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Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

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Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#551

Post by Gigachad »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #533
Gigachad wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to come up with some interesting prompts after observing just asking someone "What's been happening" yields nothing but "Oh not much, work". So far the old classics of just probing in to what they do for work, what they did last weekend, etc and then finding any bit of info to drill down in to more interesting topics works best. Also very important to recognize most conversation starters are someone…

Tangential, but I've been following your comments for years now and I have to say whatever you've discovered seems to be serving you well. You're seriously 1000x more likeable than even just a couple of years ago.

I was a bit surprised to read this. I didn't think I'd stand out in the sea of comments here. But to this, since a couple of years ago I had a break up, moved city, quit all social media and went outside to real events. HN is the only place I still comment on.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#552

Post by komali2 »

trick-or-treat wrote: post #505
komali2 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just par for the course of human existence. Lump it under all the other "human situation" stuff, somewhere between "stubbed toe" and "cancer."

Huh? I have zero stubbed toe anxiety. If it happens it happens. But knowing that I'm being classified by event organizers (and that there's a 10% chance I will be labeled "complete weirdo")? That will keep me from participating in events. Which is too bad because I already have enough reasons not to participate in events without adding neuroses on top of them.

I'm pretty sure the OP didn't mean they literally put a note in an excel document next to your name. So to explore the issue, is your anxiety around the fact that some people will think some aspects of your personality or behavior or weird? Because I could drop you into the middle of Vietnam (or whatever, pick some country you've never been to) and like 90% of people would think you're a bit weird. It's not really a bad thing, is it?

Anyway in my experience what the OP is referring to is less "nuerodivergent weirdness" and more "Will this person do violence" weirdness. Or, like, people that are just coming to events to try to fuck, and being obnoxious about it.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#553

Post by madaxe_again »

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 can confirm that this is a great hobby. I did a weekly meet up, man, nearly 20 years ago, which was at the same time and place every week, and we (me and the core clique which consolidated within a month) advertised it on Twitter, which was niche enough at the time that you’d get a bunch of interesting weirdos showing up.

It’s how I met my wife, how I met a whole bunch of people who still feature in my life decades on, how businesses got started, and so much came out of it for everyone involved. It probably helped that we did it over beer and burgers, as one was a social lubricant and the other robbed people of an excuse to leave early. Plus afterwards it transformed into poker back at my place, which was how I really got to know people fast.

Talking to strangers is fun - as is figuring out which strangers will like which other weirdos you’ve got to know and buddy them up.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#555

Post by mh2753 »

4ggr0 wrote: post #549
mh2753 wrote: post #541

My niche hobby is exploring patterns in Islamic Geometry and trying to re create them. It is an art of creating pleasing and aesthetic geometric patterns (from intersecting circles mostly). The art form is very popular in decorating Mosques and other Islamic monuments as human/animal representation is forbidden. [Edit] The thing that I find the most fascinating is that all the complex design you see, are done with on…

are you muslim yourself or did the artistry itself pique your interest? just curious about it, hope that's not a weird question.

I am. My interest developed after visiting a number of Mosques/Monuments and seeing the intricate designs.

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#556

Post by zimpenfish »

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…

Oh, I didn't know about the BattyBirdNET - thanks. I'll have to slap my bat-mode AudioMoth back on the balcony.

(I've already got a BirdNET pipeline for my non-bat AudioMoths which should make the bat path easy to add.)

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#557

Post by deviation »

nathan_douglas wrote: post #311
deviation wrote: post #127

I've been pretty obsessed with FSRS in general (tldr: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/awesome-fsrs/wiki/... ) It's a fantastic new-ish scheduler for spaced repetition - basically a machine learning model which adapts to you, and schedules flash (or anything, really, it's an algorithm) cards according to how well you are personally performing - surfacing data like retention, stability, recall, etc. It's a ma…

FSRS is really cool. I'm trying to use it and a modified flashcard system to learn more abstract computer science and higher math. I hadn't considered it as a way of learning Chess - that's really interesting. I'm thinking about expanding my system to cover ear-training, birdsong recognition, a few other things like that.

I never thought about ear-training!

My listening comprehension for Piano has always been lacking. A deck of piano sounds that map to actual notes (or even chords) might do wonders for it...

My current decks are as follows - I spend about an hour in total reviewing/learning them all, daily:

- 5000 most common French words

- 5000 most common French sentences (following the Alex Crompton method: https://www.alexcrompton.com/blog/how-to-learn-a-language)

- English GMAT Vocabulary List (to keep my English sharp)

- Unscrambling 5000 English Anagrams (to practice unscrambling for Scrabble or other similar board games)

- Some machine learning concepts & algorithms relevant to my day job

- Some distributed systems concepts & algorithms relevant to my day job

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#559

Post by kruffalon »

BOOKHOUSEUK wrote: post #518

I design treasure hunts and then hide them in books. Well, I've just started to. Was obsessed by the book Masquerade, by Kit Williams as a kid. Finally decided that I could probably do that as well. So have started. Very much enjoying it.

I'm just trying to understand what it is you do...

Do you make some sort of map and/or list of clues that you hide between the pages of books

Or

Do you write books that have maps and/or clues in the text?

Re: Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

#560

Post by zimpenfish »

duckkg5 wrote: post #28

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 tak…

> If you try to buy a bamboo rod in a store, they run $2K-$5K.

I got a bunch of cane[0] rods off eBay for relatively cheap[2] (but that was ~2010.) Sadly my fishing activities were strongly curtailed around 2012[1] (due to a family divorce) but I'm hoping to get back to it one day.

When I did get a chance to use them, they were much nicer (to me) than my companion's fancy new rods (even if the bend when fighting a fish was absolutely terrifying.)

[0] I'm not sure if there's any bamboo ones - it's been a while since I've seen them due to [1]

[2] Inspired, as many people are, by Chris Yates.

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