HACKER Q&A
📣 tagwarehouse

What's your favourite hobby and how did it start?


I find myself doing side projects in the evenings after my startup job.

I love tech too much and would like to find something social or at least different in my spare time that pulls me away...


  👤 mindcrime Accepted Answer ✓
Hmmm. Hard to say exactly which is my favorite: in some cases it's hard to even tease apart what is "just" a hobby and what is a hobby that I'm interested in for other reasons.

But no matter how you slice it, two of my top hobbies are definitely fishing (mostly freshwater fishing, mostly for bass) and bike riding (mostly MTB, some road, some BMX). Both are hobbies I took up when I was very young and have been with my basically my entire life.

There are "tech" things that could also be considered hobbies, like messing around with discrete electronics, working with Arduino's and other microcontroller platforms, goofing around with Raspberry Pi, etc. But to some extent I have interest in those things simply for their own sake, but also for a career / financial / commercial sake. That is, I have ideas about building things to sell, or at least to learn things that will advance my ability to build other things to sell, etc. So "hobby" I guess, but not "pure hobby" if that makes sense.


👤 leftnode
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - It's an odd combination of intense physical activity and human chess (setting up attacks in advance while also trying to deflect your opponents attacks, except using chokes or joint breaks). Grapplers are either freak athletes, 120lb stoners, or business professionals. BJJ is one of the most unique sports/martial arts out there, and I encourage everyone to try it at least once.

I started after enrolling my children in it, and then figuring "why the hell not, I should train too."


👤 MetallicCloud
Woodworking - It started when someone on my work slack posted an image of an arcade machine they had made. I thought "I want one of those". So I borrowed a circular saw and made one. Then I was hooked. Now I'm doing lots of home improvements, such as building a coffee bar and converting an unused area into a pantry. I'm currently building some shop furniture, then I'll be converting an unused cupboard near our entry way into a mud room.

The two downsides are: * It's easy to want to buy all the shiniest tools, which are expensive * I don't want to buy furniture anymore, I want to make it. But there just aren't enough hours in the day.


👤 neom
Learning Ableton opened me up to a whole new world of meeting new people and picking up new skills.

https://www.ableton.com/en/live/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iuRsiKtObw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxY0x1i3XhY

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9oiyAGA6zOTSPR5-ttojODT4...

Getting some teenage engineering pocket operators is also something I'd strongly recommend. Check out this 8 year old building a tune with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhFIUdICYSA


👤 jahsome
Not the healthiest of hobbies but I stumbled into DOTA (the league of legends precursor) 20 years ago and have never fallen out of love.

It's been a dangerous addiction at several points of my life, but in many ways has revealed to me more insight about myself than any other activity.

There is so much variation and nuance, there's always something to learn. For a naturally curious and slightly competitive person, it's quite an intoxicating cocktail.


👤 Ilasky
Violin! It was a pandemic hobby I started in 2020, but has turned into a super important aspect of my daily life. I played sax for about 12 years, but wanted to learn something completely different and that always seemed “virtuosic” in my eyes.

Been an awesome journey and just about to learn my first Bach Violin Sonata!


👤 bigfishrunning
I've been having a lot of fun with HAM radio lately -- it's tech adjacent, and very social.

👤 etrautmann
I have a lot, but photography, building things (lots of woodworking but some electronics and art), rock climbing, camping, going deep on random cooking projects, etc. key is to just follow a thread of interest for as long as you find it interesting. Investing in gear upfront can sometimes be worthwhile, but prototyping can help there.

👤 squeegee_scream
Building furniture out of wood. I enjoy it a ton, even the boring stuff like sanding isn’t too bad. Sure beats staring at a screen all day (I’m a Software Engineer but left to my own I will be on the computer ALL day).

