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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

It seems like it is not as uncommon as it may seem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

The American engineer and supercomputer architect Seymour Cray is known to have been a hobby tunneller. Cray built an 8 by 4 feet (2.4 by 1.2 m) cedar-floored tunnel under his house, explaining that the digging helped him to think about computer designs. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem," he said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hobby_tunneling&s...

When I switched from construction to freelance web design I spent a couple years doing part time so I could listen to podcasts. Digging, or just about any repetitive physical activity, is therapeutic and unlike programming I don’t have to think much. Now days I do a similar thing with the gym, but it’s still not the same. Reminds me of the end of Office Space where the main character refuses a new programming job because he likes digging and working outside.

Wait, you switched to part time work entirely to listen to podcasts? That's so interesting to me

Well more like a kept a couple of hours a few times a week for podcasts, and the company was happy to have me as I had a worked with them for awhile prior to becoming an engineer.

I'd bet this was also part of his nuclear war survival plans, it's said he moved to Chippewa Falls in part because the Twin Cities were too obvious of a target.

I had some childhood friends who could have served as the basis for the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. Four brothers with varying degrees of brilliance, their household a constant state of mayhem. One did indeed dig a tunnel under the foundation of their house. It was more of a crawlspace but it went all the way down there…

Then there was the twenty-year-old tarantula… the time one learned to spin yarn and made a sweater out of his dog’s hair… that time they procured some authentic bedouin garb and built a bonfire of plastic american flags on the driveway (this was pre-9/11)… fun bunch

Hah, even some aristocratic examples:

"The 5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself but rather had workmen build his tunnels."

Hobby tunnel manager, perhaps?

Vicarious hobby tunneler, more likely.

Eccentric aristocrats get trapped by the social norms of their classmates. There's even lore around this. For example, people who don't think Shakespeare actually wrote anything[0] also tend to believe it was written by some aristocrat who couldn't reveal they participated in something as vulgar as creative writing.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shakespeare_authorship...

New video game idea: Tunnel Digger Simulator.

Dibs!

I think that's called Minecraft already?

Here is the most extreme hobby tunnel I am aware of. Burro Schmidt's tunnel is approximately 1/2 mile through granite and now a historical site

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel

The entry on Seymour Cray is disappointing. An "8ft x 4ft" tunnel? What does that even mean? I thought tunnels are 3D.

It means 8 feet high by 4 feet wide. But I’m with you: I’d like to know how long it was.

From the wiki source (https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,967...)

> ...has been dividing his time between building the next generation of supercomputers and digging an underground tunnel that starts below his Chippewa Falls house and heads toward the nearby woods. "He's been working at it for some time now," says Rollwagen, who reports that the tunnel is 8 ft. high, 4 ft. wide and lined with 4-by-4 cedar boards. ...

so at that point (1988), it was not yet finished

From the wiki source, my inference is that the tunnel is at least 4 inches long if he was able to line it with 4x4 boards... But aren't 4x4 boards typically called "posts"? I'm amused by how poorly Time reported this.

We assume inches, but it could be microns.

"Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast."

The tunnel is long enough to get to the dragon.

I can relate to that. My home's basement has a side resting on a rocky mountain. I have daydreamed of secretly digging into the mountain and making a secret room, but it's not feasible: neighbors would complain of noise, the construction would be quite evident, and there's subterranean wiring and likely gas/water/drain pipes in the way. It would also be awful to find a spring and flood the house.

Now, if this was in a remote area...

Those problems are solvable. E.g. only dig when neighbours using noisy equipment like mowers?

Just get started, and work out solutions as you go along.

Go ask your neighbors if there's a good time for you to play your music loud once or twice a week like you used to when you were young.

That is really cool (to read about).

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