My two are:
Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.
Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.
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Reading
Thanks to e-books and the Libby app you don’t even have to physically go anywhere or pay anything to find a good book these days.
libby is such a game changer. i totally get why a lot of people want to only read physical books but for me, being able to read anywhere at any time instead of having to make a concious decision to find and bring a book with you means i read way way more than i used to
For me it’s that I have to think less about my choices. I don’t have a ton of time anymore so if I pick a book I am not vibing with I can just return it and pick another in a matter of seconds. It’s led me to taking chances on books I normally wouldn’t read.
Oh yeah!
I have a 75-page rule. If a book hasn’t grabbed me by then, I move on.
I’m a mix of both. I generally read a book for the first time on Libby and then end up buying a physical copy for my home library.
I like physical books in a theoretical sense. Some hardcovers are beautiful and it’s hard to resist the urge to collect them.
But I don’t really like reading physical books. I really don’t like the typesetting of 70-80 characters on a page. That leaves a lot of my books at maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page, and it’s really hard to get into a flow that way. On an ereader I can control the layout, the font, and really get into a book.
(And that’s on top of the fact that I can carry thousands of books around with me, borrow from the library, and take notes more effectively for nonfiction.)
I’m a slow reader and get frustrated with how long books take. My “internal” reading speed is about as fast as reading aloud, so anything longer than a few hundred pages takes forever.
That can happen. My focus is weird, and I strongly zone-in to what I’m doing, so for me reading is a very engaging and fun thing to do.
Playing older video games via emulation. The barrier to entry gets easier and easier as time marches on. And as long as you have disc space to download the games, you’ll likely find a repository somewhere on the Internet.
Oh yeah some even let you play in browser now. Crazy how it takes seconds, and most peoples phones can even play most everything game cube and earlier.
That is a particularly handy feature for older computer games from DOS and C64.
Chinese handhelds (sbcgamings) are an interesting rabbit hole.
Miyoo Mini Plus!!!
My childhood dream.
I’ve been playing tons of GameCube games since Dolphin recently released RetroAchievement support. (Basically community made achievements for retro games, available for tons of games and consoles)
Doom scrolling
Has anyone found a way to get out of this hobby? Asking for a friend.
Heck, even some clients have auto scroll, really really easy this hobby.
Blender. Not great at it, but there’s so many fantastic tutorials on YouTube. I can use it good enough to design and 3d print simple things. Of course, there’s may aspects / layers to it. It’s both broad and deep. So it’s good to kind of focus on one thing at the time, and then break that down even further.
What are your favorite tutorials about Blender specifically for 3D printing? Any channel recommendations?
I do resin printing. All models get sliced into 2d layers by the slicer program. Therefore, the geometry of the mesh isn’t nearly as important as it would be for something you wanted to animate or use in a game. (Pro 3d modelers take great pains to keep their meshes very clean and smooth, made up of all triangles, etc. But if you’re just going to convert the thing to a bunch of 2d slices, you don’t need that level of discipline.)
You can basically overlap and tweak a bunch of primitive shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc) to build a complex shape for the thing you want. Then you can export that as an STL file and load it into your slicer. Once inside the slicer you can add any needed supports and then slice it.
In order to get to this pretty basic level of competence, I just watched several tutorial videos on the basics. Like how to add shapes, scale them, modify them, mirror them for perfect symmetry, etc. I have watched some videos on texturing, lighting, etc. out of curiosity but you don’t need any of that for resin printing.
And once you export it as an STL it looks like one solid thing, so it’s easy to rotate it around and so on in the slicer program.
“Blender Guru” is a really well done Blender tutorial channel, but he also covers a lot of things I don’t really need. Early on, I learned a lot from the “tutor4u” channel.
Wholeheartedly agree! Nomad Sculpt ^(yo-ho!) via tablet & stylus is a great addition to this notion, and makes for far better modulation in post than creating in zBrush (multiple parts v. inseparable object).
What sort of resin printing do you do, and what part of the world, if you don’t mind me asking?
I have an Anycubic 4k resin printer. I’m in the US. Most of the time I am printing miniatures for tabletop gaming using STL files I find online. However, sometimes I want to customize them. And more than once I’ve needed to repair some broken household object and needed to print a part for it. I’ve also made a few original gifts for people from scratch. I’m not a very good sculptor, but I can make funny / cute things and put their name on it, stuff like that. I can also copy stuff pretty well if I have enough photos of it from enough 90-degree angles. It’s a very fun hobby, I wish I had more time for it!
Oh, for sure. I feel ya there. Some days, I almost wish it was still just a hobby for me, heh. But, the hours are decent, and I absolutely love the creative aspect as well as the personalized service of most prints I make for others. I certainly had no idea that the “Satanic” pastimes I was up to in the early days would somehow build into a bonafide job, that’s for sure. 🤣🤓
You actually succeeded in the quest from hobbies to career. Well done!