I find it creative, beautiful, practical, and an opportunity to be outside


👤 bwestergard
I got into birding earlier this year. I went birding, usually early in the morning, every day for one hundred and sixteen days in a row.

http://bjornwestergard.com/log/2023-04-05-birding.gmi


👤 dutchbrit
Pigeon keeping, well, I use to keep them as a kid. Missed them ever since. I recently bought a house with a nice garden and I’m in the process of starting again. Fancy pigeons, 2 specific breeds. Planning the loft build as we speak. Besides that, I love woodworking.

👤 randcraw
I got a bicycle at age 6 and a minibike at age 11 and have ridden bikes and cycles ever since, mostly on-road but I'd love to do more off. I only wish it was safer to share the road. Most drivers act like running down a cyclist is their god-given right.

👤 isanjay
I started playing chess online recently. I found it a bit too addictive:)

👤 mdf
Currently, birding. Got really into it in 2021 since it pretty much runs in the family. I feel that observing the lives of our fellow creatures helps me really destress and put my mind off work. Interestingly, I find that birding while walking in the nature works better in this regard than just walking in the nature.

Get a good pair of binoculars, a bird sound recognition app for your mobile[1], and a bird field guide (as a European, I prefer [2]), and you're good to go.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.tu_chemnitz...

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.natureguid...


👤 tetris11
Not sleeping. I just love the quiet night hours or the quiet early morning hours where it's just me in the house and my laptop and I can focus on my little coding projects that never seem to go anywhere.

👤 Octabrain
Rock climbing. I always did sport when I was younger (gymnastics, martial arts etc). Then moved to a different country and lost the habit (despite I've kept myself in good shape because of doing calisthenics at home). A year and a half ago, a friend of mine insisted me on give it a try to climbing with him in an indoor gym and oh, boy, I got absolutely hooked to it. A good side effect is that it made me to pursue enjoyment in life. It made me realise that work is not the main thing in life.

👤 nlstitch
Combat Robotics! Do you know Battlebots or Robot Wars? Turns out it is a pretty good hobby! You'll learn a lot about materials and parts and their suitable application(s), 3d designing and offcourse building a bot hands on.

👤 porknChps
I grew up without TV and learned all the things to keep my mind occupied. The ones I spend most time on:

Woodworking

Playing music (guitar, piano, sax, drums, and Audulus 4)

Programming (started around 90 in qbasic)

Gardening (simple stuff these days, herbs and peppers, tomatoes; I make a lot of sauces to add to meals)

Engine repair (started with tractors, now I just fix small engines)

Building building (just built a greenhouse for friends; designing mine now)

Logic circuit design (EE started in motherboard design as a career, switched to software as hardware went overseas)

I went deep on all these at various points. Anymore really only spend enough time on them throughout the year to keep a connection, muscle memory.

If I had to recommend any I’d say gardening and music. Learning a musical instrument fosters connectivity between both sides of the brain in a way no other skills based learning does[1].

And a fresh sauce makes boiled potato taste like Michelin star cuisine.

[1] https://youtu.be/R0JKCYZ8hng?si=wkyGmTs51d0yp9zI


👤 zethus
Magic: the Gathering.

Started playing very casually before stepping into a more competitive scene. It's both strategic (intersection between poker and chess) as well as creatively expressive (deckbuilding/theorycrafting).

Downsides: $$$


👤 mecsred
Music is a fantastic option. I've always loved listening but didn't dig into it for a long time. I imagined myself getting into synthesizers and DAWs and figured I didn't need another hobby that keeps me at the workbench or computer. During the pandemic I decided to buy a bass guitar and it turns out there is something to these analog instruments after all. A key part of it for me was intentionally avoiding electronics like pedals or obsessing over amps and pickups. Being able to grab an acoustic and play some tunes around the firepit has been great.

👤 incidentist
- Karaoke: a friend of mine did a monthly outing to a karaoke bar and invited me along. It turned into a great friend group as well as a fun skill to practice, and now I host karaoke parties and write karaoke software.

