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Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#51

Post by vikingerik »

edanm wrote: post #50
vikingerik wrote: post #34

Pinball is my big one. I play competitively, in tournaments and a league, and have my own machines at home. It's such a different dimension than any other kind of video game, with the size and physicality. As a WFHer since Covid, pinball is huge in giving me something to do that isn't sitting on my butt staring at a screen. It's not a cheap hobby, for sure, modern machines run around $6k and up, but then again they c…

Ooh fascinating! Money for the machine aside, don't they just take up a lot of space? I can't imagine having even one machine in my apartment, let alone multiple if it's a serious hobby.

One machine isn't all that big, the size of a large desk or small sofa. It's 2.5 feet wide by about 4.5 long, plus a couple feet of space for you to stand in. One machine would fit in all but the tiniest apartments (assuming you can get it up any stairs into there), although the big problem in an apartment is really noise bothering the neighbors.

I have an unused bedroom as my pinball room (in a spacious suburban house), which fits five machines side by side.

Most commonly people do it in a converted garage or full sized finished basement rec-room kind of setup, often big enough to fit 10 or 20 machines.

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#52

Post by xu3u32 »

codingclaws wrote: post #12
xu3u32 wrote: post #5

Running, building small SaaS projects that dont make money, lifting

I am into lifting too, but I'm home gym with minimal equipment.

I love going to my local YMCA because I enjoy seeing the regulars every day and they have everything I need - dumbells, isolation machines, benches and squat racks.

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#53

Post by edanm »

FumblingBear wrote: post #16

I host 3 weekly book clubs with various friend groups via Discord which is very rewarding and a great way to socialize! Highly recommend for any people who enjoy reading to give a book club a shot—not only does it deepen my relationships with friends, it provides a ton of different perspectives on motifs, themes, and moments in the story that resonate with others. We've tended towards fantasy series, but have done so…

That's awesome, I want to read (part of?) Malazan in 2024, after having finally gotten around to reading Wheel of Time in 2022-23.

And I also have a collection of YoYos! Haven't learned too much relatively speaking, but I did love it when I focused on it and always want to get back into it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#55

Post by mikewarot »

Photography - Specifically, Synthetic Aperture / Virtual Focus, Computational Photography.

I used to commute via the South Shore Railroad to Chicago, and had about 50 minutes each way with my laptop. Most days, I'd be processing photos. Some are aligned in a focal plane, some are aligned other ways. Here's an old gallery on Flickr.[2]

I got into this after seeing a demo of Marc Levoy's work at Stanford, where the demo showed a number of subjects in a virtual focal plane, then a subject behind a hedge, focused THROUGH the shrubbery.... which seemed like magic.[3,4] I didn't have the funds for a 128 camera array, but what I did have was time... so I improvised.

Stand in a spot, with your DSLR or smartphone.... look at a non-moving subject.... take a cluster of pictures within about a dinner plate size area

Then take all those photos, and using Hugin[1], align selected points in the scene that will be your virtual focal plane, across all the photo pairs

Use Hugin to transform all those images into the same virtual focal plane

Use a small python script to average the photos into a single image

If you like, you can chose different points to get a different focal plane from the same set of images.

[1] https://hugin.sourceforge.io/

[2] https://flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/7215771858512354...

[3] https://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/

[4] https://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/videos/crowd0-s...

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#56

Post by FumblingBear »

edanm wrote: post #53
FumblingBear wrote: post #16

I host 3 weekly book clubs with various friend groups via Discord which is very rewarding and a great way to socialize! Highly recommend for any people who enjoy reading to give a book club a shot—not only does it deepen my relationships with friends, it provides a ton of different perspectives on motifs, themes, and moments in the story that resonate with others. We've tended towards fantasy series, but have done so…

That's awesome, I want to read (part of?) Malazan in 2024, after having finally gotten around to reading Wheel of Time in 2022-23. And I also have a collection of YoYos! Haven't learned too much relatively speaking, but I did love it when I focused on it and always want to get back into it.

