581–590 of 769 posts
I play vintage baseball. It's baseball using rules and equipment from the 19th century. There's nothing else in my life that connects me to my eight-year old self, but the feeling I get running out onto the field or going up to bat is exactly what it was back in Little League. It's also a really fun community of passionate baseball nerds, and a good motivation to stay fit.
1. Lacto fermented food, you can spend plenty of time making unique food not available anywhere. Good niche to start is lacto fermented hot sauce. You can go very mild or crazy hot depending on your preference. 2. Sourdough is pretty understood, but there is hardly anything about gluten free sourdough. Basic principles are the same, you make a starter from flour and water, but you need to make it across different glu…
Social dancer here -- without hyperbole this was a lifechanging hobby for the better, and while I haven't been able to "meaningfully contribute to" as a criteria, I am a much better person for it. I'm primarily a salsa dancer (~18 years), but spent a few years doing a buncha other dances to get an understanding of the music and movement so I'm pretty much beginner-intermediate in a buncha other dances (equiv of 1-2 y…
I never got good, but: It is still a useful skill to even just know a little bit. To have the option to join instead of having to stay put at the table when your group decides to go dance. I wound up meeting people from latin america later, so that was way more often than was reasonable to expect. Im pretty sure having some basic ability helped me win someone over - to be able to show interest in that hobby -, and even just feeling better when showing my child now how to dance is nice.
Especially when you otherwise are mainly interested in technical stuff it is a good counter point.
I got into HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) fencing last year through a club in my little town. Olympic/sport fencing is fun, but imagine (safely) swinging a 4lbs. steel longsword with two hands at your opponent instead. It's a ton of fun, a great workout (I burn ~1500 calories per class), and competitive so it keeps my interest. Then there's the whole nerd layer of reading all the original sources from the 15…
+1 for martial arts in general. Depending on the art it might not be niche (I'm sure karate and taekwondo are too big for that). But things like HEMA, iaido, eskrima, all kinds of archery, ... are great fun and typically come with smallish & fun communities. 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…
On the point of tech in MA, I recall seeing a documentary where some people got a Xing Yi Quan master to perform a form in mocap gear so they could analyse his movements. I think there's still a lot that kinesiology could learn from the way different people move (especially from Inclusive Karate practitioners).
I build weird experimental instruments and then play them at the local electronic music open mic nights. My main instrument is the electroduochord, a stereo two-stringed instrument played with a drone motor rotary magnetic bow. https://youtu.be/G1ftvw-Y6pk I've also hooked up audio jacks to small solar panels to convert vibrations in light into sound. https://youtu.be/ZF2Rn5YfBC8 Now I'm working on cybernetic drummin…
Have you heard of electronicos fantasticos? It's this band from Japan who make incredible music with instruments they made themselves.
I started designing my own clothes. The insight was that I spend 80% money on suits that I wear 2 times a year, and the rest was low quality clothing I actually wore. I flipped it, and made suits and pants that I could wear everyday. The fast fashion stores were crap quality, my body is not a template size and I care about fabric and comfort. The process was to learn how to sketch, to determine fabrics, colors and fi…
How did you start out? Was it through local classes?
For example, the waist of almost every pant became uncomfortable when I sat down after eating food.
The area below arm pits and close to thighs was always tight. The length of pants was always long for the waist.
- To determine my taste, I looked at various styles of women clothing (on Pinterest).
Then for the models I found most attractive, I imagined what would the clothes they have put on look like if they were men. That led me to the realisation that I like formal aesthetic, reserved and subtle colors.
Everything else was experimental
Earlier quoted context omitted.
one of my favorite parts of powerlifting, opposed to hiit or other fitness lifting, is the lack in physical change. i feel like i look the same but can point to numbers that show im much stronger
my clothes haven't changed in size, but I fill them out better, is probably best to describe it!
I set up trail cameras in remote areas to watch bears, mountain lions and other critters. Getting there is very hard so it keeps me in shape and I am always fascinated when I can watch new footage. 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…
How do you manage power source for the cameras, protection from natural elements, and what about internet?
Social dancer here -- without hyperbole this was a lifechanging hobby for the better, and while I haven't been able to "meaningfully contribute to" as a criteria, I am a much better person for it. I'm primarily a salsa dancer (~18 years), but spent a few years doing a buncha other dances to get an understanding of the music and movement so I'm pretty much beginner-intermediate in a buncha other dances (equiv of 1-2 y…