- Theater: got into it in middle school and never looked back. The way to get into it now is either to just audition for community shows, or take classes somewhere.

I have found that cooking, building furniture, sewing and other forms of craft are interesting for the same reasons coding is interesting, but without a group of friends who do that stuff I've found it hard to maintain momentum.


👤 samsquire
My hobby is journalling, my writing or note keeping is simplistic writing of ideas about software that feel interesting to me. I've been journalling in the open since 2013. I am interested in parallelism, multithreading, coroutines, programming language design and implementation.

Writing helps me think and really satisfying. Writing is thinking.

I hope you choose to do something good and positive for your spirit and full of love - something that gets you away from the computer screen, such as study God.


👤 farialima
Violin.

I can't spend one day without it, as a break every few hours of coding or meeting, it's really great

It's quite a lot of work, but really the best way to make your brain two sides work together - as well as your fingers, arms, body...

I started 5 years ago, with some prior knowledge of music from being a kid.

Oh, and now I can play with people, to people. I started in my mom's retirement home - she loved it, and other residents too, and even the staff, because all the residents would be so quite after that... and now that I play better I can play to my friends, family..

It changed my life.


👤 itronitron
You should take an introduction to sewing class, which should basically walk you through the main functions of a standard sewing machine. Then you can go down the rabbit hole of early to mid 20th century antique sewing machines and ponder the downfall of manufacturing once plastics were introduced (mid to late 20th century).

👤 comprev
DJing and it was naturally born out of the love of music.

I’ve invested a fair amount of cash in the equipment (4x CDJ-1000 mk2, 3x PLX-1000, a DJM-750mk2 mixer, etc - c. €8-9k all in) but it’s fun to have friends over for B2B mixes (or B2B2B2B depending on who’s around!)

I enjoy the ability to easily switch styles/technique. Quick-mixing d&b every 16/32/48 bars or looping techno over 4 (digital) players is a very different experience to the tactile, analogue - and brutally unforgiving - world of vinyl.

Thanks to DVS (digital vinyl system) technology I can also mix/manipulate digital music as if it was vinyl.


👤 infamousclyde
I like running (now). I never played sports growing up, and would not consider myself particularly athletic. I joined my country's military as an officer, and always found myself running at someone else's pace, which was also awful.

When I finished my undergraduate degree, I found I had a huge vacuum of time. So, I started running. I signed up for a marathon with some friends and the training was fun, because I was running (!) the show. I ended up running pretty well, and kept it up.

Nevertheless, I met a girl while running who really put me through the ringer on a "running first date"-- She turned out to be an Olympian in track. This past week, I actually got to watch her compete at the World Championships in Budapest in the 5000m, and was even luckier to propose to her about two days ago.

I still think it's kind of funny, as a guy who really hated exercise growing up. She's a great foil to my dorkiness. Anyways, feel free to ask us anything about running. We're just killing time right now.


👤 jareklupinski
Electronics. I was always drawn to understanding 'how things work', and the answers increasingly relied on knowing things like circuit design, digital microcontrollers, and general electricity fundamentals.

Later I picked up Basic, which was coincidentally used by the Basic Stamp that my school had a few spares of, which led to my software career, but hardware is still taking up my benchspace.

Hackerspaces and working on physical things in general i think brings the social element, especially when someone needs a tool you have and you need something they have ;)


👤 H1Supreme
Making music. At the ripe old age of 16, I bought DJ Shadow's "Entroducing" album, and wanted to make music just like that. Started out making "music" with the Wave Editor that shipped with Windows 95, and the rest is history.

In the last 26 years or so (man that sounds like a long time), I've learned a number of different DAW's, put a modular system together, learned to play instruments (piano, guitar, drums), and wrote hundreds of songs. It's such a fulfilling hobby. Which has been equally fulfilling every step of the way. From noob to whatever I am now. Can't imagine life without it.


