In 2022 I was toying around with OpenAI's RL Gym, right when the first non-instruct GPT3 model came out. I was thinking about getting into ML a lot more, but hesitated. Before that it was 3D printers, mechanical keyboards, drones, etc. All of these have exploded, and while they are still very interesting, I do love my Browns and manage Prusas for my local hackerspace, they have just, for the lack of a better term, industrialized. I'm also now in a position where I have time and money for it, not like when I was 15 and rating Ender motherboard upgrades I knew I'd never buy.
Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem. There's also biohacking, and while designing chips to go into my body is really interesting, I only have one, and don't want to push it too far. One promising idea is a kind of 'Personal Computer 2', where people try to innovate HCI, and while I really like that and do have some research ideas, I'd like to explore a bit more before delving deep into it.
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.
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.
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.
Rouleaux formations are clumps of red blood cells, and they're bad because 90% of our circulatory system is < 1 cell wide, so clumps cannot pass. Hematological literature of past 50 years is a bit of a mess regarding mechanisms, seemingly has not considered structured water because it's recent and looks a little fringe. Structured water is known to be disrupted by WiFi, so if a clearer connection can be made between structured water and rouleaux, it could offer the simplest and most encompassing explanation for biological harm from EMF; would also make the benefits of sauna, red light therapy, grounding/earthing, and other practices more legible.
I did an n=5 study on sauna and rouleaux (positive result; draft report: https://thespacebetween.xyz/p/sangre-y-sauna/), and some n=1 observations of myself with grounding and wifi. Blog post: https://thespacebetweenx.substack.com/p/blood-and-the-specte...
Frankly this is a bit of a red flag for me in terms of scientific rigour. It sounds like you want the conclusion to be true, or you already believe it to be true, that EMFs are harmful, and you are searching for ways to justify it. Careful with confirmation bias.
> would also make the benefits of sauna, red light therapy, grounding/earthing, and other practices more legible
This is also a bit suspect. These treatments don't seem to have much in common and it's unclear how they may affect the phenomenon you are discussing. Coincidentally they also tend to be some of the go-to treatments for a myriad unscientific wellness practices.
And I'm not sure how you plan to observe the molecular structure of water with a basic microscope. I suppose that trying to induce Rouleaux formations by exposing red blood cells to WiFi is worth a try of course, but it would be very strange if such a basic thing hadn't been observed already by the scientific community.
> Hexagonal water, also known as gel water, structured water, cluster water,[1] H3O2 or H3O2 is a term used in a marketing scam[2][3] that claims the ability to create a certain configuration of water that is better for the body.[4]
> The concept of hexagonal water clashes with several established scientific ideas. Although water clusters have been observed experimentally, they have a very short lifetime: the hydrogen bonds are continually breaking and reforming at timescales shorter than 200 femtoseconds.[7] This contradicts the hexagonal water model's claim that the particular structure of water consumed is the same structure used by the body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_water
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA710QYxEu0 for the latter.
If “structured water” just means that there are tiny ice crystals in water, sure that’s very plausible, but I doubt it would have much of an effect.
PS: Trying to grow crystals of different challenging structures does sound like an awesome hobby.
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.
I made a big effort about 12 years ago to go to a bunch of these (like three meetups a week and trying out a variety of different meetups), but now I mostly stick to a couple of them as I don't have as much time or energy for it anymore. But I've met most of my current friends through those meetups.
Find one you like and keep showing up until you're a regular, and get to know people slowly, and if they like you they start inviting you to things outside of the meetup, and then eventually you end up being friends.
I've done this with three different groups over the years and despite naturally being shy and an introvert I've ended up making friends at each one.
At the height of me doing this (like ten years ago), it got to the point where I'd go about my daily life and about once every other month I'd run into random people I've met at meetups also out and about. Like go out to dinner and spot someone I knew from a meetup also showing up to the same place, or run into them shopping at a Best Buy or something.
Meetups where you do a shared activity seems to be the best, like hikes or movies (+ dinner afterwards) or board games, since you can always focus on the activity if you don't feel like being social, and you have that activity you can always talk about as a subject.
Thanks for unlocking a new anxiety for me.
Heh this has a total “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” vibe.
> Even when considering just three dimensions, fewer than 5% of pilots were “average” in all. [1]
I would guess many/most people probably think they fall into either (1) the normal bucket or (変) the weird/fringe bucket. Either "I am pretty normal" or "I am an outsider". How many think "We're all fairly different once you cluster in any 3 interesting dimensions!"?
But people feel that dichotomy, which makes me think it is largely about perception relative to a dominant culture: the in-group versus out-group feeling. For example, atheists might feel like outsiders in many parts of the U.S., but less so in big cities and in other countries. In dense urban walkable cities (like NYC), people see diversity more directly and more often. Seeing a bunch of people is different than seeing a bunch of cars.
[1]: From "Curse of Dimensionality: Lessons from the U.S. Air Force Cockpit Design" by Maciej Nasinski (2025): https://polkas.github.io/posts/cursedim/
I've been to a lot of meetups and it's definitely hit or miss and obviously depends on the sociability of the people that show up. The better ones I've attended are generally ones where people aren't trying to network for work purposes and are there literally to just socialize. The networking ones I find very dull as it's people just talking shop and career and if you've nothing to offer them on the career front, they move on quickly.
I have literally never been to any kind of organized gathering where this wasn't the objective of most of the people there. Family and children's events excluded (sometimes).
I have been in partying in my teens and twens, 3 years somehow "heavily". When I turned 40, I found out the only reason I went to parties and clubs for me was to meet girls.
[0] https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/this-might-be-oversharing
I advertise on local meetup platforms and in local social media. And I go to so many meetups myself that when people ask me what my hobbies are and I tell them, they get curious and self-invite.
You'd get a bunch of people who say yes but then don't show, this is normal and don't take it personally. Secondly, maybe the first 2-3 times it'd be hard to get people to commit, but once you do it more regularly, people will find it easier to commit to something they know you're already committed to.
> You can receive $1 million immediately for every 1 year of your life you are willing to give up (taken off the end of your life). How many years, if any, do you sell?
> You get to ask a "Cosmic Google" one single question about any mystery in history (e.g., "Who was Jack the Ripper?" or "Are we alone in the universe?") and get the absolute truth. What are you asking?
> If everyone in the world had a floating stat above their head (like "lies told" or "pizzas eaten"), which stat would you want to be able to see?
I have been spending a bit of time at the local board game shops and the crowd sounds quite similar to the crowd you are attracting. On a very basic level I just try to model being a social adult and hope it rubs off.
How have you handled this in past meetups?
Basically the same way you handle the exact same situation outside of organizing meetups, but maybe a bit extra on the friendly-and-try-to-not-traumatize-people-who-might-be-trying side of things.
I'd love to organize something like this in my local community but somehow am not sure where or how to start really.
You start by starting. The first meetup will have a couple people and you let it be awkward and not quite right. Then you do a second, and a third...
I think the 10% neuro-divergent is a positive as it being ND can be very isolating for people
Makes me think a focus around ND alone would be a great idea
Yep, thats me.
It will save both sides a lot of time.
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.
Even worse, they can go into the blind box of your rollover. After two traumatic events where I had bats going into my apartment (and it took me 5 days/nights where I didnt sleep at all to take them out alive), I put something in the opening of the blind box to avoid them getting into it.
