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Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#351

Post by cadr »

system2 wrote: post #328
cadr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh! What kind of capsules?

I am trying to dial down K67. I am thinking about gold plating myself for the diaphragm in the future, but I am not ready for the expense. It is the hardest part of the project because the sound quality mostly depends on the diaphragm quality, and the rest of the capsule is literally a container. I started the hobby a while back when I tried to create an ESP32 field recorder, but the sound quality was terrible with t…

I hope I don’t miss it when you post!

I’ve wanted to make a ribbon mic but haven’t gotten around to it. I’ve seen where people use Mylar emergency blankets as the membrane for condenser mics. The closest I’ve gotten is accidentally having a capacitor in a radio act as a microphone where it shouldn’t :)

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#352

Post by PaulHoule »

hermitcrab wrote: post #267
PaulHoule wrote: post #83

I've been doing photography for a long time but over the last few years had phases where I got bored of it and tried something new. I had a long time when I was bored and carried the camera in my pack but never took any pictures, then one day I looked out at the sports center out my window and decided to start shooting sports. Posting photos to socials I found flower photographs were popular so I take a lot of them a…

Insect macro photography is an interesting and challenging niche within photography. Trying to find insects and then get a sharp photo, when you have less than 1mm depth of field, is quite a challenge! It also opens up a whole world that you wouldn't normally see.

I've seen photos by people who use the native focus stacking in Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras to get awesome shots of insects. I am firmly in the Sony camp but I have been thinking of getting an Olympus body and a lens or two for birds (lens+body is much less than the Sony lens and it can be hand-held) and macro work... Like once I saw focus stacked flower pictures I couldn't be 100% happy w/ the ones I take)

See https://learnandsupport.getolympus.com/om-system-ambassadors...

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#353

Post by 101008 »

jcims wrote: post #62

Put it down over winter but just picking it back up. Bat detection/identification with ultrasonic recordings. It's been fun building the data pipeline to manage the ~30GB+ of WAV files generated every night, run through some identification processes (currently using https://github.com/rdz-oss/BattyBirdNET-Analyzer ) and build a UI (mostly vibe coded lol) to help with replay, cataloging, etc. I'm using an AudioMoth cu…

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 put something in the opening of the blind box to avoid them getting into it.

However, I don't feel safe. I wake up in the middle of the night with any sound thinking they are trying to get into.

All this introduction is to ask if there is something that detracts bats going near my window. Maybe some kind of ultrasound (that I could play with some kind of speaker), or odor? I don't know, but I'd like to try something that could make me sleep more relaxed.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#354

Post by hermitcrab »

aslushnikov wrote: post #343
hermitcrab wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>FPV drone flying What sort of set-up would be a good one for a beginner?

The setup I'd recommend: - Velocidrone [1] flight sim - Any FPV controller that connects to laptop. 2 solid choices are TBS Tango 2 or DJI FPV Remote Controller [3] I spent ~20 hours in the sim before advancing to real drones; a few of my friends followed this path and successfully passed an improvised exam on real drone after just ~10 hours in the sim. As for the drone itself, the easiest setup is probably DJI Avata…

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#355

Post by awkwardleon »

chromacity wrote: post #148

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 like Kurt Vonnegut's take on this:

“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.”

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#356

Post by hermitcrab »

PaulHoule wrote: post #352
hermitcrab wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insect macro photography is an interesting and challenging niche within photography. Trying to find insects and then get a sharp photo, when you have less than 1mm depth of field, is quite a challenge! It also opens up a whole world that you wouldn't normally see.

I've seen photos by people who use the native focus stacking in Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras to get awesome shots of insects. I am firmly in the Sony camp but I have been thinking of getting an Olympus body and a lens or two for birds (lens+body is much less than the Sony lens and it can be hand-held ) and macro work... Like once I saw focus stacked flower pictures I couldn't be 100% happy w/ the ones I take) See https:…

Stacking is difficult with insects. Unless you kill them first, which I don't want to do.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#357

Post by hermitcrab »

dmoy wrote: post #332
hermitcrab wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HEMA looks much more interesting than olympic style fencing.

Olympic style fencing is pretty interesting too, to be fair. Physical Chess Also it's less... scary? At least you'll get less scary-looking bruises (though probably more total number of bruises)

>Olympic style fencing is pretty interesting too, to be fair.

It just seems incredibly divorced from it's martial origins. To each their own.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#358

Post by helterskelter »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #90

Recreational mapmaking. Every couple of months the family and I will book out some long weekend to just go to an Airbnb in some random town with some copy paper and just go around trying to draw what we think is around us. Inevitably the lines collide and we have to ask some local passerby for help, and if they know any interesting places nearby, and before you know it they're following along with a colored pencil an…

You could get a sextant and become an amateur surveyor :)

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#359

Post by PaulHoule »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #210
eitally wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, but not the same. I've also been doing photography for a long time and when I had kids I added some gear & skills to shoot them playing sports. After a few years of this I realized since I was already there I might as well shoot the whole team, or both/all teams, since everyone's families would value the photos. When I was laid off at the end of last year I decided to formalize this and now have a side gig (rea…

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…

In Munich in 1999 I almost got my ass kicked by some guy at a rave for taking a picture of his girlfriend with a frickin' Game Boy Camera. (Got GBC shots featured in Nintendo Power!)

My current style is centered around getting posed group portraits at events and is low risk. My act seems to disrupt people's patterns and drag them along with my script, I suspect a lot of people who might want to mess with a foxographer might think twice about messing with a huli jing (rabies, fleas, ticks, cantrips, curses, ...) and if they aren't afraid of a dangerous beast they might be afraid of a dangerous and delusional therian. I think I run a tiny risk of the sort of violence you might be targeted for if you go out in drag but so what...

I do get harassed by some people online who keep asking if I have consent for my photos and it bothers me more than it should and for now I reply like "notice that they posed for me" or "that person was carrying that protest sign on a busy road with thousands of cars going by". It's a matter of time before they lecture me again that it boggles their mind that I'd take pictures at a No Kings protest and I am plotting how to bait them so that they embarrass themselves enough that they give up.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#360

Post by andrewrn »

cameldrv wrote: post #333

Flying sailplanes/gliders. Once you get good at it, you can fly hundreds of miles (or more) by understanding the weather and figuring out where the air is going up. Lots of opportunities to nerd out. Aerodynamics, weather forecasting, remote sensing, in-flight user interfaces, strategy, communications, and also just satisfying to figure out how to coax the atmosphere to get you somewhere for free.

I did a few flights in college but never got my license because there wasn’t an instructor light enough to meet weight requirements with me lol. Do you have yours? If so, how long did it take you?
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