👤 throwawayai2
Outdoor activities It started with rock climbing, but these days it's trail running, skiing, and mountain biking. I've always loved being outside and being active, so they were natural hobbies to pick up. I've chosen where I live so I can do this 365 days a year.

Piano I can't actually get outside 365 days a year, because I need rest days. I also wanted a non-physical hobby to exercise my brain. I played drums when I was a kid and missed making music. I bought a digital piano and dabbled for 4 or 5 months then started taking weekly lessons. If you have any interest in music related hobbies, I'd highly recommend learning piano.

Cooking This is normally more of a winter hobby for me, but I'll try and cook through a whole (or most) of a cookbook. It's interesting to really get into one cuisine or style of cooking for a while, vs. hoping all over the place every couple of weeks.


👤 heinekan
Past summer I’ve been playing Ultimate Frisbee. I love running routes and cutting.

My work hosts daily lunch hour pickup games on our field. Once a year they sponsored a tournament. We even have a lot of non-employees play with us.

Now I’ve been meeting people outside the work games in local leagues and pickup games through a Meetup group.

Would recommend. The community is really open to newcomers in my area.


👤 tyoh
This summer I started playing pickup volleyball in local parks in the city. I've found a meetup or facebook group for almost every day of the week, and I've gone from total beginner to pretty competitive in just a few months. It's free, a great way to meet new people, and a great way to stay active.

👤 sourcecodeplz
Cycling. Started when I was a kid.

👤 talldatethrow
Fixing things, maybe a bit beyond the typical DIYer because I'll even do things that don't exactly make sense. Stage 1 I would say is that you diagnose and replace entire major components yourself. Stage 2 is you diagnose further and replace subcomponents. Stage 3 is you start replacing the smallest failed component on a subcomponent (replacing the capacitor on a small sub board on a larger device)

I'm at stage 2.

If the alternator on my car gives out, I'll figure out which component failed (brushes? voltage control module?) and I'll replace or fix it.

If my washer acts up, I'll basically fix whatever it is.

My dad's cement mixer stops working ? Take it apart and notice the pulley driving the drum is loose because the set pin came undone.

Basically I'm acting like the typical person outside of cities just a generation or two ago.

The best part is, once you fix something once, you learn about it and then you really don't want to throw the device away when the next thing breaks because you feel like you already know and understand it a bit so might as well keep going.

It doesn't always make sense once you factor in your time, but that applies to many hobbies. Atleast this one technically saves you money instead of costs you money.

Tldr; fixing mechanical things is a bit like debugging and troubleshooting, but instead of just fixing some code that annoyed someone somewhere, I'm fixing things I use everyday.


👤 dimal
Modular synths. Yeah, it's more tech, but it's so different from making electronic than on a laptop. I used to make music with a laptop, but after spending eight hours on a computer at work, the last thing I wanted to do was sit at a computer for "fun", so I gave it up.

About a decade ago, a friend of mine got into modular synths and got really good. (He ended up founding New York Modular Synth Society, btw. [0]) I'd see what he was doing and got jealous. So a few years ago I gave it a shot and put together a "small" system for a few thousand dollars. Now somehow I grew that to a $20,000 system. I'm still not "good", but fuck it. It's so much fun. I'm not very social, but there are a lot of modular communities out there, and they're all pretty welcoming and helpful.

[0] https://nyms.love/


👤 epiccoleman
My biggest one right now is music. I recently started taking some guitar lessons again (my first lessons since high school). It's been a great motivation to bust through some plateaus.

It's been a big encouragement too to pick up some other skills - I've been getting into recording and DAWs and even have done some (very noobish) video production.