However, I don't feel safe. I wake up in the middle of the night with any sound thinking they are trying to get into.
All this introduction is to ask if there is something that detracts bats going near my window. Maybe some kind of ultrasound (that I could play with some kind of speaker), or odor? I don't know, but I'd like to try something that could make me sleep more relaxed.
A bat loved to defecate in my son's bathroom. The most internal room of the house. I've put a sound repellent in the bathroom and it stopped happening
or did you buy one and it was "good enough" ever since?
Couple cool things I've learned about bats.
- They are *extremely* loud in the ultrasound range, 130db echolocation calls from something the size of a mouse.
- On an average recording, the ultrasonic range is almost exclusively filled with sound from wildlife (bugs, birds, etc). I'd expected to see lots of harmonics and whatnot from human-generated sounds but there just aren't that many. It's quiet up there.
- You can leverage these two in combination for sampling by just strapping the recording device to the roof of your car and driving around. The wind and road noise is basically absent and the echolocation calls come through loud and clear. The AudioMoth can be fitted with a GPS receiver to correlate the calls to location (and time ofc)
- There are three primary types of echolocation calls: Search - Semiregular calls just to see what's out there. Approach - Faster rate of calls once prey has been identified. Terminal - Aka feeding buzz, very high rate (200hz) of echolocation calls in the last meter or so of approach. Most of the recordings of bat calls you see on YouTube are slowed down 10x to bring the audio into listening range, but this also slows the call tempo by just as much. They make lots of calls.
- Most bat calls use frequency sweeps rather than continuous tones to pick up both distance and relative velocity of the target (akin to FMCW radar).
- There are more bats around than I realized. I started off by looking for 'good spots', but now I just set the device out on a porch. Many times you'll hear me walking up to the recording device at the end of a recording and there will be 2-3 bats overhead that I was perfectly unaware of.
- Some moths have developed jamming calls that confuse the standard echolocation calls of most bats - https://www.illinoisbats.org/echolocation-jamming-moths/ Some species of bats have developed countermeasures to that.
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.
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”
And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”
That said, hobbies can be remarkably useful because they allow you to create or engage in something that is uniquely tailored to your own personal interests, and the modern economy often doesn't provide that level of personalization, or if it does it's extremely expensive. E.g. the other commenter that decided to design his own clothes because mass produced clothing is really just tailored to "average".
Not everything. Take cooking, one of the most basic hobbies. It's easy to come up with recipes that you enjoy that you cannot order anywhere.
Or the comment here about designing your own clothes, same idea.
I could read that as: wanting to do something interesting that others would benefit from.
Though, I don't really think that's a good reason to filter out things to be enthusiastic about.
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/
If I had more people buying into MeshCore, I might push it to doing something like this, but at the moment I think this sort of setup is beyond anything more than just some simple testing in my case.
Find your local Discord and get rolling. In the Bay Area it's baymc.org.
I've been working on a ukulele for over a year now and it isn't close to done yet, and this is a much smaller project. (Or maybe I should say I've been working on raising kids for a decade and there is another left?).
Examples: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPmHtIa9vAm8wNPeTXP4MoZ...
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIRDOcSQGe8
[1] https://youtu.be/I2S72eajLzw
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).
Same for probably all small dance communities! While it seems like a different kind of 'contribution' than the OP is looking for, it's very meaningful personally to share music and creativity with people. (Personally, I dance lots of Balboa -- a swing dance with a local scene of probably less than 100 active participants.)
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.
OTOH, they are delicious.
We moved into this house partly bc it had an extra ~acre of space beyond the main "yard" which was starting to turn into a forest. We cleared it of woody stuff but left some black raspberries, maybe 10 plants?
2 years later, it turned into an impenetrable ~1/4 acre thicket of mostly black raspberries with some wild blackberries and wineberries among them. We paid to have it mostly cleared again, and now we are occasionally mowing whatever is not intentionally planted or mulched.
Dewberries are a real bitch to get started and don't produce a ton of fruit, but are EASILY the best berries you'll ever eat in your life. The native variety are very tart compared to bred plants, but they're legitimately the best things that you can grow. If you have a spot where grass doesn't grow well, plant these!!
In case it's interesting: people normally grow them from cuttings to make sure that the trees will 1. be female (males have figs, but they're not really edible), 2. hold/ripen fruit without pollination, 3. be true to type, and 4. bear fruit sooner (cuttings can bear fruit the first year under the right circumstances).
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
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
It's a fairly easy woodworking project, and you can get a beautiful result.
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.
Edit: before you think these arts are immune to tech, I once had a student who built a (truly awful) sword fighting "robot" to help train deflecting strikes. Not quite up to par with Dune's robot swordmasters.
Also it's less... scary? At least you'll get less scary-looking bruises (though probably more total number of bruises)
It just seems incredibly divorced from it's martial origins. To each their own.
Just don't go into it if you are looking for realism.
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
I got back into making electronic music a while ago, and you can dig in deeper by getting into hardware synthesizers. And go deeper by getting into hardware modular synths. And go deeper by building modules from kits. And go deeper by learning electronics and designing your own modules.
It's like a big branching tech tree or tech graph.
With fishing, you can get into fly fishing. And when that's too easy, you start tying flies, or maybe tenkara, or, I guess in your case, making fly rods.
I love it.
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
aphackernews-20
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.
Something is stuck within my body most of the time.
Doing certain movements makes this something flow better.
I feel better when this happens.
Breathing in certain ways enhances this something.
I feel A LOT better when this happens.
Still early, exploring.
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/
That being said, your website is wonderful! Nice work.
I would say that a hobby is a bit like a fetish in that it is derived from our interior psychology. My father’s hobby was repairing old scientific instruments, which was perfectly suited to his disposition for quantifying everything in his life, including his family (bless you dad).
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.
But I'll note that it's super...weird? in the sense that it's like halfway between being both relaxing and excitative, nature and machine. I went in expecting a thrill ride and it wasn't quite that, but it wasn't quite relaxing either (though I'd imagine the more you do it the more it feels like the letter!).
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.
Also, I’m trying to learn guitar - right now following the Justinguitar.com lessons
I really don't get obsessed with anything, which might be a fault as that seems to be a trait of people who are really successful in what they do.
On the other hand, it's the one type of exercise I have actually been able to stick with for any length of time. Started about 5 years ago at age 55. So never too late to try it, even if exercise has never been appealing to you.
Started with Stronglifts 5x5 a couple of years ago and has definitely been one of the best things for me. I don't compete but love seeing the numbers go up.
I'm obsessed with Strongman style functional lifting.
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. )
Mains-water leaks however are easy to spot, because they're damp patches (or flowing/trickling water) in otherwise good weather.
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.
I normally can't stand ambient, but you went a different direction in the middle there. You should put out an album, that probably no one will buy, but maybe eventually you get asked to do soundtracks for things.
anyhow, i used to write music. a lot. sometimes you just have to get it out of your skull... https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/valley-boulevard-0237
The software wont be sexy, but will help the non profits and the people they serve
And it has turned into a decent chunk of business over the long run.
Care to elaborate on your process? Curious how you approach them and come up with the best path forward with limited time (assuming you have a full time job as well on the side). Thanks!
By local I would recommend truly local and not a "division" of a national non-profit; those are an entirely different beast.
https://successfulsoftware.net/2018/02/04/volunteering-your-...
