Mine is mapping. I am a big OpenStreetMap contributor and I have mapped many towns near me that were previously completely unmapped.
For those who jump around too much like I do, remember:
"Jack of all trades,
Master of none,
But still better than
A master of one."
Retro gaming, data preservation, and open-source software. I’m a maintainer of several open-source retro gaming data preservation projects so go figure lol
Puzzles.
And everything is a puzzle to a degree. I love to collect information in my head and use it to solve other things. I used to try to solve them for the cosmos or for the world but I didn’t get paid very well to do that and I’d rather just solve little ones.Be it literal puzzles, trivia, cooking is often a puzzle of balancing flavors and combining them in unique ways. Software and computers are just puzzles on finding how the functions work and solving through it until you find that part that doesn’t solve right.
I make my own furniture pieces occasionally or garden. All of it is just puzzle solving for what my soil can grow, what do I need for the household or what can be done with the odds and end items I have left.
It’s fun to repurpose items, fix broken things and build new stuff and I bet it’s how lots of other people who can’t focus on things feel as well. It’s just another puzzle.
i upload photos i take of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, fungi, and bugs. The observations (photos + location + annotation) are uploaded to a public database accessible to researchers and universities.
I’ve been involved in multiple species range expansions, and i’ve documented both endangered and invasive species. Pretty fun!
The Android app is very good. The iOS app is good for uploads, but lacks a lot of browsing features like search filters and phylogenetic trees. If you are on iOS i suggest using it in a browser except for observation uploads
You can also upload audio recordings for bird and bug sounds. It’s amazing what you can learn about your local ecosystem!
I love iNaturalist. I lived out in the woods for several years and would see so many different bugs that I didn’t recognize. So when I discovered it about 2 years ago, I started taking pictures of every bug I saw and uploading them to the app to learn what they were. And then in August last year there was an unusual explosion of mushroom varieties in our yard. That’s the one area where iNaturalist is a little weak as it really struggled to give me good ID’s for a lot of them. But it should only get better with time.
I’ll see if I can find some mushroom photos to share here.Edit: one of my favorite mushroom pics I got during the mycological explosion:
Does raising and training ducks count? I’m really good at it. I have care down to a science and I’ve done quite a bit medically because there aren’t any vets that treat ducks around me. I’ve rehabilitated crazy injuries, performed minor surgery, treated severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
I have trained all of my birds to listen to basic commands and they know their names and respond to them.
What got you into that? How long have you been doing it? What kind of ducks?
I got into chickens when my sister started 4H, and when our chickens died suddenly, my grandma got us 3 ducklings as a gift without consulting anyone. They imprinted on me immediately and I was like, “I guess this is my new obsession because I’m a mother now.”
That was 8 years ago. I started off with a Muscovy male, a muscovy female, and a mallard female. We rescued a second Muscovy female a couple years in. I moved to my own place in 2022 and brought the remaining birds with me, which were the Muscovy male and mallard female.
I ordered some more ducklings and rescued a couple birds over the course of 2022 and 2023. Right now I have:
2 female muscovies: Mama Duck and Lady. Mama Duck fights me over eggs, so I have to pull a Skyrim move and put a bucket on her head so I can take her eggs without her attacking me. Lady is very sweet and shows me her eggs and acts all happy when I compliment her best and thank her for the eggs.
A tiny male mallard and his mate who is a female mallard that looks like a male but has laid eggs. Little guy is Sonic (because he runs SO FAST) and his mate is Amy. Amy went through duck menopause about 6 months after I got her, so that’s why she looks like a male in terms of feathers. Without her ovaries producing female hormones, her feathers defaulted back to mostly male. She and Sonic were rescued from a local family who couldn’t care for them anymore.
A male Pekin that doesn’t have male traits but I’ve seen his dick a few times. His name is Salt. He is a lil chonky.
A male khaki Campbell named Pepper. He was purchased with Salt as a baby. They were on sale for 25% off and were 100000% an impulse buy. They’re besties and don’t leave each other’s sides.
A female khaki Campbell named Capri-Sun who yells a lot
A female Pekin named Judy. She’s named after judge Judy because she’s always squinting at me in a judgmental way and interrupts me with sassy quacks any time I talk to her. She’s done this since she was literally only a day old. She has a distinct quack that has a squeak to it.
A female golden layer named Cayenne who is hella chill.
A female Cayuga named Fashionista who is slowly turning from black to white with each molt of her feathers (that’s normal)
Where can we sign up for duck tales?
Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong.
Believe it or not, this venn diagram has enough overlap that we’ve got a running joke about how Riichi is becoming the new FGC Retirement Home. We’ve even got a few people bringing tiles to every major tournament to unwind before/after brackets. I’ve booked my trip to Frosty Faustings next month, signed up for six different brackets and I’ll try in squeeze in as much 'jong as I can too.
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you remind me of me. you should check out the artworks of Paul Laffoley.
my hobby is collecting hobbies
if I could have a special interest for more than a week at a time I bet I’d be good at it …
I’m not sure about that, I have a lot of hobbies which I have for years like brewing beer, drying meat, making sausages, playing bass in a band, programming, and I’m not really good at any of them.
Mine is Free software. If I can avoid it, then I avoid nonfree software. This brings me a lot of problems but also a lot of joy.