I was really inspired recently by Ben Levin's music channel, so I cribbed a format he used for a few videos, and recorded myself playing a solo and then did some after-the-fact analysis on it. I really like how the video came out, although there a million things to improve upon, especially in terms of audio quality. (That video is here if that sounds interesting to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2FkjeOXchc)

I have always had a (bad...?) habit of picking up and dropping various hobbies - I love learning new stuff, and I really love how quickly you can get the first 70-80% of a new skill. Over the past few years some of those have been cooking, fishing, weightlifting, and writing. I'm not super active in any of those right now (though I really need to get back on the wagon with lifting and exercise).

Oh, also - pinball. So much fun, I could bang quarters into those machines all day long. One of these days I'll have a table in my house...

I also have three kids, one of whom is a baby, so my time for multiple hobbies is basically nil. I'd love to find more time for all of them!


👤 meheleventyone
Skiing, I skied since I was a kid going on holidays to the Alps with my family once a year. We were also lucky to have Avon dry-ski slope nearby so I could ski after a fashion in the south of the UK. I snowboarded through my teenage years and then fell out of it when I was a student and couldn’t afford it!

In my mid-twenties I met a crazy New Zealander at work, got into ski touring after shaking some of the rust off, skied all over Scotland including a bunch of gullies people normally climb and generally got much, much better. Then I moved to Iceland which when the conditions are good is a ski touring paradise. Skied all over here, various bits of the world (Japan is unreal!) took part in the first freeride comp in Scotland and have generally had a lot of fun.

I’ve calmed down a lot with two kids, it’s a bit unfair to everyone to disappear on day+ long trips all the time. I’m really enjoying teaching them to ski and pootling about on the piste as a family.

It’s a sport like climbing or swimming which I also love where you can feel when you’re doing it right and everything flows effortlessly.


👤 lostlogin
Beekeeping. It’s fairly inexpensive and most people love honey (and you end up with masses).

You can find swarms pretty easily and it’s very satisfying to save them. A bedraggled clump of sad bees in the rain can be transformed into a productive monster given the right home.

And coffee. I don’t care an awful lot how it’s made (unless it’s instant or pod) as I subscribe to the Gruber rules [1], minus that weird bit about keyboards.

You can have a great coffee very inexpensively and it’s another one that is widely appreciated. I toast the bean and grind them in the grinder I restored and brew on a reproduction Faema E-61 [2]. It’s a massive luxury and is one of the more beautiful bits of engineering in existence.

[1] https://www.foursides.ca/keys-to-success-by-john-gruber/

[2] https://www.faema.com/int-en/product/E61-MONOFASE-ANNIVERSAR...


👤 logarhythmic
Electronics. Great way to explore art and science.

Piano and Ableton. Also super fun and nice way to meet people


👤 onemoresoop
Electric unicycle aka EUC (by InMotion/Solowheel). It's an amazing ride and had no falls in more than 5 years but am constantly careful for traffic. I highly recommend it and the few hours of training needed are totally worth it to enjoy this device. Tip for beginners: take it to a supermakert parking lot and use a cart to hold onto for balance then push it forward and in circles for a few hours. Once learnt it's easier than walking, no kidding!!

👤 oh_nice_marmot
Photography.

Started with film when I was a kid but was always scared by my parents because of the "high cost" and then when I got my first digital there were no more restrictions.

It opened up other areas of interest that are tangentially related to it: I go hiking/camping, learned Photoshop and video editing, spend time learning about the masters in Painting/Photography/Film making, scouting for locations where to go on holidays. Even started a, not very successful but fun, YouTube channel.

It is also possible to enjoy it daily once you know what is out there.


👤 robaato
Aikido and Kenjutsu (more traditional Japanese sword than Kendo). Started due to a book read while in Italy nearly 40 years ago - it had a list of dojos in the back - rang up, went along and kept it going. A friend once referred to it as "old man's judo" and that has a ring of truth. Decades later, it has given me a circle of friends, continuing research topics, a level of continuing physical activity (supplemented by other things), intellectual and physical challenges and rewards. Somewhat overtaken by things like MMA/BJJ these days, but well worth checking out. Oh and music remains an ongoing interest...