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 :)
How does one find these people? Asking for a friend! :D
I've also gone down the synthesizer rabbit hole: prophet-6, full modular setup (rip bank account), subsequent 37. It's great fun!
The only slight downside is I often do it on my own away from the family.
- an amazing crazy chorus module based on one I built for vcvrack
- a pad synth using the PADSynth algorithm
- a pulsar module
- a fun pitch shifting heavy reverb
endless hours of fun!
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.
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!
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.
About 2: Gluten free sourdoughs.
Do you have any good starting points or resources to share?
I admit I haven't gotten around to search very deeply for them yet as I just started thinking about this again yesterday but previous attempts have not given me any good information just one off recipes rather than creating a new bubbly family member to store in your fridge ;)
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.
Also, making (or maybe tuning) a chess engine to teaching sounds like an interesting challenge, actually.
It started as spinning with a hand spindle using prepared (combed/carded) wool, and has evolved into looking for interesting fleeces directly from the shepherds (plenty given away or sold cheaply around here), figuring out how best to wash and process (hand comb? drum carder? spin directly from the slightly-opened locks?), working on which settings on my spinnng wheel will produce the twist I'm looking for, and most recently, dyeing using Easter egg dye and vinegar, which is surprisingly effective.
Oh, and of course, knitting and crocheting with the results.
I still use hand spindles to spin while walking, watching my kid on the playground, or on transit.
No activity brings you more endorphines than being brutalized under controlled conditions.
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).
I was convinced that a party of all Ninjas and Samurai would be unstoppable, but I never could make it work. I recall leveling up to a point where a high enough character would get 3 attacks per turn, and then when hit counterattack twice. Multiply this by the whole party.
But realistically, at some point this flurry of attacks every round just fell over because you need better magic users for enemies with certain weaknesses. My memory is fuzzy, but it also may have related to the increasingly large hordes of enemies which would dilute the effects of so many attacks.
You might like this blog, the author plays through CRPGs in chronological order. Currently they're at the mid 90s. https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/
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.
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 do gundog work, it would be fun to do the tracking together with the dog. (I don’t hunt, it would just be to make some walks more interesting)
I believe we all have three major parts: emotional, intellectual, and physical.
I have been very intellectually oriented, meaning I used my intellectual part even when it was not so useful for the thing I was doing. For example, thinking about emotions or how to do something when it is better than just feel or do.
My aim has been to become more balanced human being, meaning choosing pursuits that activate those other parts as well.
What has stayed with me over the years has been couples' dancing, which fits nicely with physical/emotional side. You just need to find a teacher whose apporach is not intellectual, i.e. based on steps and sequences! I am still doing it 2-5 times per week.
I am also doing regularly: - yin yoga - tai chi - winterswimming
I have had several other niche hobbies throughout the years, like: - fencing - improv theatre - leather works -- I ended up on a very demanding leather shoe course and made my own dancing shoes - wood crafting -- wooden spoons - traditional survival skills -- various kinds of traditional fire making skills, making traditional traps, making emergency tents, making emergency drafts, learning about plants, learning to skin/handle game etc.
Something I wanted to try but did not yet: - flint knapping
It's like being a kid and jumping off the house with a bedsheet, except it works. Most mistakes are laughed off by splashing in the water. I'm 3 years in and I can jump 7-10m then fly like a bird for 5-10 seconds without consequences.
Even as a beginner, sailing around or just feeling a kite pull you around is such a blast. Keep in mind it's really difficult and pretty much requires 10-20 hours of private lessons.
How do you combine it with work? Where I live in NL, there are few days where I’m able to go kiteboarding and I probably won’t know until the day off if it’s possible or not.
Very hard to schedule!
I’m fairly late in my career though (44yo), so I’ve opted for a lower salary, low stress and flexible job.
Is that something that happens to people?
Also how dependent is it on weather? Do you have to monitor the wind to know if its worth going out?
That happens very rarely like recently in Israel where they went out on a storm, and there was a very rare very-big gust. But extremely rare comibation of things that can go wrong.
Yes you need to monitor the wind. I'm kiting today for example.
Really efficient adrenaline with relatively very low risk.
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 had a long time when I was bored and carried the camera in my pack but never took any pictures, then one day I looked out at the sports center out my window and decided to start shooting sports.
Posting photos to socials I found flower photographs were popular so I take a lot of them and find ways to not get bored. (Maybe I will start focus stacking one of these days)
Since the beginning of the year I have been "going out" as a character who is a bit like a Disney cast member who gets photos like
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116326541009492328
from people who recognize my character. Like the Disney cast member it works better when people have seen the movie so i hand out these tokens
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/116086491667959840
which spread virally around a university campus, particularly among Chinese students who recognize the huli jing and all the time I have experiences "that could only happen in a manga" when, for instance, somebody who's heard the rumors is waiting at the bus stop for me. Laugh but all my marketing KPIs have an extra zero on the right!
When I was laid off at the end of last year I decided to formalize this and now have a side gig (real, insured business) where I shoot local youth & high school sports for free, but make a few bucks (to cover my equipment costs plus spending money) doing portraits, headshots and team media days. It's proven fulfilling, mostly because since I do the events for free I tend to receive a lot of goodwill and word-of-mouth referrals. Far more than I can handle given my day job.
I had a nasty altercation with a parent last fall and now I can't pick up the camera w/o getting PTSD-like symptoms. I'd love to know how "pros" handle dealing with that kind of thing. I had a similar situation years ago w/ a guy who got in my face for shooting on the street at a festival. My solution there was to just stop doing it.
For the latter, make sure you don't need a media credential (you probably don't) and get one if you do.
For the former, if your kid is competing, the odds are good that you already are acquainted with their teammates' parents so you can just ask directly, especially if you intend to share your album with them afterward.
My experience is that, with littler kids, if a photographer is not in the parent sideline/area, parents may wonder who they are. With older (high school) kids, they expect some media coverage so that part isn't a big deal. What they do care about is being able to reshare your shots to their socials or use them for other personal reasons. Depending on the high school or club, you may or may not need a media credential. If not, it's usually up to the coach (for high school) to decide whether you're allowed on/next-to the field/track/court. It's helpful to build a rapport with the coaches. It's also helpful to be able to show that you're a legitimate business and not just some rando.
In my case, I do events for free and provide full-res post-processed albums via Google Photos. This is a labor of love because I know athletes and their families (not to mention yearbook staff!) appreciate it. Maxpreps, SBLive and others contract with local photogs to cover events, too, and those sites aggregate and host the albums... but downloads average ~$20/image. It's not hard for a decent local photographer to favorably compete against those freelancers. Then it's also easier for me to upsell on portraits and media days. Media Days for school teams I typically charge ~$35/kid. For club teams it's usually $50/kid. For that they get a guaranteed 3 poses each plus leftover time for fun poses. Unlike a lot of commercial photogs, I charge this flat rate per athlete instead of a booking fee + per-image download or print packages. My experience is that they really just want digitals most of the time anyway, and even if I net less I don't really care because this is just a labor of love where I can cover my expenses and earn some spending money (~$10k/yr is acceptable given the time I'm putting into it).
People generally ignore or even help workers with a bright vest, carrying a ladder, etc. So I imagine you would get a lot less suspicious looks doing something like that versus looking like an Average Joe.
Maybe with a polo shirt and embroidered made-up photography company logo and name on it.
