Hobbies

[cucubits]

It may be interesting to hear what other activities we like (besides tinkering with our laptops). The more we know about each other, the more of a community we'll grow here... and it's always fun to get new ideas to eat up free time and thin out the wallet 😆

 

I've always been complaining there aren't enough hours during a day. Somehow I never get bored but on the flip side, I often find myself starting on too many adventures to handle in parallel.

 

- ever since high-school I've been on/off into the RC world. Some cars but mostly flying things. I like all of them, I build from balsa kits, I bought RTF planes, built drones, gliders. I've even delved into the gas engines world but mostly electric nowadays. Sadly I go flying more and more rarely lately and there are fewer of us left than about 5 years ago.

- 3D Printing is also a big part of my activities. I've been learning Fusion360 a lot and there's always some thing I need to work on and print, either to fix something around the apt, or for a plane or something related to the next item on the list 🙂

- this one is more recent but it doesn't seem to slow down. As many others from around the beginning of the pandemic, I started to learn about astronomy. It's amazing what you can see and how detailed you can get images of deep sky objects with the current technology available. Slowly I've gathered a few telescopes, camera, lots and lots of bits and pieces and whenever there's a clear night, I usually go out for a few hours next to the parking lot at our apartment. If there are others interested, it would be awesome to maybe open a separate Astronomy related thread and talk about whatever.

 

A cool little project I'm very proud of, the one connecting point 2 to 3 above, is this 3D Printed 8 inch telescope: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/704315-3d-printed-astronomy/page-23#entry10905513

Lots of time in Fusion360 and I think over 100 printing hours. It's working amazingly well, the only problem is, as mentioned, I can't find enough time in a day to use it to its fullest capabilities.

 

[Katja]

I have a nasty MMORPG hobby of sinking time into those; otherwise, I'm in the mech keyboard rabbit hole. I also tend to enjoy doing softmodding on game consoles (current focus is the Wii U, given I can't program), because who doesn't like running unsigned code on a console you love?

I also like putting Linux on more devices than I care to admit to. Overall, my hobbies stay kind of in the line of tech, but outside of that? Anime. I'm weeb trash.

[cucubits]

11 minutes ago, Katja said:

I also like putting Linux on more devices than I care to admit to.

I'm guilty of this as well. I've got a little raspberry pi4 box automating various things around the apt (lights/fans) and I have Linux running on my NAS box too.

[Katja]

1 minute ago, cucubits said:

I'm guilty of this as well. I've got a little raspberry pi4 box automating various things around the apt (lights/fans) and I have Linux running on my NAS box too.

I haven't used a Raspberry Pi in a long time; the last one I used was an original Model B rev B, but I've thought about getting one for some time; currently though I'm looking at getting another laptop to do some hardware tinkering and also to use as a small workhorse.

[Yotsuko]

I enjoy watching anime and playing games.  Total nerd stuff.

For games, I typically go for Final Fantasy XIV (runs great on Apple Silicon Macs) or older consoles such as the Wii U and Xbox.

[Prototime]

On 1/26/2022 at 11:46 AM, cucubits said:

- this one is more recent but it doesn't seem to slow down. As many others from around the beginning of the pandemic, I started to learn about astronomy. It's amazing what you can see and how detailed you can get images of deep sky objects with the current technology available. Slowly I've gathered a few telescopes, camera, lots and lots of bits and pieces and whenever there's a clear night, I usually go out for a few hours next to the parking lot at our apartment. If there are others interested, it would be awesome to maybe open a separate Astronomy related thread and talk about whatever.

 

If you make an astronomy thread, I'd be interested in participating. I've loved astronomy since I was a kid. Never have owned a telescope, though I love stargazing; unfortunately, I can see few stars in the bright city where I live. But I have read quite a bit on astronomy and astrophysics (amateur-level reading, at least), and really enjoy YouTube channels like PBS SpaceTime. Good stuff.

[cucubits]

26 minutes ago, Prototime said:

If you make an astronomy thread, I'd be interested in participating. I've loved astronomy since I was a kid. Never have owned a telescope, though I love stargazing; unfortunately, I can see few stars in the bright city where I live. But I have read quite a bit on astronomy and astrophysics (amateur-level reading, at least), and really enjoy YouTube channels like PBS SpaceTime. Good stuff.

Great, I will open one and prepare some materials for it. Good idea.

[serpro69]

I used to play Airsoft a lot, was my main hobby from 2006 till around 2016. Have been moving around quite a bit since 2016, so that hobby of mine had to be put on hold.

Other than that my hobbies are very much techy-geeky stuff.

I also like astronomy, though I never owned a telescope myself, so I'm limited to videos and documentaries mostly. I would be very much interested in an astronomy-focused thread here as well :)

[cucubits]

I started one today, posted some info and pics:

 

[serpro69]

4 minutes ago, cucubits said:

I started one today, posted some info and pics:

Yeah, as I finished typing my previous post I discovered your thread :) Looks really amazing. Thanks for sharing.

[HWI]

Cars, guns, computers, video games, and anime. Kind of an odd mix and the first 3 cost entirely too much money.

