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Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#291

Post by ggambetta »

riffraff wrote: post #187
ggambetta wrote: post #128

I'm into book restoration, here's a gallery: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1oNxCfKJp4k6yjoZ9 Much less niche, but I'm also really into acting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=do5PicgU0Jw

That's impressive work! But how come the books are in mixed languages? Are they your books? Do you fix books for random people?

Hahaha, good observation :) I ran out of my childhood books (in Spanish) to fix, then I ran out of my GFs childhood books (in Latvian), so at that point I offered my services to anyone in the Google Zürich office. I got books in all kinds of languages I couldn't read, and a few chocolates and bottles of wine for my troubles :)

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!

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#292

Post by ddorian43 »

embwbam wrote: post #74

Not sure if you were looking only for indoor hobbies, but I picked up Kiteboarding recently, and it is the most outrageously fun thing I've ever done. 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…

Kitesurfing is insane yes! I can jump up to ~6m in 1 year.

Really efficient adrenaline with relatively very low risk.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#293

Post by pikewood »

cadr wrote: post #141

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…

Any pointers to resources or groups around 3D printed musical instruments? Sounds really interesting!

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#294

Post by EvanAnderson »

hermitcrab wrote: post #234
EvanAnderson wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gig is something I tried to do w/ my daughter's sports for the past 5-ish years. I loved shooting her games and distributing the photos both teams. It was so much fun. 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 fac…

You need to be extremely careful about taking photos of children without explicit permission from the parents.

At least on the street and in sports my experience is people using purpose-built cameras get harassed.

People using cell phones as cameras get a pass (at least in sports).

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#295

Post by Triphibian »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #286
Triphibian wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been my experience that social deduction games are very attractive to folks who have problems socializing in day-to-day life. You can see them almost come alive when they are given the permission.

Yes and the reverse is also true. I don’t like to play social games at my meetups because that’s a framework that seems to stifle genuine conversation. I do sometimes provide hypothetical questions as a bit of scaffolding. > 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 G…

Same. I don't like to yuck other people's yums, but I don't get a lot from those kinds of games. Talking to strangers is not a problem for me.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#296

Post by nate »

Taught myself to use a sewing machine. Then I made my own EDC wallet thing. Basically a zipper pouch that can fit a lot of things while keep them as spread out in my front pocket.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#298

Post by Arch-TK »

I don't quite get your point about 3D printers.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#300

Post by nathan_douglas »

_spduchamp wrote: post #201

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…

Really dig the sound of the first one, though all of these are really cool.
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