My current style is centered around getting posed group portraits at events and is low risk. My act seems to disrupt people's patterns and drag them along with my script, I suspect a lot of people who might want to mess with a foxographer might think twice about messing with a huli jing (rabies, fleas, ticks, cantrips, curses, ...) and if they aren't afraid of a dangerous beast they might be afraid of a dangerous and delusional therian. I think I run a tiny risk of the sort of violence you might be targeted for if you go out in drag but so what...
I do get harassed by some people online who keep asking if I have consent for my photos and it bothers me more than it should and for now I reply like "notice that they posed for me" or "that person was carrying that protest sign on a busy road with thousands of cars going by". It's a matter of time before they lecture me again that it boggles their mind that I'd take pictures at a No Kings protest and I am plotting how to bait them so that they embarrass themselves enough that they give up.
(Yikes-- I feel my pulse in my neck and chest just writing about this.)
I likely need to see a therapist about it. Wow.
People using cell phones as cameras get a pass (at least in sports).
At my Uni I usually go right in without any trouble, the only case I got hassled was a woman's hockey game and that time I kept repeating "I've never had trouble getting into a game before" (true) until they gave up and let me in. (Which doesn't leave me inclined to try again, but I'd already bought a ticket and didn't want to back and stash my gear in my office) I hear in hockey they are really worried about wildcat video streams.
Some of the sports at Cornell are exceptionally laid back. We are one of a few schools that plays sprint football which is 100% the same as regular football except players have to weigh less than 178 lbs [1], I know the head coach, I know people in the parent's association, they leave the gate unlocked and i go right down to the sidelines.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_football
See https://learnandsupport.getolympus.com/om-system-ambassadors...
As an example, we've just came back from a holiday trip, and if I had taken a digital camera I would've taken a photo of a beautiful scene, looked at the screen and feel dissatisfied with it, and try to take another, and another, eventually heading back to the hotel dissatisfied and thinking I could've done better. But with a film camera, I end up taking one or two photos and then continue enjoying the place. Two weeks later at home I either get surprised or disappointed.
I don't share it on social media. I don't even share it with friends and family anymore. It's just for me, and every now and then I share it with a small online community who are also into film photography.
I'd love to get into darkroom printing next but financials and physical space is limited at the moment.
These guys are legit and actually flying airframes instead of just ignition on a test stand. https://www.halfcatrocketry.com/
The hobby is geography constrained though, you need access to large open spaces. Even small engines are spectacularly loud and igniting one in your garage would scare the crap out of your neighbors.
Edit: if you're in/near LA this club is pretty much ground zero. Tom Mueller of SpaceX's Merlin engine series fame was discovered here iirc. https://rrs.org
What differentiates High-Power from the other options?
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.
He's a tech guy, but no engineer. He saw the need (he works on a SAR team), saw the solution and made it happen. Inspiring, really.
I do a bit of 3d printing stuff myself. Personally, I'm attracted that it's getting more professional. I can use it as the impetus to learn real engineering/CAD, etc. Not in an "I'm an engineer" way, but still using real principles to make better things. You don't have to be intimidated if you keep your identity small and let it inspire you instead.
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
The main community and learning resource is at http://aagenielsen.dk.
Much less niche, but I'm also really into acting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=do5PicgU0Jw
Some of the most interesting books were especially challenging. One in old German that was missing a couple of pages. It was a popular fairytale so I found the missing content online and a closely matching font, and reconstructed the pages. Another was in an Asian script I not only couldn't read, I didn't know how to sort or even properly rotate some loose pages, so I had to ask the owner. In a few cases when bits of the cover were missing, I found photos online, and printed a patch. Fun times!
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
This one was created autonomously using a feedback algorithm controlling the speed of the rotary magnetic bow. https://stefanpowell.bandcamp.com/album/autonomous-drone-lul...
It's an album meant for falling asleep.
I've also dabbled in home wine making, cheese making, preserving and pickling, and they've all given me a deeper understanding of fermentation even if I've not stuck with them as much as I did with bread. However, if I go for a wine-tasting or a beer brewery I now know what they're talking about when they go into the process of it, which is a good conversation starter if nothing else.
There's also gardening, but that's mostly something my partner stuck with instead.
Is this something that would be saturated in the Bay Area? Does the SAR team provide the drone?
I'm not sure how saturated it would be. My advice would be to contact the closest FD (or PD if you wanted to go the SAR route) and ask. If they say they're covered, ask if they know any other stations that could use a hand. There's bound to be a department that needs volunteers.
The FD should have an enterprise level DJI (or equivalent) with color and IR cameras but it will probably depend on how well funded the department is. SAR may be a different story as far as equipment but I don't know since that's not the route I pursued.
If you have English-style tower bells near you, it's worth checking out, even if only to listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lyDCUKsWZs
I've written a blog post about it [1] though there have been a few updates since I've written that.
I honestly think it might be a fun thing for me to keep doing, whether or not I'm successful with my search. I think there is a lot of old software that is just sitting on old hard drives that is waiting to be preserved.
[1] https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Technical/2026/03-March/The-Q...
I have been looking into the Concurrent DOS 286 and FlexOS lineage. Since there is still some level of commercial usage of it, it seems like people are a big more reluctant to talk about it in any capacity.
That said, if you're looking for something meaningful, consider doing something with kids. Technical or not, it doesn't matter. Could be anything from volunteering at a local sports club to teaching part-time at a trade school.
It’s not very niche, but as a hobby it’s pretty fulfilling. It allows for a lot of play, and you end with something tasty. Also, makes for a great small gift for friends and family.
As someone who has learned a lot of skills and hobbies online and likes sharing info, fishing has been a really interesting different world. Because anglers are effectively competing for a scarce resource, specific information about good fishing spots is understandably not shared widely.
So you have to put in the time yourself to try spots and see what produces. But in order to catch fish, you need to be at the right place, at the right time of year, at the right time of day, with the right lure, and the right technique. Get any one of those wrong and the only signal you get is "no bites". That makes it really tough to learn and improve.
I've found that taking detailed notes helps me see patterns in what works that would otherwise be hard to see.
https://github.com/MichaelAPerry/FishDex
I got into scuba diving while living in NC, and it just happens that there's a lot of it off the coast! The other problem is that it's deep. Diving down to 130 feet sounds cool until you experience hours on a boat only to get a few minutes at the bottom. Eventually I got bothered to learn more about diving.
I headed down to northern Florida to dive with GUE. My instructor was a person who regularly got hit up to dive to exotic places all over the world. Missions like collecting/deploying samples, archaeology, recovery. Here were people meaningfully impacting the environment, science, and keeping technical know-how alive.
I don't know how to convey a the wonder I feel in text. Check it out maybe.
Just kidding. Honestly, the best ideas out there are low-tech. Anything where as you put it is "crowded" with tech people don't want, but is also of good build.
Or if you must add an LLM and a touch screen to everything, do it in a way that respects user consent and boundaries.
One thing I wanted to get into but can't due to time is sub-150ms responsive LLM for use with drones and bots. Faster response time than a human brain. Multiple LLMs running on dedicated hardware to preempt and predict response for various stimuli.
A drone you can't shoot-down with an arrow, and a robot you can't beat at dodgeball.