[Nick]

Tennis, ultimate, cooking, working on cars, and side jobs. 

[Tenoroon]

Playing musical instruments is fun, especially when you can play whatever you'd like. Right now I'm mostly playing the French Horn, but I play Trumpet during the Football season when I march and occasionally play the Baritone Saxophone for fun. I've tried many times to play the Bassoon as I really like the sound and tone of it, but the fingerings are too complicated for me, the Saxophone is kind of my limit for how many fingerings/positions I can remember.   

[KabyZen]

For me it is piano and soft-modding every game console I own. Oh yeah and also playing MMORPGS, mainly the Korean one...

[Sandy Bridge]

My main two non-tech-related hobbies are cooking and outdoors activities, specifically hiking and bicycling.

Cooking is just great for quality of life, not to mention being able to eat deliciously without spending a fortune.  I've always enjoyed cooking and have gradually become better at it, but about the only good thing to come from 2020 was that cooking almost all my meals at home took my cooking to the next level.  Italian is my specialty, particularly making homemade sauces.  But I'll make a variety.  In 2020 I learned how to make good cream sauces and how to make my favorite Americanized Chinese dishes at home to replace take-out; in 2021 I expanded my repertoire of chicken dishes, especially marinades; this year my goal is to increase my proficiency in Indian cuisine.

Hiking and bicycling have also been great for quality of life.  I've been bicycling some during the warmer months for years, but broke my annual record five times over last year, clocking in at over 1500 miles (2500km).  A friend convinced me to try hiking in the Appalachians, and I caught the bug for that, too.  So I got into the habit of taking short-to-medium length trips to go hiking and/or cycling in a new locale last year; also a fun way to discover new, often smaller towns and cities.  For any Parks and Rec fans, Jerry wasn't wrong about Muncie being a great place to go on vacation.  They've got some amazing restaurants and breweries, and are located along the longest recreational trail in Indiana.

Now that it's winter I haven't really been cycling, but hiking in the snow is fun.

[serpro69]

7 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

My main two non-tech-related hobbies are cooking and outdoors activities, specifically hiking and bicycling.

I used to enjoy cooking quite a lot, even thought about doing that professionally at one point in life. But lately it's become more of a "chore" than a "hobby" for me, unfortunately. I just have way too many things going on during weekdays to be able to cook anything beyond "quick and simple" 3 times a day. But I try to cook something more "fancy" at least once a weekend.

I also love hiking and cycling, but mostly during warmer seasons.

[Sandy Bridge]

11 hours ago, serpro69 said:

I used to enjoy cooking quite a lot, even thought about doing that professionally at one point in life. But lately it's become more of a "chore" than a "hobby" for me, unfortunately. I just have way too many things going on during weekdays to be able to cook anything beyond "quick and simple" 3 times a day. But I try to cook something more "fancy" at least once a weekend.

I also love hiking and cycling, but mostly during warmer seasons.

It definitely requires some time.  For that reason, I prefer dishes that make enough to have leftovers, and if it's a few meals worth of leftovers instead of just one, all the better.  Lunch today was leftovers from Wednesday, dinner will be either more of the same or leftovers from yesterday, and whichever I don't choose can be lunch tomorrow.  Although yesterday's cooking was "quick and simple".

But I also have relatively free weekday evenings, especially in these days when a lot of people still aren't back to their pre-pandemic social schedules.  No kids is probably the biggest single thing ensuring I have time in the evenings.

I might have to start a cycling/hiking/outdoors thread.  I got a hike in today, 2.7 miles which is shorter than usual, but it finished off a much longer trail in one direction.

[Samir]

Super cool idea for a thread. :)  So my main ones are Cars, Computers, and Photography.  But these all have their own niches like mech keyboards (I'm on all 3 communities), automotive makes/marques/clubs/etc (I'm a member of almost everything--yes, all the hundreds of forums out there including my own, Huntsville Car Scene.com which is in a hiatus while I work on some family issues), and photography sites as well like dpreview, fredmiranda, etc.

Indian cooking was something I never expected to find in this thread, and my wife is actually an excellent cook for south Indian dishes (because she is south Indian, lol).  But she's really great at making the dishes and has even made some custom food for me to suit my tastes that is just wonderful.  And it's not just Indian cooking that she plays with as she's made an awesome chicken soup from scratch and we once made a shrimp linguine together that was just as good as a restaurant.  Definitely reach out if you want some recipes or links that my wife uses for some of her creations. :)

[ratchetnclank]

My main hobbies besides the obvious of computers and gaming are Photography and Cooking, spent a long time improving at this and think that I've got pretty good at it. Watch a lot of stuff on YouTube for tips and trick especially J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, recently been trying to get good a bread baking specifically. I also code but not so much in my spare time recently as doing full time at work takes the shine off it a bit.

Not exactly a hobby but I love to learn about engineering stuff too, videos on how rockets/planes/buildings/road whatever bit of machinery etc are created and how challenges were overcome. 

[Samir]

Neat to see another photography and cooking enthusiast here. :)  I wouldn't have thought cooking to be something that the community was into--learn something new every day. :)