing is still a wild-west and there are plenty of avenues to explore. Not sure what else to say about that other than as someone with daily and close personal proximity to the 'industry' that cropped up I am well aware that there is plenty of work to be done by enthusiasts and niche-people.
Engineering and machinery is still a place full of exploration if you have the chops. If you don't have them yet then there is plenty of topics within that domain to explore; you'll never run out of things to learn there.
My 0.02c : learn to disregard the crowds and focus on your own work. Just because people are doing something you used to do doesn't mean they have anywhere near the depth of understanding and 'freedom of movement' as you do as a 'resident expert'.
also : the fact that no one is doing something may be a signal; crowds form for a reason. Very few hobbyist bomb-squad folk and rabid-racoon-caregivers, get what I mean?
the GPT3 models didn't keep you from learning about ML. The industry didn't push you from keyboard and printers. You did these things.
If you're trying to lead an entirely one-off human life with total uniqueness from other people then all I could suggest is hallucinogens , but personally I think that the goal of just being unique for the sake of being unique is ludicrous.
Just find enjoyment, that's the goal for me at least.
My hobby involves trying to help my brother get a job. He has a disability and can only work remotely at low-skill jobs. So, I have spent years applying, starting, and doing work in virtual assistant, support desk, and social media management roles for him. I apply to contract and freelance projects on his behalf, get started with the work, and later try to hand it off to him. He will either say one of two things: "You do it yourself" or that his brain cannot process the work. I make 10-15 times more money at my regular job, so hearing him say "You do it yourself" is not fun.
This hobby also includes trying to convince him that the business schemes he comes up with are not great—they're exclusively fraud-related, such as various forms of gambling and crypto stuff.
Mum keeps telling me that if I do not look after him, he will likely end up in a worst situation. He is in his early 40s by the way.
I did a second job as a hobby so I could just pay him the money, but that did not work because he keeps investing it in one of his schemes. So, I have to find him a job and convince him to keep it. I have a set of fake accounts that I use to apply to jobs and beg him take them on while he continuously says "you do it".
I’ve started making what I “joy machines” that I am putting up in or near my neighborhood. They’re some combination of public interactive art (e.g. push a button and it prints out a compliment) and little art on display that I design and 3D print for people to take.
I've been building small games on and off over the last decade
Started taking it a bit more seriously over the last 3 months and I've started building a specific game that I'm slowly building out
It's a top down ARPG called Mechstain where the player creates and pilots voxel based mechs
Instead of traditional gear, your mech has a physical voxel footprint that you the player have to fit weapons and components inside
Your job is to manage space, power and mass, what you can fit and power directly becomes your stats and abilities, essentially a bin packing problem
Basically take Diablo 2 and remix it with Kerbal Space Program, still fleshing out the various systems, but I'm really enjoying the process of slowly designing systems, iterating on it and fleshing it out
It's quite fun taking thoughts I've been noodling on for years and trying to figure out if they synergise with what I'm looking at and do they provide interesting player decisions
Recently onboarded a 3d artist and it's really making things look a lot better
If anyone has experience lighting this sort of game, I'd love to talk to them, still trying to figure that out =)
I make holiday light shows with an open source program called XLights[0]. I'm sure you've seen the videos[1] of what people[2] can do. Usually the top comment is "man that is cool but I wouldn't want to be their neighbor!" followed by "my neighbors love my light shows".
Creating the sequences is time consuming, and lot of people end up buying them or sharing them, but those are rarely as good as the ones you make for yourself.
Some folks have dabbled with using AI to create the sequences. I think the biggest issues are lack of training data and it's a very visual art, so there needs to be a better feedback between the text representation and the visual manifestation.
So if you're into using AI to make physical world things better, that would be a good place to look!
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I took the info and organized it into a nice wiki-style site with maps and descriptions so everyone in the community can learn about the old orchards.
https://heritageapplecorps.org/index.php/Main_Page
I've also learned how to prune and graft hundred year old apple trees and now have a couple dozen young grafted trees growing in my garage, all clones of local hundred year old trees, some of which genetically tested unique and are of currently unknown varieties.