Now imagine the implications of that!? But the first problem I'd like to solve is remotely piloted work. if that LLM and response-time combo works, you would be able to safely work alongside a remotely piloted robot in a hazardous construction site better than you would with a human (it could even improve safety for humans). At all times it is getting audio/sonar, lidar, infrared and visual (image processing) input and several of these really fast LLMs (not just, LLMs aren't great at certain tasks, so naturally other types of ML and predefined routines would also be running) will be preparing if/else decision trees in case a potential condition is met. Sees a ladder just leaning there? what if it randomly slips, how would it react? plan is in place under 150ms while other plans are being formulated for other things as well.
So for instance, I use YNAB for our family budgeting, and I have it setup so that if I go a whole week without performing reconciliations, I get dinged -1. Otherwise this sits at 1.0. Then I have a score for journaling - my goal is to journal 4-5 times per week, so each time I journal it resets the score to 1, and then slowly ticks down to 0 over time. Then I have a number of Apple health scores that get imported automatically via REST API. This part compiles all the data on calories, relevant macronutrients (I mostly track protein and fiber currently), steps, workouts, etc. and builds a nice visualization. I consider a total integration score of 0.8 to be pretty good - keeping at that level is actually better than seeking for a perfect 1.0 all the time as my theory is that it will prevent burnout and allow for some forgiveness, because I can't be perfect.
It's been a fun project, and one that I generally try to avoid any AI use. Fun to just build and because the stakes are so low I just chip away at one feature at a time, carving out 15 minutes here or there.
In all honesty, under the hood it's a bit of a mess. I may have eschewed some of the software engineering best practices in lieu of building something quickly that I wanted. I'll get around to going back through and retrofitting the app with some cleaner code, but for now I couldn't even open-source it without a self-perceived hit to my portfolio.
The project largely started out as something else. I initially wanted a combined TO-DO list and journal. Rather than checking things off I would run the journal content through a local LLM and have it check things off for me based on what I wrote each day. That's yet to be implemented. Then I moved on to an "ordering" system - I was inspired by the way that medical practitioners put in orders once they determined a course of treatment, and thought that might be a useful model to help motivate me to get things on my list done more effectively. I built this, but have utilized it less than I thought. Since then it's mostly been focus on the integrations and scoring system. The whole thing is highly modular, so for each integration I grab a template for the visualization I want to build and then need to reason out how to get the data into the system, which usually involves an API integration, scraping from some online data source, and/or data engineering. It's very fun, because each integration module has its own challenges.
I built the app using a standard stack of .NET core, Blazor server, and the data is stored in SQL server and data operations are handled with EF core. I use the Radzen component library, which I like a lot from a developer perspective but it's challenging to retheme and I'm largely unhappy with the look/feel of the app. This is something I plan on getting to eventually.
Happy to answer any/all questions. It's such a personal, homebrewed app that I can't imagine anyone else would get as much use out of, but it's very powerful and I think the hobby aspect of it could translate to pretty much any other developer.
- 3D printed musical instruments. Print other designs or contribute your own
- lock picking. When you really get into it, you modify locks to make them more of a challenge and mail them to people
- Ham radio is hundreds of sub-hobbies in a trench coat. I’m currently mainly interested in linearizing switch-mode amplifiers, but was doing fox hunting for a bit (radio direction finding), and periodically do POTA (transmitting from parks)
Really good way of putting it! POTA can be a lot of fun.
Fipple flutes like recorders and ocarinas tend to be easy to start with. I also had good luck with the Modular Fiddle [https://openfabpdx.com/download/modular-fiddle-complete-desi... .
I didn't really plan to build HCI as a hobby, but I have a strong interest in hardware engineering and eventually I wanted to switch back to building things that anyone can physically see.
Years ago I built a hemisphere keyboard and now I've built an LED globe with a viewing portal. I started building visible things again because I had a vision and it's very satisfying to use the result. I spend more time using it now than I did originally building it, although it is definitely a work in progress. I want to build it again for a 2.0 version.
I have worked with the logs extensively over time to convert the simple data inputs from the scoreboard controls into charts & graphs that update in real time on the screen to “tell the story” of the game, and generate “talking points” from the data. It allows us to plug in students as commentators and they can talk about the game much more confidently because they can visually see the game's storyline that is based on actual data. “The Trojans are on a 14-4 streak starting late in the 3rd quarter, and that has flipped the lead in their favor” is a lot more fun than “the Trojans are doing well the last little bit”.
It’s been fun (and challenging) to develop the right UI to display the game’s story in a way that is rich yet easy to read at a glance. And it has been cool to see the students increase in how professional they sound on the live broadcast.
All features are included in the free version, just some usage limits. If you decide to use it, send a message using the “Contact Us” from with the account and I’ll send you the details on the analytics / charts as they are at unpublished URLs.
I'd encourage all "mental work" folks to engage with something physical in the 3D realm (art, cooking, gardening, etc.). I really believe humans have a special affinity for creating refined objects, and I don't think software "scratches that itch".
Fundamentally I enjoy being a craftsperson. That is, someone who through training and experience gets really good at something, and then uses that expertise to create new things. Software wasn't always like that, but more often than not I enjoyed it, so I count myself as really lucky. I think the business of software engineering has changed in ways that make it much less amenable to the "craftsperson ethos".
It's not really that hard to start as a luthier - there are 3 violin making schools in the US and you don't really need previous experience, they teach you everything (shout out to The Violin Making School of America - violin making as a newbie can be difficult and frustrating at times but I look forward to school every single day). Since I was a software engineer for 25 years with rather inexpensive tastes generally and no children, and a working spouse, I had saved up enough to not really worry about finances (I certainly needed to downshift some of my expenses, but again, it wasn't that hard for me and in many ways I felt it was liberating - I cook a lot more now, I walk to school instead of rot in traffic, I sold my house which I always hated the maintenance, upkeep and expense of, etc.) I certainly don't have "FU money" but I'm fine being in school for a few years and then making much less than I did as a software engineer.
I've got a version of this now in my front pocket for like 9 months: https://share.zight.com/wbu487ew Yes, it's big, but it's the most comfortable from of a big wallet.
It's funny though. I can't help feel the pull to try and make the hobby a business. But then it probably becomes unfun. But my brain just can't not think that way.
I recommend going through the basics (Tock Custom has a nice energy [0]), then picking up a fairly complex pattern for a common piece of clothing. Of course there's also r/myog.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/@TockCustom
I also can't believe how tedious cutting fabric is. Even for a tiny project like this it was such a pain in the ass. Even with nice circular cutters and mats and rulers. I'm now tempted to get a cricut 4 to make the cutting easier.
Fairy-Stockfish is a fork used by LiChess for the variants on the site, but it can now play a multitude of games from Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) to Shogi (Japanese Chess) to a crazy modern variants. There's a variety of tools to train new neural nets for these variants, generate opening books, puzzles, etc. You can play some of them on PyChess (pychess.org). These are projects basically run by a couple people with huge backlogs of bugs and feature requests. An enthusiastic developer can easily get involved! Or just enjoy playing different variants and getting involved with the player community.
I was playing chess with one of my friends and we played spell-chess which is an clash royale/clash of clans x chess thing where you get two spells of freeze and jump
Freeze allows you to select a tile and have a 3x3 square radius which freezes those pieces
Jump allows you to select any piece (opponent or yours) and it will effectively allow you to jump over that.
