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Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#21

Post by yodsanklai »

> that isn't absolutely crowded

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#22

Post by Gooblebrai »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #3

My hobby is organizing in-person meetups for random people to get together, chat and make friends. Barely structured, if at all. I've found this rewarding and ended up making friends this way. 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…

I organise events as well and I'm wondering if you ever charged for them. I used to do them for free but so many people signed up and didn't attend later that it was hard to put numbers to book a venue to meet. How did you solve this?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

skyberrys wrote: post #20

I'm into innovation in HCI as a hobby, but it does get expensive so I would like to bring in some additional financial support for my unusual builds. 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 vi…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#26

Post by abadar »

I used to play Pokémon cards competitively. It was fun going to local tournaments and flying with friends for Regional tournaments. I stopped to focus on night school, and I want to pick it back up with the card legality change happening Friday.

Pokémon Champions just came out, so I might give up cards for the video game. We'll see.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#27

Post by shivekkhurana »

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 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.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#28

Post by duckkg5 »

I was into woodworking, then I got into building fly fishing rods from bamboo.

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

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#30

Post by pavel_lishin »

powerbroker wrote: post #12

Hang gliding. It's good if you are in an area with some hills and consistent winds. There are maybe a dozen well-established launch sites around the U.S. Sadly, I broke down my glider around 2001 -- and did a post-mortem on it to discover it had a minor dent in it. Recommendation -- don't stall the glider at heights between 10 and 25 feet from the ground. Also, avoid barbed wire fences.

My brother-in-law did a lot of hang gliding, and was part of a big community that did.

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!)

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