I'm in the middle of building out a similar big project that takes a different tack: looking through every period pomological text (e.g. Apple of New York, Fruits and Fruit Trees of America) and pulling the images, descriptions, etc for every heritage apple variety. Includes the watercolors too. I also pull in every scanned catalog from nurseries selling fruit trees in the PNW from the late 1800s.
The goal is a tool we can use to identify apples, and also have comprehensive info on every variety, using public domain period content.
It's not fully done yet, there are bugs/issues right now but you can take a look here: https://heritageapplecorps.org/varieties/
I think we grafted ~90 scions this year. A lot of them we haven't actually DNA tested yet so no idea what they are. So many of these trees are on their last legs, so our priority is cloning them first, and then once the clones grow, DNA test those as funds are available.
I make my own cider too (though as a hobby). If we ever find ourselves in the same city I'd love to meet up and we can swap scions/cider/etc.
My work and operation is small, limited to residential yards/gardens and particularly focused on dwarf and columnar varieties.
Used your site quite a bit! Thanks for making it.
While I’m interested in heritage apples, I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate. An apple that thrived over a century ago depended on conditions that are different today and are continuing to change.
Some cool people active in this space include:
- https://gnarlypippins.com/6th-pomological-exhibition-high-hi...
- https://www.mofga.org/trainings/annual-events/seed-swap-and-...
> I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate.
The neat thing is that these tend to be self-selecting! These older orchards drop a lot of fruit and can self-propagate new seedlings. The ones that manage to survive are the ones well adapted to current local conditions.
also I came back here after three days, how did this get 713 comments all of a sudden???
Apple trees are pretty easy to propagate if they're alive. Snip off a twig, graft it onto another tree, and away it goes.
Some poor-condition trees can certainly present a challenge in terms of finding ideal graftable wood, but even a poor-quality scion is a lot easier to propagate via grafting than trying to culture in a petri dish.
We haven't been doing that for now. The success rate doing so is somewhat less than directly grafting the whole top of the tree onto rootstock, for a few reasons. Since our primary goal is preservation and a lot of these trees have zero clones and could be wiped out by wildfire on any given year, our first priority is to get clones of every tree.
Do you know any good first resources about this? I'd like to give it a try.
I flipped it, and made suits and pants that I could wear everyday.
The fast fashion stores were crap quality, my body is not a template size and I care about fabric and comfort.
The process was to learn how to sketch, to determine fabrics, colors and fit. I made pants that stay comfortable even after I eat food, I made suits that I can wear casually.
I don’t stitch myself, for that I worked with multiple workshops, until I found one that works for me.
Took me about 3 years to reach a point where all my wardrobe is designed by and for me.
There were multiple side effects on my confidence, my life, and the opportunities coming my way.
My website is shivekkhurana.com. My email is on my github.
The waist is fitted, but with elastic bands on the side for added comfort (my belly gets bigger during evening, when I sit down and after I eat).
Kudos for living this lifestyle, those pants look really sick..
How do you source materials? I'm usually very picky about the material, especially if it touches my skin, and usually the heavier the better. The best T-shirts I ever owned was a military surplus made from organic cotton, and was more than twice the weight of my other T-shirts, but I couldn't find anything like it anywhere.
I didn't want to dress up like a boy. Me and my friend were in Paris when we got inspired by the floor(fashion_sense). I was already working on my clothing, but that day we promised each other that we will not be underdressed anymore.
He opted for off-the-shelf formal clothing: high quality shirts, and pants. I went all in.
First I found markets that sell cheap fabrics, so I can experiment. I travel a lot, so my clothing had to be designed for all weathers. I'm Indian (Bharat), but look racially ambiguous, so I also wanted my clothing to reflect my roots and culture, yet be modern enough for any room in the world.
I run a company, and write code, so comfort was paramount. But I also had meetings or presentations so I wanted to be presentable.