When me and my friends were playing, I kept trying to do something wonky to find the most optimal play. I had thoughts for a day or two to find/make fairy stockfish or atleast had the idea to do so but not the experience to do so but I certainly wished even from the end point perspective as to what/if the game was solved. I don't know but these things make me feel as if perhaps, just maybe, the game can be played a certain way where even in the best game, its not draw but rather a particular side wins (effectively solving it),
I felt like these spells were too overpowered so there was an possibility about it, you just made me remember a lot of things about these things that I had thought. It was these thoughts which randomly led me to discover fairy stockfish which is an really interesting project!
I spent many months redesigning, improving and rebuilding a prusa clone, not because I couldn't afford anything else, but precisely because I could afford to "waste" time and money learning and having fun.
Once I felt like the printer was in a useful state, I spent some more time getting it to a point where it could print nice ABS parts for a Voron Trident. Of course I couldn't just build a Trident. That would be too easy. Before I had even finished assembling it, it already had a number of bespoke modifications that I had designed.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Have you ever _looked_ at the klipper source code? It's like a fractal of weirdness. I mean it works, and clearly the person behind it is very knowledgeable about many things. But it makes for such an enormous and fun playground for improvements and redesigns. I've redesigned the entire build system for the firmware component. I've made the host component an actual (almost) normal python package. I changed a bunch of core aspects so that it could be packages for a linux distro. I am working on making the native helper a normal python native extension library too. And I am also writing some proper test rig for it.
And while I was at it, I started writing my own display software which doesn't use Wayland or X. It is going quite well actually. (Writing it in Rust)
This hobby (and, really, any hobby) has as much depth and obscurity as you are willing to look for.
You used to have to do all that tinkering because you had no choice which is not the case anymore
If your goal is just to print stuff then it doesn't really feel like a hobby, its just another tool in the workshop the same as a tablesaw or welder
It's actually a complex discipline with a huge range of bows and projectiles to choose from, each having unique characteristics you have to train for.
Training using VR equipment is picking up steam, as typically you need a sizeable amount of real estate to practice when the weather is bad.
I always wondered, how does that work?
Over in bullseye rifle we live and breathe dryfire (no ammo), but I understand the equivalent (no arrow) with a bow is a recipe for breaking the bow.
Like my brain just cannot comprehend how to get enough reps to get good enough at a thing without being able to do dryfire at the volume we do for rifle.
I wonder if it's some combination of people wanting a more tactile hobby plus some vague apocalyptic undercurrents in society today.
Recommendation -- don't stall the glider at heights between 10 and 25 feet from the ground. Also, avoid barbed wire fences.
That community had a tendency to walk around - if they could walk around - in casts for a large part of their life.
He also ended up having a heart attack mid-glide, which was no fun at all. (He survived it, though!)
Weight wise I was skinny back then and it wasn’t a problem. I soloed my first full year and got my license the next year.
It started as something to keep my hands busy in the Minnesota winter evenings, but there is actually quite a lot of depth to the materials/buoyancy/fluid dynamics that dictate how the lure moves in different water conditions. Each one is also a little work of art which is nice.
Best of all, you don’t actually have to hunt. You can stick to dummies.
In terms of contributing in a meaningful way, your local trainer will always be happy with helpers. If you need to setup multiple 200m retrieves for multiple dogs, it helps if you have someone out in the field doing the work. And lots of stuff to organise and help out with.
I got into tech by liking data visualization, information design, and aesthetics in frontend. It turns out transit maps and wayfinding is one of the earliest modern attempts at information design that is standardized and legible. And it’s fun to revisit because there’s no objective truth about what kind of map is best.
Bonus: You get to eat the stuff you grow :)
There's also an entire community of people who play Table Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) solo and use the outcomes of their play reports to blog or write fiction.
Also, the tooling around these games is very interesting if you want to build an app: Crafting calculator? Generative hexcrawl maps? Random tables? Statistics tools for dice rolls?
Then add a telescope or sextant.
This is lots of fun, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Outside of software development I enjoy gardening, farming/breeding worms and collecting their compost for the garden was a fun hobby I could dive into. It is a great amendment to my garden's soil and just a unique thing I can do on my own. I would like to start a small side business selling the castings, extracts, and worms one day.
Very crude approach: I've been doing it in Blender, if you've 3D skills should be easy. I've got a friend who does the printing and casting, so there's more I could explore there later.
I also do dioramas, which grew out of 40K. Got bored with hench guys with guns and moved to 6mm, it's been great fun focusing on buildings.
Do you have any interest in digital humanities? Knowledge work where verification is still important but not as black-and-white as does the math check out, does the code run.
Do you have any interest in family history or genealogy?
https://vibegenealogy.ai/p/the-genealogical-research-assista...
While severall open medical databases and open-source tools exist, they are often fragmented or built for academia. There is significant room to contribute by hacking together better toolsets, localized databases, or AI-driven interfaces to make this data truly accessible.
Below are some of my favorite I'd love to share:
- FPV drone flying: once you've spent 5-10 hours to get initial reflexes for the controls in the simulator, the first flight on a real machine outside feels magical.
- Electric unicycles: the "mind-controlled" PEV, and arguably the best way to get around in San Francisco.
- Foiling: the closest feeling to riding a hoverboard. You can kite-foil, pump-foil, sup-foil etc, but wing foiling is the easiest to get started.
- Knots: tying laces properly just makes life easier, and tying tucker's / voodoo hitches for the first few times feels like a magic trick.
- Cardistry: learning to do a proper riffle shuffle and a few artistic cuts adds some fun to the most boring part of any card game.
What sort of set-up would be a good one for a beginner?
A few pointers:
The guy we all watch on YouTube is called Joshua Bardwell.
Regarding radio, the protocol you're looking for is ELRS. Everything has converged on ELRS, it's open source and crazy good. ELRS at 250mW will survive more than your video feed, and many ELRS transmitters go to 1W.
Transmitter (the controller): There are options, but you can't go wrong with anything from RadioMaster. FPV quads don't need many inputs, so honestly a RadioMaster Pocket is completely fine. I have both the Pocket and the TX16S (their flagship transmitter, I also fly fixed wings), and it makes zero difference for quads. This is completely up to your budget, just get something with ELRS.
The video situation is a bit more interesting, but generally: analog is alive and kicking with brutal power and range, but shitty video. In digital, DJI is king, although a bit expensive. They sell entire drones, even some (very meh) FPV, but they also sell cameras, video transmitters and goggles for "proper" FPV builds, and these kick ass. If you don't like DJI, there are alternatives (WalkSnail, HDZero), but nothing as open and as compatible as analog.
First you spend some time on a sim. They're all good nowadays, I personally fly Uncrashed the most, but I also have Liftoff and Tryp FPV, it's all good fun. The flight models feel slightly different, but so do real-life quads, so unless you're trying to match your real-life quad down to the last atom, you won't notice any issues.
You either build a quad from scratch (not hard at all, but it takes time and there's some soldering) or you buy a finished one (we call these BNF — bind and fly), or you get something in between and add your own parts (e.g. a camera + VTX (video transmitter) to match your goggles).
You choose the size and type of the quad according to where and how you want to fly. A "tiny whoop" for your apartment, a "cinewhoop" for high-quality video indoors and outdoors, a 3inch freestyle quad for a big garden or a park, a 5inch (the golden standard) for racing and seriously whipping it around, a 7inch for huge environments and longer cruising, and anything bigger for serious long-range missions.
