.
Knitting: My mom gave me a knitting book when I was little and I just kind of never stopped. I knit/craft on and off now.
Video Games: I guess I was just raised around them. My mom and grandma had a Nintendo, and my grandma had a Sega Genesis (she really like sonic). They were just always there in some capacity.
Birdwatching: I bought a bird feeder to give my cat some “cat TV” and now I’m just heavily invested in them for some reason. Merlin Bird ID is my pokedex ❤️
I didn’t wanna be fat in university so I started BJJ. Then I didn’t wanna be weak in BJJ so I started lifting weights. Then I wanted to make weight so I started eating better.
Kind of a slippery slope to health 🤷♂️.
3d printing: heard about it from a friend and started looking into it. Got hooked.
Laser etching/cutting: next logical step fron 3d peinting. Started researching. Got hooked.
Homebrewing: got hooked on craft beers as opposed to crap big brews. It’s expensive as hell so I started researching. Got hooked.
Moral of the story: careful what you research. You may get hooked.
I started 3d printing during COVID when people started talking about printing masks. I realized quickly that that wasn’t a great idea but I had the printer at that point. Discovered quickly that it’s was fun and useful for all kinds of stuff.
Printing lead to microcontrollers and minicomputera as I came up with cool stuff to print for neat home automation and various other useful tools.
This led to having a couple Raspberries kicking around which led me to extensive, self-hosted home automation. That’s my current obsession.
I’m wondering where this goes next.You start breaking into people’s houses, and while living in their walls you slowly automate their homes for them.
Note to self: take up lock picking.
Having time. I don’t think I have anything much as a hobby anymore. Just decompression activities.
That’s where I’m at. I don’t have time for hobbies right now. But I will in the future, so I’m curious.
I mean most of my hobbies come from interests combined with opportunity. Was renting a unit in a flat these sisters owned. They said they don’t use the whole garden and I could plant something if I like. Heck yeah! Then like im not a great cook but if I have the time it is super rewarding. Soooo many books I could be reading. That ones a bit hard because soooo many shows and films out there. I mean walking and biking are so much better than driving or taking public trans. I got time and there is a gaming group available in my area. Yes please. Heck I can go find one online. Screwing around with tech or improving my house. Why the heck not. Learning anything is cool. walk through the local college or check out a catalogue and maybe grab something. I got time then I will check out neighborhood stuff that happens. There is just so much feakin stuff. Just try whats around and if you like it you will stick to it and if not you will not. Man I wish I was retired in a way that I could stay financially solvent.
While trying to poop (think pee anxiety with number two instead), it used to ease my mind to read instructions on the bottles found in my childhood bathrooms. I later found that I enjoyed the way rules worked and the emergence of role playing games through reading cover-to-cover The Players Handbook for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (not while pooping).
Extremely unique way to find that you enjoy learning mechanics and systems.
Passion since I was a kid. The earliest memory I have is me touching tthe LCD of a laptop.
TTRPGs: first system playing in college, I’ve been playing and running games for various groups over the last ~13 years.
Video games: played so much Donkey Kong Country with my dad as a little kid. Never truly stopped ever since.
3d modeling/animation: It’s my job, and I use it for personal reasons.
Cooking: Learned along side cooking with my parents and watching food network before it was overrun with competition cooking.
Music: my dad was in a hard rock band in the 90s and got me into a lot of rock and post grunge, then I got Guitar Hero and it was all downhill from there. Decided to pick up bass guitar because it was the less popular guitar instrument and I liked to be very slightly non conformist, and I just kept at it.
Video games: my mom bought me a game boy color, which I loved, then she let me use her Windows XP home machine, and I tried tons of free to play MMOs, private server world of Warcraft, then Half-Life 2 and Garry’s Mod when Steam became a thing, and that was all downhill from there.