Started with pants, because I thought pants are easy to optimise, and I just need a black, gray and dark blue one. Over 5 iterations, I reached a design with elastic straps on the side (because when I eat food, my tummy bloats a little and its uncomfortable to sit down), and loose on the thighs. Imagine pyjamas, that look like pants.
Then next step was to experiment with jackets and shirts. I played with fabric, patterns, and finish (zippers, titch buttons, different cuff lengths and styles, different collars).
My friends started noticing, and I also consulted some clients. Then I gave a talk about it. This is one of my skills that I discovered by first principles. The best part is that I met my girlfriend because she noticed my aesthetics, and she told me that she makes her own clothes too.
I took care of the stage but couldn’t manage operations.
When you have to start optimising things for efficiency, it generally stops being relaxing and fun.
You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning, kind and full of interesting insights and hobbies, although perhaps difficult to socialize with, at least until they get to know you're well-meaning too.
These challenges come with the territory. You end up talking to people you'd otherwise never meet in the normal course of your life, and it's neutral at worst and wonderful at best.
Find a niche where you can resist the temptation to constantly compare yourself to eight billion other people on the internet. Something where success isn't measured in Github stars, Youtube likes, or Reddit upvotes. Once you get in that mindset, almost anything goes. I know people who collect RPN calculators and are having a blast. All kinds of hands-on crafts are great too. I like making electronic music and I'm pretty bad at it.
Bat detection/identification with ultrasonic recordings. It's been fun building the data pipeline to manage the ~30GB+ of WAV files generated every night, run through some identification processes (currently using https://github.com/rdz-oss/BattyBirdNET-Analyzer) and build a UI (mostly vibe coded lol) to help with replay, cataloging, etc.
I'm using an AudioMoth currently (https://www.openacousticdevices.info/audiomoth), am thinking about extending it to do some of the preprocessing in the field to scale things up a bit.
It's interesting for if there were some sort of disaster impacting the cell network, or for use in the back woods where you have no cell contact. But it's extremely unreliable. My coworker who is into it, he lives 2-3 miles away but we can rarely communicate because he lives in a bit of a bowl that we don't have reachability into. Meanwhile I'm regularly getting messages from 30-70 miles away no problem.
It reminds me a lot of HAM radio, where there are other better ways to communicate, but if those ways broke it would be nice to have an alternative.
https://meshcore.co.uk/
I started a few years back and have been doing it off and on since. It's challenging but a lot of fun.
I shoot a lot of older style "recurve" bows, but the main style I shoot are horsebows, that is, bows that were historically shot from horseback.
They're very lightweight and you can shoot much more rapidly than you can with a more modern/mechanical recurve or compound. Right now I shoot around 20-25 arrows a minute. Not amazing compared to experienced archers, but a lot of fun.
I have a number of bows, but here are my favorites:
Assyrian: https://www.bogararchery.sk/image/cache/catalog/product/boga... Buryat: (No longer available)
I also shoot an English longbow from time to time.
The horsebows use a technique called "thumb draw" which is very different from the way most bows are shot in the west.
Here's a great YouTube channel if you want to explore getting into it: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminHirmer
They're really difficult to make but super fun to listen to. When I'm carving I have to plan out how the circuit will be laid out, ensure there's enough space inside for the transformers, consider grounding schemes, etc. Plus mounting components and soldering inside a cramped log is not easy. But when they're done they have such personality. No other stereo listens to music _with_ you.
I love them because they combine many of my disparate interests - woodworking, tiki, electronics, soldering, music, vacuum tubes, metalworking. They're also an excuse to have friends over and throw parties.
edit: here's a video where I build one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xo-TGkFvOg
A couple years ago I decided to build a pair of synergy horns (look them up!) which included all kinds of interesting stuff! For example, I had to learn CAD, the principles of CNC and how to create toolpaths, what a waveguide is, general woodworking, and lots more. There's also lots of interesting "subhobbies" one may dwelve into such as psychoacoustics, signal processing, LEM/BEM simulations, the optimization of horn geometries (look up AKABAK or Ath4 and their respective DiyAudio threads), analog crossovers, or acoustically treating a room to reduce reverb.