👤 outcoldman
Skydiving.

I did an ifly 2 minutes flight (indoor skydiving), and my co-worker asked me if we should try to go do a real skydiving. I had 0 friends and knowledge about it. We went to website, looked that you can pay 300 to go solo, and 200 for tandem. Without even thinking, we payed for solo 300, just assuming it is a better experience.

We were sitting in a class terrifying while listening for 6 hours what might kill us. We both jumped the next day after the class (weathered out the day of the class). My friend did not continue. I am getting close to 1400 jumps.

There are several things I like about this sport. Adrenaline. While you skydive, you definitely don’t think about how to fix THAT bug, your focus is on Dropzone. People. 99% of people I have met during skydiving are the best people you can have around you. Various professions, various hobbies, ages, statuses. But in the plane and on skydive we are all the same. Bag of meat falling out of the sky. Some do it better than others.

Skydiving opens the world. There are so many activities around the places, where it is hard to get access to, but people in skydiving looking for various options to jump in those areas. I had one of the best experiences traveling around Iceland in a cargo plane with always open door, so we can jump in various national parks and awesome places where you need to hike for hours. One week trip was 4000 EUR per person, including food, lodging, skydiving and transportation. I definitely want to do similar to Africa and Egypt at some point.


👤 PeterisP
Painting miniatures; saw a friend do it, then for Christmas got a kit to try it out together with my kids, and it turned out to be a surprisingly de-stressing form of hands-on tinkering.

👤 synthc
Cooking and climbing.

Cooking is something that grew on me, I was a horrible cook when I moved out of my parents house. I just started with simple recipes, learned basic techniques, and expanded from there.

I joined the local climbing association way back in college and loved it. Before climbing, other sports didn't really interest me much. I guess it scratches my puzzle solving itch. I loved being outdoors and travelling to places, but these days I mostly just go bouldering at the local gym.


👤 mgarfias
Cars. Started as a kid helping dad with the race car.

👤 Euphorbium
Acroyoga. Tried it at a festival, and love it.

👤 UtopiaPunk
I've been riding a bicycle for a little over a year and really enjoy it. About once a week I'll ride 4-5 miles to a coffee shop and work from there in the afternoons. Otherwise, I do small errands on my bike, like picking up groceries, picking up take-out food, or checking out a book from the library. The trips are short and my area is pretty flat, so it's light and pleasant exercise. I also save some gas money by not driving my car so much, and it's just so nice to be outside and feeling the wind go by me.

One aspect I'm enjoying more than I imagined is tinkering with my bicycle. I think that tickles the nerdier part of my personality: comparing different ways to carry cargo, adjusting various things to achieve more comfort, light maintenance like inflating tires and lubing the chain, etc. It's fun.

Historically, a lot of my hobbies involved me sitting in front of a screen (movies, video games, recording music, etc). Now my work is more screen oriented than ever, and I found such hobbies felt a little too much like my work, so I needed to find something very different. Biking has been good for me.


👤 Glench
Contact improvisation dance. It's a kind of intuitive movement practice you do with other people. Here's a video of some people who are pretty high level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED8hNoulZv4

It's great exercise, really joyous, and in my experience the people who go to jams are excellent. A friend told me about it and I just decided to go, knowing that I could opt out of any movement or dance that didn't feel ok. Now I go to the contact improv jams in my city every week and even went to some international jams while traveling recently. There's usually contact improv events near most major cities.


👤 rjray
I build scale models (aircraft, military vehicles, etc.). Very relaxing and surprisingly social-- there are clubs all over the world. When I moved from Oklahoma to Colorado, and later Colorado to California, I got in with local modeling clubs first thing. Started my development of a new circle of friends right off the bat.

(My involvement in it started at age 4; I had a knack for taking things apart, so my dad bought me a model kit to encourage me to be more "constructive"...)