The Wheel of Time is one that I'd like to read eventually too! Best of luck with Malazan! Our group has had a blast—definitely rewarding to read with a group if you can find others willing to commit because it's so dense that we're often able to theorize or point out parts that others overlooked!

Also love that you collect YoYo's too! My favorite is my OneDrop Markmont Classic. Smoothest and most balanced YoYo I've ever tried! Do you have a fave?

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#57

Post by paulcole »

xu3u32 wrote: post #54
paulcole wrote: post #10

Long distance running, reading, bicycling, cooking, fashion.

What kind of distances? Any injuries?

Anything up to 30ish miles is comfortable to me. But I’ll only do that on trails or particularly scenic roads (both of which I have available on foot from my apartment). And I limit myself to one or two outings like that per quarter. Other than that it’s mostly 3-10 miles per run depending on what I feel like doing.

I’ve been running for 15ish years and probably take a full week off a year if I’m feeling anything uncomfortable that affects my stride. Other than that I try to average 20-40 miles a week depending on the time of year and how I’m feeling overall.

The things I think I do differently from most runners are:

1. My #1 goal is to be running in 30 years. So I’ll sacrifice distance and speed today for that goal.

2. I care about speed very little. I enjoy being outside and moving so probably 1% of my mileage is at a high intensity.

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#58

Post by FumblingBear »

subtra3t wrote: post #42
FumblingBear wrote: post #16

I host 3 weekly book clubs with various friend groups via Discord which is very rewarding and a great way to socialize! Highly recommend for any people who enjoy reading to give a book club a shot—not only does it deepen my relationships with friends, it provides a ton of different perspectives on motifs, themes, and moments in the story that resonate with others. We've tended towards fantasy series, but have done so…

I haven't read Malazan but I've heard it's very hard to get into. I've seen trying to read the first book being likened to being dropped in a remote Chinese village with no manual or linguistic ability in Mandarin. For your group to not only successfully complete the 1st book, but to also proceed till the 3rd book must have been a challenging feat.

Thanks! I think the difficulty can be a little overhyped sometimes, but it's definitely been a challenging read! More than anything, it often presents information with little context and leaves you to wonder for a while (sometimes books) before finally explaining things. The nice thing about reading it in a group is we can all share different insights and predictions for the things that are happening.

I think we're going to make it through the whole series because everyone is still very engaged with the books but only time will tell haha. Definitely a marathon of a series!

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#59

Post by robotguy »

I have moved beyond hobbies into METAHOBBIES.

Specifically: Collecting Hobbies.

I find that following my ADHD hyperfocus until the next shiny thing comes along has led to a massively diverse array of introductory knowledge and mediocre skills (as well as a garage stuffed full with bins of unfinished projects). Specifically in the last two years I have dabbled in:

  home automation (incl. Node Red, LoRa, MQTT on Raspberry Pi)

  weather stations

  terrariums

  greenhouse climate control

  making wooden boxes

  Minecraft

  mechanical pencils

  fountain pens

  notebooks

  bookbinding (custom notebooks)

  Dungeons & Dragons
I realized years ago that I had to embrace the change and I try to dip my toe into any hobby that appeals at the time with as minimal monetary outlay as possible. I find interests tend to resurface after a while, and the skills/tools/materials for one can generally be used somewhere else down the road.

I have found that I learn something and increase my skillset with every unfinished project. That leads to, over the long run, being able to get more accomplished in less time on newer projects. The real treasures are the friends you made ^h^h^h^h^h things you learned along the way.

Re: Ask HN: What are your hobbies?

#60

Post by gtroja »

robotguy wrote: post #59

I have moved beyond hobbies into METAHOBBIES. Specifically: Collecting Hobbies. I find that following my ADHD hyperfocus until the next shiny thing comes along has led to a massively diverse array of introductory knowledge and mediocre skills (as well as a garage stuffed full with bins of unfinished projects). Specifically in the last two years I have dabbled in: home automation (incl. Node Red, LoRa, MQTT on Raspber…

Almost the same here! ADHD and a lot of seasonal hobbies, like bookbinding (just love moleskine, and I started making my own) mechanical pencils (rotring ftw), paper in general
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