Building speakers and experimenting with bracing and lining/damping have been rewarding for me as determining wether I prefer A or B really requires me to _listen_ in a different way from say, listening to a conversation (or even to music!). It feels very grounding and meditative in a way, and at least in my case, indirectly trains one to notice and appreciate more sounds in everyday life.
A big bonus is that it becomes really easy to throw outdoor parties out in the woods when one doesn't have to rent gear. Loudspeakers and bringing people together is a damn good and rewarding combo.
Fly fishing has been around for a long time. They used to build rods by hand out of bamboo - a specific species of bamboo native to southern China - before factories started making them out of graphite, fiberglass, etc. for cheap.
Modern fly rods are a few hundred bucks. If you try to buy a bamboo rod in a store, they run $2K-$5K. They take a lot of time and meticulous work to build, and the result is a functional work of art.
Woodworking is a ton of fun, and challenging. Bamboo rod making is a niche within a niche, and there are not a whole lot of people who still do it ... mostly retired guys with a lot of time. It's a great tradition, and it's about as far away from computers and technology as I can get.
I didn't even know how to fly fish until I built my first bamboo rod.
Here's a great video showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfTvRxcTuV0
Then there's the whole nerd layer of reading all the original sources from the 15th century, attempting to retain the historical character of the techniques while engaging in real combat, etc. It's both intellectually and physically stimulating.
So far I've got about 40 fig trees in containers (~30 varieties), am focusing a bit more on blackberries this year (4 varieties that were planted last year), and we also have strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, as well as a more standard annual garden with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc as well as some wild edibles: mulberries, wineberries, and black raspberries.
There's a lot of interesting angles to this hobby: fruit selection, cultivation, harvesting, pest management (annoying but still interesting), landscape design, etc. Planning cycles are months at a minimum, and but more often you have to keep in mind what you want the landscape and experience to be like years from now.
It makes it more enjoyable to spend time outside doing physical things when the weather is warm, and I mostly take a break from it (or switch to planning) during the winters here.
They're essentially a combination of a plane, spoke-shave, draw-knife and gouge but all in a one handed tool. They were primarily used by Native Americans to build things like canoes, snowshoes, baskets etc. I first found about them from reading John McPhee's Survival of the Bark Canoe [1] but there are lots of uses of them on video on the website below (which I created).
If you want to get into woodworking but want only a few tools and/or a very portable tool, highly recommend.
e.g. in theory you could build an entire canoe with an axe, crooked knife and 3 or 4 sided awl (and a lot of time, patience and materials)
0 - https://crookedknives.com/
1 - https://amzn.to/3NSj4T3
Think of all the jobs that have to be done to run a railway and you will be able to find a museum that does it: heavy maintenance, boiler work, fitting and turning, blacksmithing, woodwork, upholstering, painting, catering, engine driving, fireman, signalling, customer service, ...
It's a great way to meet people, learn new skills and work with physical things.
Other similar social dance forms from the UK are Contra dancing, English Country dancing, and Ceilidh dancing. Square dancing in the US developed out of these forms. Many other cultures have their own social dance forms, with varying levels of formalization.
Meaningful contribution is easy: these groups always benefit from more participants. Scottish Country dance has a formalized teaching certificate program, roughly equivalent to a Master's degree worth of work (and if you're a UK resident it qualifies to teach PE in UK schools).
https://www.qavvali.com/
EDIT: I have one more page but that is not in navigation yet for people not familiar with the genre. The site is still work in progress -- if you have any feedback, please do leave it here, on the website if you can. The content curation is the most tedious part! https://www.qavvali.com/tradition/
I wrote software to generate patterns given configurations and keep track of which row I'm on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40307089
I am sharing some of my patterns here: https://alejo.ch/2s0
I'm currently working on my second ruana.