- Velocidrone [1] flight sim
- Any FPV controller that connects to laptop. 2 solid choices are TBS Tango 2 or DJI FPV Remote Controller [3]
I spent ~20 hours in the sim before advancing to real drones; a few of my friends followed this path and successfully passed an improvised exam on real drone after just ~10 hours in the sim.
As for the drone itself, the easiest setup is probably DJI Avata [4], but it's less of the proper "FPV feel". I personally fly Flywoo Explorer [5] with DJI system: it's a small & nibmle long range drone, easy to travel with, and powerful enough to chase kiteboarders even in a strong wind.
P.S. Don't be discouraged with sim flying: it's actually very fun, feels similar to TrackMania Nations.
[1] https://www.velocidrone.com/
[2] https://www.team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:tbs_tango_2
[3] https://store.dji.com/product/dji-fpv-remote-controller-3?vi...
[4] https://www.dji.com/avata-2
[5] https://flywoo.net/products/explorer-lr-4-o4-pro-sub250-4k-1...
But with dji neo 2 / avata you get a fairly beginner friendly set up. Once you're used to it, you can upgrade to a good racing drone by building one yourself.
- a good audio book
- a massage chair
- a mindless idle game that you don't need to think of while listening to a good book and getting a massage
Priceless.
First is gym - I go every morning before work, do a 2-mile run or 5k, depending on my mood, and then power lifting.
On weekends I hike or climb. I find it very liberating when visiting places without any kind of network and it's me, nature and socialising. I've recently also started an outdoor agency (it's local to my place) - for when AI takes over my job completely: https://boa.ba/
Woodworking, oil painting, pottery, analog synthesizers, animal husbandry, spinning and yarnmaking, knitting and weaving, sewing, pattern making, metalwork, welding, endurance running, rock climbing, beekeeping, brewing and distilling, the list goes on and on. Contrary to popular opinion they are all extremely technical and demanding fields, and getting to reconnect with the physical world and the people in it, as well as history, is extremely rewarding.
* using short boardgames to measure cognitive performance on various metrics
* creating simple 3d boardgames with raylib kolibri_engine
* dancing and studying vajra dance and the vajra song from namkai norbu
* reading and studying about: mahamudra and dzogchen vs christian contemplative traditions and mystics, and transpersonal psychology
If you have more money - 1) DJing/mixing on vinyl + record digging, 2) Modular synthesis (your wallet will hate you your soul will love you)
For the past 60d I've been using Anki (a flash card program) and it's FSRS setting to learn my French deck (5000 most common French words) and I'm absolutely zooming. I can already follow a fair chunk of conversational French.
I've also been using the same system to learn Chess more deeply (endgames, tactics, openings) through Chessable and a few other websites that offer FSRS. It's levelled up my chess game a lot
Basically - the thing that hooked me was the data. Being able to see how many cards I've reviewed, how many cards are at 90/80% retention, the stability of every piece of that knowledge, the decay rate, etc... It's really cool.
Did you go to a luthier school or self taught?
once I have more time I will try classifying and trimming the videos with AI so there is a tech component too. And maybe in the long run do my own cameras that have better detection than the usual PIR sensors that trigger a lot for moving branches or leaves.
However I'm not part of the big party.
I'm not expected to win, but at least I'm going to put up a fight.
I'm involved in some Zoom calls to learn about the process of campaigning.
I have a creative background (mixed with punk rock) and intend to make this a creative process.
Additional goals are to get away from the computer, meet new people, and have fun.
Going to have to do something on the other end of the spectrum after this. Maybe RISO printing…
Probably the coolest part has been automating the optomechanical equipment and optimizing physical experiments with Bayesian optimization. Similar to hyperparameter tuning in ML, but with lasers.
Also, Thorlabs sells some really fun toys.
https://www.amazon.com/s?refresh=1&rh=n%3A7141123011%2Cp_4%3...
It's probably because the main measuring instrument (a probe thermometer) doesn't provide any feedback about fat rendering, moisture, etc. Plus, every brisket cut has different fat ratios and thickness, which means a recipe can't guarantee identical inputs like bread baking. I'd love for someone to throw some over the top engineering & experimentation at this.
The hobbyist can approximate that brisket to a reasonable degree. However, that involves smoking a, hopefully not literal, ton of brisket. Given the cost of beef, time to smoke, and effort it takes to meal-plan brisket throughout the week, attaining Franklin-level quality consistently is a tough row to hoe.
So for ideas, sorry that’s going to be whatever floats your boat. You listed a bunch of different things.
But hobby is normally “playing softball” or “guitar”, but it could be “researching next gen PCs”… but that seems more like a PhD lab project.
;0)
As a history lover with appreciation for tactile aspects of history (love 100+ year old books), this scratches this itch better than anything else, while leaving me wanting more. I research and write up every banknote I acquire, and the sense of history I get from browsing my album is like nothing else.
For anyone interested, here are the photos of my collection circa end of last year: https://imgur.com/a/zmCXd8l
Got started as a "temp" for my sons mini-team (back when he was 5). Temporary turns into UEFA certified youth trainer/coach real fast. It's no longer just about the kids (sorry guys), but a really awesome hobby with lots of personal development paths.
I'm sure there are field that should be absolutely crowded but where you can do something meaningful.
If I had free time, I would write an app to learn foreign languages I'm interested in. I'm pretty sure that there are good apps, but I tried a few ones, and none really fit my needs.
There are also software that I use a lot, like transcribe! which works well, but that I could see how to improve.
So as others mentioned, do something that you would be interested in.
I do find the term “printmaking” hilarious because there’s just sooo many ways to make prints. I tried to get into linocut fairly recently, but the battleship grey linoleum I had wasn’t very good. It cracked and crumbled pretty easily. I did get some of pink Speedball “blocks,” but it gets expensive pretty quickly. I guess more to the point is the feeling that I lack much to say. But, that’s an excuse. :)
I’m quite at the beginning myself, but I like it so far! It’s a nice mix of science and craft.
It's an interesting hobby, as you have to adapt it to the area you live, and where you grow the plants.
Here in NYC it doesn’t feel like it, but we’re a world unto ourselves
I play chess but not chessboxing but hey, you asked for some interesting niche hobbies!
It seems that what you do is mostly related to computers within the niche hobbies but what if you can do something else too?
> Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem
Not everything should be done for the end-result, sometimes its the process which matters, there was a great hackernews post about it (https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/)
If you want something niche, perhaps make some portal-2 mods or make more efficient versions of using GlaDOS TTS within browser etc. (this is just something that I want to be honest, but I feel like it can be a niche hobby in its regards seeing your interests)
Let me know if you want more ideas and have fun and have a nice day man!
I do want something related to computers because that's where I'm skilled the most, but it being mixed with something else is fine (i.e., biohacking). But computers generally are becoming stale, considering how much money has been poured into everything digital, it's going to be hard to find something novel. Maybe the next frontier is becoming an electrician?
I feel like it depends, there are many sorts of projects which are still low hanging fruits. you might not get appreciated to do things anymore because of the amount of competition but you can feel proud of yourself.
Breaking NATs without root permissions (try searching dropbear without root and building it and running it with something like pinggy to then make a minecraft server beneath a nat work), making a free crypto chain have data embedded within a loop of transactions to embed data on crypto for free, recently using single-file to somehow archive archive.is pages on archive.org* anonymously using piping-server.