👤 agent531c
Photography has been the only real 'non tech hobby' that Ive stuck with through the years. It encapsulates everything I love into one hobby:

- Fun social activity if you make friends with other photographers/find a club locally

- Instant Visual creation of something (since my brain rejects spending too much time on something like a drawing, only for it to turn out crappy)

- Fun/Neurotic Tech options when it comes to Lenses/Bodies/Gear. Love the rabbithole of researching exactly what I need/want.

- Lots of technical detail involved in learning different aspects of it, and really understanding properties of light

- I love DataHoarding, so organizing photos on my NAS using Lightroom makes my brain happy too.

- Actually gets me active, outside and moving, which has been a problem for me in the past (since I hyperfocus on logical problems, and loathe the gym as a waste of time)

The only downside is that during the winter I find it harder to get out and take pictures, but at least they're getting warmer!.. :(


👤 sshine
Chinese. It’s the first hobby besides programming that is remotely as captivating. I can spend hours every day reading, writing, communicating with people, listening to music.

👤 spccdt
Pickleball, it’s the only recreational sport I’ve liked as much my entire life, and I’ve tried many: tennis, soccer, judo, golf, basketball, biking, hiking, snowboarding, etc.

Things I like about pickleball are: it’s relatively cheap, easy to pick up, fun to play, highly social/community driven, and just the right intensity level for me.


👤 RhysU
Motorcycling.

Motorcycling is a high bandwidth sensory experience both alike and unlike the puzzles of flying a high resolution monitor and keyboard during the day job. It is an endless excuse to explore the endless physical world. It is something for sharing but also fundamentally a personal experience.

Motorcycling was my father's midlife crisis. I learned on dirt bikes when I was 11, riding old Japanese dual sports through closed strip mines and down power line cuts. Getting lost, getting stuck, and then getting home.

You, or anyone in the US, can learn from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic rider course: https://msf-usa.org/start-your-ride/basic-ridercourse/


👤 jacknews
Paragliding.

Someone else mentioned skydiving, and if you want the adrenaline, you can find it in paragliding with acro flying, or just in rougher weather.

But otherwise you can hang serenely below cloudbase, or pull into thermals.

Sailing gives something similar, playing with the wind as it were.


👤 inawarminister
HEMA. Historical European Martial Arts.

I started when I was writing a novel with swordsmen and want to research historical moves, ended up getting addicted and now am trying to grow the sport in Asia. Guess it is how things start anyway.


👤 valbaca
Magic the Gathering. Got a box of Starter 1999 at my local game store (LGS) as I was growing out of playing Pokémon.

I’ve been paying off and on ever since; usually ON when I have money (summer I worked in college and once again when I graduated and started making Engineer money)

I often joke that it’s like Golfing for Tech. I’ve met so many lifelong friends through the hobby. I’ve taught people how to play on first dates (and yes, they continued to date me haha). It’s been a hobby that has helped me establish new friends when I’ve moved cities. I’ve even played semi-competitively in Modern and Legacy, which is just a fun conversation starter.

Nowadays I play Cube and Commander weekly and I buy the yearly Commander decks and play them with my friends that like to play occasionally but leave the Hobby to me.


👤 the_third_wave
Self-reliance as a hobby, it may not be recognised as such but I consider it to be mine. It more or less grew out of my desire to come as close as I could to my interpretation of the concept of 'homo universalis' [1]. This really just comes down to ditching the idea that 'I can not do this' or 'I will never learn this' and doing the thing instead - badly first but usually better later on. Most of this does not square with the drive for hyper-specialisation but... I don't care. This is my life of which I only have one so I'll just keep on exploring.

Build a house, fix a car, pick up an instrument, make a mural, raise children, read books and start writing, paddle a river from source to sea, climb a mountain, build a synthesizer from scratch, start a band, never stop... Don't be discouraged by naysayers, just try until you succeed or decide to move on.

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Renaissance-man