It's something I got into a few years ago and has been a real eye-opener into the world of perfumery and our wonderful olfactory senses. Strangely, though I suspect is the case with many other hobbies, there is crossover with programming albeit somewhat abstractly.
Often it's about building abstractions and reusable components. For example let's say you wish to create an apple note (typically referred to as an accord). You're not tasked with creating the scent of an actual apple but rather the illusion of apple. This is done by mixing ingredients (usually referred to as raw materials) which are generally split into two categories, synthetic and natural, where a synthetic material if often just an isolated molecule and a natural material may be an oil extracted from nature or a tincture, among other kinds. Once you have mixed the raw materials and are happy with the result, you've essentially created a formula which is a reusable component that can then be used in one or many of your creations.
Aside from the creative process of making the actual perfume, you've then got a ton of applications in which to use it such as a fine fragrance, a candle, room spray, shower gel, shampoo, laundry detergent to name just a few.
With new raw materials becoming available all the time there are just endless possibilities as to what you can create and it, for me, has been a lot of fun both learning the craft and creating actual perfumes that I myself now wear.
Nowadays there are nice, cheapish groove boxes that are perfect for noodling on the couch. I started with the Novation Circuit Tracks, and also really enjoy the Teenage Engineering EP-133. Not to say that I am any good at this, but it's an enjoyable hobby! Bonus if you are friends who are also into it and you can jam together :)
[1] https://youtu.be/I2S72eajLzw
It's also a recognized UNESCO recognized intangible cultural heritage in at least half a dozen countries.
https://www.demoparty.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
Every couple of months the family and I will book out some long weekend to just go to an Airbnb in some random town with some copy paper and just go around trying to draw what we think is around us. Inevitably the lines collide and we have to ask some local passerby for help, and if they know any interesting places nearby, and before you know it they're following along with a colored pencil and some copy paper against a hardcover book too.
A lot of people think of it as looking for paw/hoof marks in the mud, but tracking can actually be quite involved, requiring you to understand the environment and ecology as a whole.
For example, tracking birds is outrageously difficult and when I first started out I didn't think it was possible. But the more I learned about birds, their habits (per species), their environment, I started to see signs everywhere. It really got my eyes open and I started seeing the same old places in completely new ways!
And in terms of contributing something, there are all sorts of apps/organization that can help you identify different species and in turn you give them data in the form of pictures, location, etc. I use iNaturalist myself, but there are others.
I lived in a town where on any sunny day I could go for a walk and be almost guaranteed to spot a water mains leak I hadn't seen before, which I'd then report and see how long it would be before it was fixed.
The record was over a year for one of them.
( Yes, it was a Thames Water area. )
It’s surprisingly deep for something that looks so simple. You can start with almost nothing: a small axe to split the wood and a knife to shape it. That’s enough to make your first spoon. From there, it can become as technical or as artistic as you want, depending on how far you go.
There’s also a whole international community around it. People organize small gatherings and larger meetups where they carve together, share techniques, compare tools, and pass down very specific bits of knowledge. There is a whole series of videos about this on youtube on a channel named "zed outdoors". This hobby also had me look around for wood everywhere, when walking or driving and you can do it almost everywhere as long as you have a small knife with you.
Also, using a spoon you made yourself is genuinely satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain. It changes the relationship you have with a very ordinary object.
It looks like a quiet craft, but you can go very far with it.
If anyone is curious, I put out a single recently (remaster from last year): https://soundcloud.com/vectordust/ion-dunes-1
My main personal goal right now is to release a full length album this year.
Also, I’m trying to learn guitar - right now following the Justinguitar.com lessons
Another niche hobby of mine is constellations groups: you meet with others to simulate and explore a problem somebody within the group is facing; a bit like impro theatre but real-life issues. Very interesting and doesn't require any skills, you just "do". I often just go and participate as a viewer: Better than cinema!
I also like NVC (non-violent communication) classes and trainings. It's a hobby but a bit more effort, you spend time with other likeminded people, learn something about the inner functioning of others, plus it improves my communication and conflict skills, both in personal and business areas.
