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Electronics, once you realize that you can pretty much build anything you need if you can find a chip for it you’re unstoppable, at least as long as you can gather the energy to work on it (or to finally fix your broken soldering station)
Yup. I started out with a keyboard.
NIce board!
I almost started out with keyboards, but I ordered a kit from gboards.ca (fully expecting there to be delays), and the person behind that just went poof, and so did the money :/
In the meantime I’ve been playing around with my g305 mouse (ported ZMK to it, no sensor driver yet) and some other projects, but I still want to build a split at some point, I even have the switches laying around already.
It is fun and satisfying making and seeing your projects
Agreed. I started out with one of those cracker box amplifiers because it looked nice. Then I figured I need something to actually play so I naturally had to build a cookie box banjo with a piezo element for noise pickup. That was a fun trip into a weird rabbit hole.
Listening to birds wherever I go, and using Merlin to identify them
A little garden with a bird feeder and a little porch to watch it all from is my slice of heaven.
Oh man, so many, but to name a few:
If you can afford to get into 3d printing, its extremely useful - probably the most useful tool I have ever purchased. If you do want to get into it and want to learn how to 3d model functional parts, then I would recommend learning parametric modeling with fusion 360 for free.
Programming - people would be really amazed at how useful learning to program can be regardless of your occupation. Python is easy to get started with, and you learn a lot about computer science when learning it as well.
Music production - You can buy a guitar off craigslist for like 50 bucks and just start messing around with it. It might take a couple years, but learning an instrument is a lot of fun. You can also get into music production with free digital audio workstation software such as reaper and some free VST instruments.
Painting - Acrylic paint is cheap so you can start this for a fairly low cost. If you have a little more money, I would say buy oil paint and canvas/an easel, and just follow along with any bob ross video. Oil paint stays wet for days, so its actually extremely forgiving. You can scrape off paint to redo something and never know it was even there in the first place!
It’s been awhile since I’ve used it, but gouache is pretty fun in terms of getting a bit more fluid/rewettable pigments than acrylics, but not as unwieldy and intimidating as watercolor. And also not as smelly as oil paints :)
Definitely! I have actually seen gouache used to great effect when combined with watercolor as well.
There is a guy who does some really excellent watercolor/gouache stuff on youtube:
I feel like saying he does good stuff on youtube is underselling what an amazing artist James Gurney is historically, haha. He’s very great!
Lol I think you are right, I really don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the quality of his art properly.
Lockpicking. It’s like solving a mechanical puzzle by performing surgery on it! Extremely satisfying, as well!
I picked up some basic lock picking when I was younger, its come in handy a LOT of times since then.
Also really interesting to learn about the mechanical engineering behind different types of locks!
Filipino martial arts: It doesn’t get boring as it has ton of techniques, drills etc., it’s coordinatively challenging and plain fun.
Scuba diving, I can’t describe with words how it it is… You are in a complete different world
Shooting at a gun range. Controlling your breathing, slowing your movements, and focusing on the end goal of hitting center ring…it’s almost zen like to get in the groove.
Also if you just want to blow off some steam you can get a brick of .22LR for a 10/22 and go wild on a paper target for a wallet-friendly cost. Lots of fun and helps you with bigger cartridges.
I got into firearms recently and it is really fun to learn about.
I just need to find a decent/safe location on some nearby federal land so that I can go shoot without paying 50 bucks every time I want to use the range.
My main hobby is basically “making cool stuff” and I honestly think being able to make something is worth it for everyone. That could mean knitting or crochet or sewing, it could mean pottery or origami.
But it could also mean programming. I’m really into gamedev as a hobby and consider it just another part of the “making cool stuff” hobby along with all those more traditional crafts.
Bonus of course is that learning to program is a massively useful life skill in general!
I’m definitely a “making stuff” enjoyer as well - whether it’s programming, woodworking, cooking. A good parallel is “fixing things”, if something I have breaks I will usually try to fix it myself before going to a professional. I discovered I really enjoy working on small engines this way - it kept breaking, so I kept fixing it and now I’m able to rebuild an entire 2 stroke engine myself.
