501–510 of 769 posts
It's lots of fun, with folding allowing you to go offline for a while. The community is very friendly, both online and with IRL meetings such as yearly conventions in many countries.
Still a kind of niche within origami, so there's lots of room for novelty and explorations. And there are strong ties to mathematical and computational origami if you're into this kind of thing.
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You need to know the law. That is being careful, but it doesn't mean it's always illegal to photograph children in public.
For sure, but it didn't help me because I don't have the fortitude to stand my ground. I'm very non-confrontational. (Yikes-- I feel my pulse in my neck and chest just writing about this.) I likely need to see a therapist about it. Wow.
Likewise for volunteering at hospices, food banks, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters.
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Sorry if this is not the place to do it. I live in a city that has bat at nights, so if you live above 6th floor and you leave your windows open, there are chances some confused bats go into your apartment. 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…
Mosquito sound repellents are useless for insects, but solved my bat problem. 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
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> You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos Thanks for unlocking a new anxiety for me.
This is just par for the course of human existence. Lump it under all the other "human situation" stuff, somewhere between "stubbed toe" and "cancer."
But knowing that I'm being classified by event organizers (and that there's a 10% chance I will be labeled "complete weirdo")? That will keep me from participating in events.
Which is too bad because I already have enough reasons not to participate in events without adding neuroses on top of them.
Almost everything you can do on your own is a "solved problem". Why go into woodworking if you can buy an Ikea stool? The point of hobbies isn't to solve problems - that's called a job - but to learn and have fun. Find a niche where you can resist the temptation to constantly compare yourself to eight billion other people on the internet. Something where success isn't measured in Github stars, Youtube likes, or Reddi…
I have been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find the owners of the old Digital Research "Concurrent DOS" operating system. There's a lot of interesting turns in the search and it's been fun to document. 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…
I don’t know how niche they are, but a few I’ve done in the past - 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…
Consider mathematics. If you already know enough math to derive the quadratic equation, you might make a small change, like adding X^3 or X^4. See where your own techniques take you before looking up the answer. With just a few pen strokes, you will be playing with an equation for which there is no general solution, or no known solution. In mathematics it will take you very little time to start playing at the boundar…
Nice example of something many of us could try: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45694856
I think a really underrated hobby is amateur Microscopy, I don't know why its not more popular. Looking at moss, pond water, microbes, tardigrades, paramecia, cells, plants, crystals, stuff around the house You can get a decent microscope for like $250 and just get a smartphone mount to take high quality pictures/videos. I feel like with astronomy/telescopes you spend a ton of money just to see a blurry blob whereas…