The software wont be sexy, but will help the non profits and the people they serve
I'm primarily a salsa dancer (~18 years), but spent a few years doing a buncha other dances to get an understanding of the music and movement so I'm pretty much beginner-intermediate in a buncha other dances (equiv of 1-2 year level dancer) -- Bachata, West Coast Swing, Fusion, and a splash of a ton of other dances.
The best I can explain to most people is that dance is a conversation to a topic (music) through the language of motion instead of sound, and that just like rewarding conversations we can have through verbal language and text, some of the most resonant conversations can be had through connection and touch.
For the subset of folks who happen to be gamers here, this is a massively multiplayer co-op music game with a very high skill curve.
I started dancing due to taking a popular social dance series at college by Richard Powers, and that was the gateway for my lifelong dance practice. It allowed me to indulge in another side of collaborative music, gave me a good relationship with interpersonal connection and physical touch, and provided me with a fairly active and healthy hobby for my life.
Can't say enough good things about it, just that the skill curve for beginners is high -- the first year is known as beginner's hell, but once you establish a basic vocabulary in the dance it becomes so much more artistic and creative.
Also, obviously it's your life, and we're here on Earth to fart around, but I have spent a good portion of my life dipping into one hobby after another, as my dad did before me, so I'm half speaking to myself when I ask this: why do you think you can't meaningfully contribute to any of these realms, even now? To me that sounds like some deep seated fear or doubt, some aversion to competition, some overriding bitterness. I'm slightly worried you'll just be back here in another couple of years trying to find another new hobby, unsullied by the efforts and achievements of others. You won't find that! I would actually suggest a particularly expensive hobby: going to therapy. Try that, and learn that you're already enough, and if your contributions are meaningful to you, that's all that matters. Happy to be way off the mark here though.
People pay vast accruing cumulative sums over time to go to the gym and my exercise pays me with every single walk. Some of that modern human history I have found dates back hundreds of years in the form of coins and bottles while some of the native human history I have found dates back 10 thousand years. I cannot neglect the fossils either as the oldest I have found reviewed by an expert is said to be Paleozoic tabulate coral being over 251 million years aged.
Thanks to gravity everything lost in the past is under our feet and as digitalization has taken over our global society, created by some of those reading this here, there are not many folks walking let alone looking. I found my first item over 14 years ago now and while my partner HATES the aggregate volume of the things I have collected she cannot neglect the uniqueness, rarity and value of some of those items. Every single walk inspires real motivation however one needs their health first to take that walk.
Stay Healthy!
Looking at moss, pond water, microbes, tardigrades, paramecia, cells, plants, crystals, stuff around the house
You can get a decent microscope for like $250 and just get a smartphone mount to take high quality pictures/videos.
I feel like with astronomy/telescopes you spend a ton of money just to see a blurry blob whereas microscopes are way more bang-for-buck in terms of how much cool science stuff you can see for cheap.
I absolutely love my ancient machines, and I use them to explore period applications, much more than games.
I also love to restore and preserve them. There’s something magical about a Sun workstation Solaris 2 a Frog Design Trinitron monitor. or a Microvax running VMS and DECWindows. Or a multi-user Altair Z80. I think it’s sad a lot of software was lost and some platforms were denied the documentation that’d enable their preservation (looking at you, IBM - document the AS/400 and release old OS to hobbyists).
[Edit] The thing that I find the most fascinating is that all the complex design you see, are done with only using a pair of compass and rulers.
My main instrument is the electroduochord, a stereo two-stringed instrument played with a drone motor rotary magnetic bow. https://youtu.be/G1ftvw-Y6pk
I've also hooked up audio jacks to small solar panels to convert vibrations in light into sound. https://youtu.be/ZF2Rn5YfBC8
Now I'm working on cybernetic drumming and rhythm synthesis. https://youtu.be/oJZeP4Naqxo https://youtu.be/NwNrJLvHuAE
Repairing a watch feels similar to dealing with code to me:
- observing to see how/why certain watch components/chunks of code work and interact with each other - analyzing performance - disassembling and cleaning parts/"cleaning" code - troubleshooting why something isn't working - repairing faults caused by the previous watchmaker/developer
I highly recommend it to anyone needing something physical to do after a day spent staring at a screen. Stare at a watch instead!