Thank you :)
I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.
However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.
I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.
Not sure exactly what you consider ‘expensive’, but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.
Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.
That’s absolutely reasonable, but I’m not a student. Is that required by the license agreement?
Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn’t grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn’t “make sense”.
I’ve found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it’s easier for me to grasp “okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc” than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don’t offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.
I totally get that. It’s like finding a programming language or personal information manager app that you like. Have to try a bunch out to find something that works for you.
A long time ago I dabbled in script-generated ray tracing. That was fun, but I never got great at it.
I also learned PostScript for a while, because I wanted to create some very intricate printable forms. Using WYSIWG tools was just not cutting it. I ended up with some large 300dpi forms that I liked, whuch were perfect for the assignment.
Sometimes a different model or approach can make a huge difference to your work flow.
This was awhile ago, but playing dungeons and dragons! I showed up one night at the local gaming store, asked the group playing that night if they had space, and bam! I’m playing a terrifying monk in World’s Largest Dungeon!
Game Mastering for TTRPGs. Set up can take some work, but it’s a great creative outlet and, once you find the right group, soooo much fun. I personally started off with Paranoia XP and moved from there to a couple different systems before landing on D&D 5e. There are some great rules-light systems like Kids on Bikes/ Kids on Brooms or Paranoia Perfect Edition if the behemoth of D&D (with its multiple text-book sized rule books) seems daunting.
ETA: there’s also entire libraries of advice on GMing out there for assistance if you need it.
I played D&D for 10 years before I seriously tried DMing. I’m now a year and a half into a 5e game with 4 other players and it’s been great. It helped that YouTube kept sending me Matt Colville videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8
Nice! I’m a big fan of Ginny Di, she’s got some great tips for DMs and players.
making mead:
honey, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock (fancy cork), wait two weeks.
wine making:
juice, sugar, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock, wait two weeks.
No camden tablets for sterilization?
Programming.
I first realized that I loved it at the age of 11. It’s easy to get into but programming itself can be difficult or easy depending on what you are aiming to do and how. I love it both as a hobby and as a high school subject (hopefully as a job in the next few years as well)
hopefully as a job in the next few years
😅😬
Sewing! My girlfriend is into it and had some machines already. It’s way easier and more fun than I expected.
Fly fishing
Got yelled at as a kid for playing with your pole too much? Then it’s the hobby for you. Can practice in your backyard and it’s fun just to whip shit around
The bizarre culture (pun intended) around sourdough is maddening. The obsession over the “ear,” bannetons, lames, daily feeding: all bro club bullshit. This is the bread humans have been making for millennia; the only tools you need are one hot rock and one not-hot rock.
Do you even sour, bro?
Lul reminds me of the coffee bros. With their 3.4 sec at 666 degrees vs 8.9 sec at 69 degrees pour or whatever they call it.
It’s the exact same phenomenon. Surely astroturf bullshit started by whomever is selling the useless tools.
That and I think there’s a fair bit of eliticism as well. Everyone is always trying to one up each other and since you can only go so expensive with the beans and equipment the next step is to be pretencious with the prep.
There are some serious differences between a badly made loaf and a well done one though. You never stop learning. But yeah, it’s easy to get something passable.
None of the differences have anything to do with the Bro Method.
Tying fishing flies
Looks really hard. Not terribly hard to make some respectable flies with a little bit of instruction.
houseplants and especially ferns: It all started with a gift: a bird’s-nest fern and a blue-star fern. i was already into cultivating offshoots, but the bird’s-nest fern does not generate those, and the internet said you can not divide a single plant into multiples. but how do they propagate then? the use spores and the internet said it is not easy to get new plants this way, but i gave it a try. and it was not that difficult…
currently i have about 12 nest-ferns of all sizes and fear the winter when i have to bring all plants into the small flat.
funny enough: the blue-star fern is easy to propagate via offshoots, but its even easier with spores: as soon as you have a medium moist pot near such a fern you get fresh ferns for free. they grow quite slow, but still look beautiful.
if your interested and German based, write me a PM and i can send you a letter with some spores to bootstrap your new hobby!
Whittling
Just buy a knife kit and some wood blanks, surprisingly affordable.
And, it only takes a few trips to the ER to find out how shite you are at it! Win! Time for another hobby that requires only a few fingers! 🤩🤌🏽
Yeah I should have added the cut proof gloves and thumb protectors
My first thought was sourdough too, and making fermented foods in general. I wanted to get into making my own sourdough bread for a while, but every time I started researching I just gave up. A lot of recipes out there make it look so intimidating and honestly, most of the steps are just not necessary for a basic loaf. Been making simple bread in loaf pans for months now and loving it.
Same! Some of the recipes make it sound like you need 6 special tools and a climate controlled area. Freaking internet blogs trying to justify their existence by over complicating things.