I have used AI/LLM assistance in most of these but I feel like aside from being frustrated at the code aspects, I had some good ideas and even with everyone else having AI, I didn't see anyone else doing these things (the reason I say this is because if they did, I would've just used their services :] )
Not sure if a lot of these things sound novel, programmatically not, but idea-wise I think* they might-be novel.
A lot of my novel ideas come out of proving things. Can I prove that I can run minecraft on a free intel server that me and my friends can play on? Can I prove that I can save archive.is pages on archive.org anonymously-ish since the issue with archive.is
So my point is, out of personal experience, there are so many novel-ideas within things which seem obvious but nobody has really implemented them and to be honest, everyone is just creating yet another chatgpt wrapper with AI. Much of these experiments are prototyping/proving these ideas and I believe that there are some low hanging fruits in such sense of these ideas which can be interesting to think about.
So I don't suppose that you have to go bio-hacking to find things which pique your interest, there are some practical things too in my opinion which can pique your interest.
Not sure if this might be the answer you are looking for, but I hope this helps within the context you asked it. Sometimes two normal things combined together can be the novel thing to do.
My opinion is that people with money chase money oriented things, the people with passion/hobby-tinkering will do things that chase passion and so sometimes you have nothing to worry about :-)
So are there any things that you feel is similar to this for you, perhaps?
But I feel very disorganized when most of my attention is on distinct one-off side projects, I want to work on something novel and big. But thanks for your suggestions. It is true that most industries begin when passion oriented people finally meet money oriented people, but most time they are separate.
Pokémon Champions just came out, so I might give up cards for the video game. We'll see.
Also do a few others - learned Esperanto (exclusively through listening and speaking with people), beekeeping, woodworking, etc.
I never feel more connected to my community than when I'm at a game. Supporters groups are welcoming and politically/socially engaged and regularly sponsor community service events. The league is still young and fanbases are small, but it's a really critical point in history to support pro women's sports.
It's definitely worth throwing some of that tech salary at. Bonus: it has none of the drama of the men's game!
Because of the bait available for the lakers differs from what they eat in different lakes inland and other surrounding states, they are SUPER aggressive when the fishing is good.
The game is cruising around until you find marks at the depths and/or structure you are looking for. Once you find them, you drop heavy lures down on them (1-4oz) and they will rocket up sometimes 3/4 of the water column +(70ft / 21m) and absolutely crush your lure.
This tactic also requires you to properly reel your lure to match the intensity of the fish. Too fast or slow and they will swim off. Sometimes you have to leave your bait motionless and wait for them to approach and then "fleeing" at the right time to trigger their agression and chase.
I've had fish mess with me for 5+mins and still not bite. This tactic works in both ice fishing as well as open water fishing.
I discovered this technique trying to adapt what I learned on a boat to kayak fishing. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if you want to catch fish that aren't near shore you gotta float somehow.
Part of the kayak adaptation was going from 1/8, 1/4 or 1/2oz lures up to 1, 2, 3 or 4oz. You are often dealing with not only wind that pushes your boat, but also current that pulls your lure in a different direction making it difficult to see your lure on the fishfinder.
There are a couple other ways to do the jigging thing but all of this has resulted in a new lure design i've been trying to figure out how to turn into a viable business. I'm also trying to figure out how to do some kind of kayak fishing guiding because there are much higher restrictions / licensing reqs on taking people out on boats
https://www.verticaltubejig.com
https://youtu.be/1Z5CPrB3Cpk?si=pD1oQLb6ai7rSujg
https://github.com/abhimanyu-jain/PRML_Solutions
There are different directions that bread making can go. During the pandemic there was a rash of people making rock hard sourdough, and sourdough is still the magic word for 'higher status' bread, even though almost every commercially available sourdough loaf is faked with enzymes added to a regular 'Chorleywood' loaf.
I gave sourdough a go but I prefer my bread making machines creations that are definitely not sourdough. I like to fortify my bread in two different ways, either with fruits and nuts to make a 'fruit loaf' of sorts, or with seeds and wholemeal flour to have bread that covers many a niche nutrient.
Commercial bread in the UK comes with government issued fortifications of folates, B vitamins and whatnot. This might be fine for pregnant mums that can't cook, but I am not one of them! So the challenge is to do a better job of the fortifications, mostly with seeds and choice of flour.
Commercial bread is also not very real, with lots of additives that I don't seem to need in my own creations. Emulsifiers, preservatives and everything else are needed for commercial bread, if it is to have shelf life and appeal, but my intestines are not crying out for these sorts of additives and I seem to still be alive without them, with improved digestive tract functionality.
Although we have more interesting things to eat than bread, our history in the West is the history of bread, we would not be here without it. Once you start baking your own, albeit with a machine, history becomes so much more interesting.
The other optimisation I try is cost. It is easy to produce a decent loaf with very expensive ingredients, however, on a budget it gets to have a different challenge to it.
I introduced my uncle to the hobby and he is a meticulous record keeper, so I wrote a simple app for him to record his bakes and ratings. This enables him to make fine adjustments to quantities so as to improve on his creations.
I did look for an app before I wrote my own, and the app was called 'Microsoft Excel'. I am sure that could be customised with recipes and whatnot, but I wanted to reinvent the wheel, hence my own app, just for myself and my uncle.
With some hobbies that is all you do and an obsession. Bread making is not like that, you can have plenty of more strings to your bow. As mentioned, people are always impressed if you give them a loaf, or if they learn that your sandwiches are made with your own bread. You can insist that it took three minutes with the machine, to downplay everything, however people stay impressed.
This is the most niche tech-related hobby I have currently.
I started the hobby a while back when I tried to create an ESP32 field recorder, but the sound quality was terrible with the MEMS style micropones. I ordered the Japanese Primo mics (14db for 10mm is crazy), and said if Japanese dudes can do it, I can do it too.
I was trying to create a visualizer tool for my steps in the backyard with ESP32 microphones, which sync perfectly and analyze the sound locations with Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) methods. I got close, but mic sensitivity, even at 14db is not 100% unless I place the mics 30-40 inches apart. I am still working on that project, but that also got expensive because $28 for ESP32-S3 POE and $25 primo mic per node got very expensive quickly as I wanted to cover more areas. I hope to share it soon with HN.
I’ve wanted to make a ribbon mic but haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve seen where people use Mylar emergency blankets as the membrane for condenser mics. The closest I’ve gotten is accidentally having a capacitor in a radio act as a microphone where it shouldn’t :)
Now on the other side of the Bay I have a couple spots, not as dense a network. About an hour away there are masses.
Go complete OSM quests using the "Street complete" app. Or just add stuff that's not on OSM yet using OsmAnd app.
Record open street view photos using Mapillary or similar.
Flesh out missing albums and metadata on musicbrainz.
Maybe learn a new language that isn't European or Japanese.
If "niche" matters to you, anything currently receiving any type of investing (ML etc) is probably not gonna work.
It took me a while but I finally got my hands on some polymetallic nodules (basically the rocks you find on the seabed that contain cobalt) which I'm scanning and will hopefully have uploaded soon. Tragically the nodules were damaged through shipping but it's all I have, especially since the first shipment was stolen off my porch lol. It's build with Project Chrono using C++ https://github.com/thansen0/seabed-sim-chrono
Btw: If you intend to blog about it make sure your alias resides in a jurisdiction without conversative laws.