LLMs have really revitalized interest in these areas. AI can really help navigate the initial learning curve, can do a surprising amount of "heavy lifting" and can make tedious but useful work much easier. Do you want your little language to have a language server and nice editor-specific syntax highlighting? Do you need to write a parser with decent error messages? Do you need to prove a bunch of largely straightforward lemmas to get to the proof you actually care about? All of these things are easier (and, hopefully, more fun) than they were a few years ago. But, at the same time, there is still a lot of room for human insight and design in this process. There are a lot of areas that AI can't handle (or, at least, can't handle well) and, of course, nothing stops you from doing the fun stuff by hand even if you could hand it off to Claude.
And, of course, all this PL stuff was fun before LLMs. It's even more fun now even if you don't want to use AI yourself, because more people are doing and talking about PL stuff online, and there are more tools and libraries you can use yourself.
https://successfulsoftware.net/2024/08/04/making-your-own-ho...
It's quite easy and you don't have to make it super hot.
I am currently growing chillis for the next batch.
Engineering and machinery is still a place full of exploration if you have the chops. If you don't have them yet then there is plenty of topics within that domain to explore; you'll never run out of things to learn there.
My 0.02c : learn to disregard the crowds and focus on your own work. Just because people are doing something you used to do doesn't mean they have anywhere near the depth of understanding and 'freedom of movement' as you do as a 'resident expert'.
also : the fact that no one is doing something may be a signal; crowds form for a reason. Very few hobbyist bomb-squad folk and rabid-racoon-caregivers, get what I mean?
the GPT3 models didn't keep you from learning about ML. The industry didn't push you from keyboard and printers. You did these things.
If you're trying to lead an entirely one-off human life with total uniqueness from other people then all I could suggest is hallucinogens , but personally I think that the goal of just being unique for the sake of being unique is ludicrous.
Just find enjoyment, that's the goal for me at least.
This hobby also includes trying to convince him that the business schemes he comes up with are not great—they're exclusively fraud-related, such as various forms of gambling and crypto stuff.
Mum keeps telling me that if I do not look after him, he will likely end up in a worst situation. He is in his early 40s by the way.
I did a second job as a hobby so I could just pay him the money, but that did not work because he keeps investing it in one of his schemes. So, I have to find him a job and convince him to keep it. I have a set of fake accounts that I use to apply to jobs and beg him take them on while he continuously says "you do it".
This has been going on for 7 years now.
Started taking it a bit more seriously over the last 3 months and I've started building a specific game that I'm slowly building out
It's a top down ARPG called Mechstain where the player creates and pilots voxel based mechs
Instead of traditional gear, your mech has a physical voxel footprint that you the player have to fit weapons and components inside
Your job is to manage space, power and mass, what you can fit and power directly becomes your stats and abilities, essentially a bin packing problem
Basically take Diablo 2 and remix it with Kerbal Space Program, still fleshing out the various systems, but I'm really enjoying the process of slowly designing systems, iterating on it and fleshing it out
It's quite fun taking thoughts I've been noodling on for years and trying to figure out if they synergise with what I'm looking at and do they provide interesting player decisions
Recently onboarded a 3d artist and it's really making things look a lot better
If anyone has experience lighting this sort of game, I'd love to talk to them, still trying to figure that out =)
Creating the sequences is time consuming, and lot of people end up buying them or sharing them, but those are rarely as good as the ones you make for yourself.
Some folks have dabbled with using AI to create the sequences. I think the biggest issues are lack of training data and it's a very visual art, so there needs to be a better feedback between the text representation and the visual manifestation.
So if you're into using AI to make physical world things better, that would be a good place to look!
[0] https://xlights.org
[1] https://youtu.be/enhhtPZMwCE?t=119
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5dfpe_-Lgg