That’s really cool! I’ve not graduated from making to fixing quite yet (apart from a bit of darning old knitted socks) but hope to get there one day.
For most things its a pretty easy jump to make. Buy something that’s already broken where the only purpose of that purchase is to learn how to fix it. That way if you accidentally mess it up it’s not really a “loss” since it was never functional for you in the first place. If you do manage to fix it successfully, the feeling of accomplishment is much the same as creating something. Bonus points if you get a really good deal on something broken that you may not have been able to afford brand new.
I started out by (accidentally) buying some broken jet skis, knowing literally nothing about engines at the time, and then slowly learning and then mastering them as different parts of them continued to break over time.
Dammit as if I needed another hobby rabbithole to jump down…
RC cars and trucks - not children’s toys, these are hobby-grade 1/10 scale (or bigger!) Radio controlled beasts that can go 45+ mph. They have a lot of the same types of adjustability and principals as a real car, but in a package that’s so much more affordable and accessible.
See - Traxxas Slash as a nice starting point if you’re interested
I don’t know if I can say it as a hobby since it’s my job, but people tend to really enjoy pixel art when they get into it. Either no cost or one time purchases not really over $25 for a software, and can be saved & transferred anywhere! It seems less intimidating than picking up traditional art because of the limitations, you can usually make something better at a small scale or “mask” areas you aren’t as good at yet. There’s also a rich culture of editing game sprites, so you don’t really have to start from scratch to make something you enjoy. (way in the past people would edit doll bases, a basically time capsule exist in kawaiihana’s website) In addition, given it’s small size and limited nature, it’s a bit easier to make simple animations! Seeing your little creation move is really rewarding.
Selfhosting
Model Railroading. It sounds like a hobby for old people these days, and I did get into the hobby because of my dad, but it is a hobby that pairs well with more modern maker hobbies like electronics, programming, 3D printing, and more. My dad was into model train stuff before I was born and he built a layout and had a collection of trains. When I was little I had some train stuff and around middle school my dad and I built a new layout after going to a train show and seeing some new digital control stuff. I already knew I enjoyed electronics and electricity projects, but making the model railroad layout we made some custom circuit boards and did a lot of wiring which I enjoyed.
Fast forward 20 years and the layout basically sat unused in my parents’ basement for most of those years, but my dad is retired now and was looking for projects. I had moved on to learn programming and go into computer engineering. I got into 3D printing, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc. My dad wants to do some improvements on the layout so I help him get into Arduino programming. Now, over the past two years or so, we’ve made all sorts of fun “smart” upgrades to our layout including an Arduino powered turntable with stepper motor, Arduino powered controllers for all the turnouts (switches), Arduino powered controller for lighting, getting it all talking together using a program called JMRI running on a Raspberry Pi, and best of all a Raspberry Pi Zero powered train car with a camera for viewing the layout in first person. Adding all this cool tech to an old hobby has been a ton of fun, and I’ve learned a lot of new stuff as well. I’ve been doing a lot of 3D modeling in Blender for the camera car project and hadn’t really done much 3D modeling in the past.
I would honestly love to get into this one day. Yeah it’s got a bit of a dorky rep, but as a lifelong dork idgaf
wow that sounds awesome!
- Bicycling
It’s cheap (well, can be), healthy (the risk of murderous drivers notwithstanding), and extremely fun. I’ve moved from mostly moving around by public transportation to biking everywhere, and I’ve never gotten so much free exercise. As a bonus, I get so much time to listen to podcasts as well.
- Coffee
Brewing coffee can be very fun and rewarding.
- Podcasts
Not the bro-kind. Lots of great entertaining and educational material out there, I listen to north of 50 hours a month.
- Growing food
Growing your own food is a really rewarding activity, give it a try if you can.
- Calisthenics and flexibility
I don’t have good access to a gym where I live, so calisthenics has been the option for keeping my body relatively fit. Getting into flexibility more recently has been a really good addition.
Definitely not a thing for everyone but I find conlanging (a conlang is a constructed language) to be pretty fun and it could be for other people who are also somewhat into linguistics. For me it’s a good excuse to learn more about linguistics and also to apply it trying things out in my own languages.