I was at a lull in my life and needed a passion when my girlfriend’s brother gifted her scuba diving lessons for her birthday as he was instructor. Scuba always looked cool so I signed myself up and eventually saved up enough to buy my own equipment. It eventually dawns on me that the oceans are quite a ways from Ohio. Now the price of traveling is a factor so camping is a way to keep the costs down. This soon leads to me taking up backpacking. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than scuba. Diving is incredible but you spend a lot of dough to be underwater for an hour or less. While backpacking you are immersed 24/7 and it’s practically free once you have the gear. In fact I could argue I save money because I’d spend money at home just keeping occupied. Gas money to Pennsylvania is the biggest expense. Fast forward 25 years and carrying a pack is getting harder. By this time I’ve run into a lot of fly anglers along the trail and knew when it came time to hang up my pack I’d give fly fishing a try. Trout seem to live in the prettiest places and the sport attracts the nicest people.
So that’s how I became a fly fisherman. A long rambling point that I hope comes across to others seeking a passion is to just try something that looks fun. There’s no reason you can’t drop it if it’s not for you. Doing things exposes you to other things. The important thing is to not do anything
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Circumstance, really. Some things just stuck with me.
Went for a walk. Liked it. Walks got longer and longer while the equipment got better and better. Ended up with trekking.
“Hey, this card game looks pretty cool. Can you explain me the rules of it?” The bane of my wallet, Magic the Gathering, entered my life.
After oven pizza #2947294 “This tastes like shit. What am I doing to myself?” Learned to love cooking.
I existed in the vicinity of computers.
- Video games: lifelong tech interest + it was what the other people in school were doing? I found that I like to compete as well
- Podcasts: monotonous tasks always really annoyed me as I was mentally understimulated. Listening to podcasts solved that particular issue, and now I can wash dishes and clean for days at a time
- Walking: I was overweight and wanted to change that, and I had trouble getting into running due to me finding it mind-numbingly boring. Just walking and walking a lot was very helpful in this regard. Combined with the aforementioned podcasts it was a winning combination
- Biking: I don’t own a car by choice, being able to get around more than just fine with transit where I live. During the pandemic while I was working from home, this became a challenge as I didn’t want to risk infection when going to buy food or other things. As such, I dusted off an old bicycle, and started using it to get around my local area. I quickly noticed that it was great fun to bike, despite having just a bog-standard terrible bike. I then changed jobs and wanted to go to the office more, and figured one day that I would try to combine my new-found interest in biking with my desire to be at the office by commuting by bike. It was a bit hard to justify time-wise as it was generally faster to go by transit, which motivated me to go faster every day to try to beat the transit alternative. As such, every day became two small races, and I fell in love. Cycling is way more fun than running and I have never been healthier than I am today, I believe.
By trying a lot of other shit I found out I wasn’t wasn’t into
Guitar: as a kid I just thought it’d be awesome to shred. Now I mostly play acoustic fingerstyle, but shred some. Interest has ebbed and flowed over the years, but been playing forever.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: I wanted a challenge and to get good at something new. It’s hard, but I like it and just keep coming back. Been doing it for a couple years and am a blue belt.
Hiking: did it as a kid, now I do it with my wife who pushes me to hike more than I would otherwise which is good
Tech stuff: coding, piracy, stuff like that. Dad was in IT and taught me to look for solutions with tech. Never stopped. I’m not a fantastic coder, but use it for work and also to solve personal challenges, enter piracy.
I just started a BJJ class when it was shut down by the pandemic :(
I definitely recommend it! Have to be very careful about staying safe, though. People don’t take injuries seriously enough. But it’s great exercise and very rewarding
I’ll keep that in mind, thank you!
I have a flower garden because I like taking pictures of flowers and bees and butterflies and shit.
I have a camera because I wanted to have original photos of textures and objects to practice CV and photogrammetry techniques on. (I still haven’t really done that much of this, lol.)
I think the CS stuff generally was from a Stanford course on YouTube?
Okay, I can get behind the bee and flower pictures, but why pictures of shit? Is it a modern art thing?
