Ask HN: What's your favourite hobby and how did it start?
I love tech too much and would like to find something social or at least different in my spare time that pulls me away...
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. They're affordable and fun! Check out this 8 year old building a tune with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhFIUdICYSA
I also learned ableton without any resources, but back in 2003 when it was a simpler product. It begs to be tinkered with (I think that’s the draw of it) but it’s a deep bit of software.
Btw thanks for the links, they look super helpful.
Also, I unfortunately didn't care for the pocket operators - only musical instrument I've ever returned. People will likely have more fun with the volcas, the Circuit or inexpensive Behringers.
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.
It was a great race - love watching Hassan race too. Also enjoyed the mens 5km and was very happy (as a Brit) to see Josh Kerr beat Ingebrigtsen in the 1500m :)
I started after enrolling my children in it, and then figuring "why the hell not, I should train too."
I only got out of it because of a combination of A. lack of time, and B. injuries (note: the injuries were more from mountain biking than from BJJ, but I did tear a hip adductor muscle once in BJJ training).
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...
My favorites are Corvids.
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.
Built myself a shed from scratch earlier in the summer as a warm up for building a garden office.
Currently have the roof off the porch (somewhat regrettably given the state the summer in the uk) because the ivy got to it before we purchased the house and it was rotting away. Having to learn a new set of skills around tiling hip rafters. Thank the Lord for YouTube!
It’s amazing the number of tools you end up needing as you go along. Though a circular saw and an impact driver will take you a long way.
Do it myself and any issues are easier to live with as they are my fault.
I make a lot of mistakes, but as you say, you can make your peace with them.
Why would you spend $400 on a piece of furniture when you could make it yourself for $800?
I too have been bitten by this bug.
Pens in particular are easy to learn, make gifts that people ooh and aah over, and don't take a ton of time. Materials for a pen range from $10 (for a cheap kit) to $35 (for a top of the line kit plus a fancy blank). Once you've made a few you should be spending an hour to an hour and a half per pen. If something goes wrong mid-project you lose the wood and the tubes, and replacement tubes are cheap, so you don't have to re-buy the whole kit.
Once you master that there are a variety of projects that will ramp up the skill step by step. And there are tons of classes around that'll help you gain those skills.
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.
Before that my obsession was Go, the board game. Still enjoy it but don't ever feel I have 40min - hour to spare for a game and don't enjoy smaller/faster formats. I'll sometimes do problems on a phone app.
If you have any interest in recording & want to maintain the part where you stay away from the computer/workbench while you play music, I cannot more strongly recommend a digital 8-track recorder. It's been life-changing for me.
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/
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.
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.
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.
Music theory is not a necessary entry point per se, but it can help to get some basic concepts into your head to play around with. But really, the best thing you can possibly do is just pick something that seems adjacent to music you like and just start screwing around (if you're a metalhead, maybe guitar, if you like EDM, pick any DAW, if you like jazz, get a decent midi keyboard, etc). Music really isn't an intellectual exercise, just start doing something, see what you like, and what you don't like.
I wrote this comment a while back on learning music theory, which has some more thoughts and also some links and pointers to various tools and resources: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37078383. Might be of interest.
LPT: If someone is new, and looking to make house, techno, etc. I'd recommend sticking to minor keys when exploring music theory.
I don't release music (although I do consider from time to time). I mostly just enjoy the process, and listening back to older work.
I think you should!
Not that my opinion counts for anything, I need to take my own advice. But my guitar teacher said something recently that really hit me - "You don't need to wait 20 years until you're the perfect player before you put music out into the world."
This was a big part of what made me feel confident enough to publish the solo video I linked in my other comment, and I've got some other stuff in the works too. I am trying (to some very small success so far) to be a little less fearful of looking stupid or putting something half baked out into the world.
Music is for everyone! Share it. (Or ignore this advice, that's ok too, don't let me tell you what to do ;)
- 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!.. :(
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.
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 - which I learned from the same pigeon guy who owned a woodworking company.
Been an awesome journey and just about to learn my first Bach Violin Sonata!
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.
Also cycling - 5 bikes and counting :-)
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: $$$
Problem is that it’s worthless to anyone but him.
The cards are expensive but they also hold some relative value (can be resold) and only real cards are legal in tournaments.
That said, for casual games, proxies are growing in popularity and I always say they’re a moral imperative. Only problem is some people use proxies that use non-standard art or borders, which can really hamper the game (or in one case, be incredibly cringe and awful to play against).
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.
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.
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!
For myself, I'm sporadically very motivated to take photography seriously, but don't beat myself up if I'm not motivated for a few months.
Each trip I get to research repeaters. Program the radios. Test while traveling in different locations.
Why am I driving 200 miles into the mountains this weekend? To use the ham radio. Why am I researching and using ham radios? To make driving in the mountains alone safer. It's a win/win.
(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"...)
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.
You can learn it from a friendly beekeeper, a local club, or a good book. There is no substitute for seeing a skilled person work with them though.
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...
Keeping it from messing with neighbours too much is a good idea, as dirty washing or stings wouldn’t be appreciated. Heaving the entrance to the hive close to a wall or fence is a traditional way to get them to fly high and away from people.
With the bees, no. It’s very variable among beekeepers. I open the hive once every 1-2 weeks in spring and maybe once a month in summer. The honey harvest is quite hard work in autumn and then I close them up until spring, not going in for 4-5 months.
Opening a hive should be done with an objective and is sometimes a quick 5-10 minute job (are there eggs?) and sometimes a bit protracted, like the first spring check which took me about 90 minutes last weekend (disease check, stores check, clean up frames. Look for eggs and the queen, treat for varroa, added a box and queen excluder to the hive).
The honey harvest is hot, heavy work and I have got a lot better at it but it still takes me 4-5 hours once a year, early autumn. It’s been as much as 250kgs of honey from my 2 hives and hot, hard work when organised so you can imagine what the first few times are like as it’s bees, sticky honey and heavy boxes and buckets.
I look at the entrance every few days, but that’s not required.
Watching a beehive on a warm day is a bit like watching a fire in winter, its slightly hypnotic.
> Do you need to take care daily?
With coffee, it’s much more rigorous and needs attention 2-3 times per day.
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.
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]. I credit musical instrument skills for the abundance of creative energy I feel. That I spend time on daily or I feel depressed and “off”.
And a fresh sauce makes boiled potato taste like Michelin star cuisine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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 ;)
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.
The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.
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.
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.
I’m a newbie in woodwork so any suggestions are appreciated.
But otherwise you can hang serenely above a sand dune, or below cloudbase, or pull into thermals.
Sailing gives something similar, playing with the wind as it were.
I find it creative, beautiful, practical, and an opportunity to be outside
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.
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.
Piano and Ableton. Also super fun and nice way to meet people
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 me for 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.
How did these things start?
Well...
Fishing - my dad took me fishing as a kid. Both freshwater and saltwater. The bug didn't necessarily "bite" right away, but by the time I was around 11 or 12 I fell into a habit of going fishing a lot with an older friend from school who lived down the road from me, and I just slowly got more and more into it. I had a few pauses or gaps here and there where I didn't fish much, but the pull was always there even when I left other things take precedence and keep me away from the water. I got back into fishing really often in 2019 and have fished relatively regularly since.
Bike Riding - my parents bought me a bike when I was pretty young. 8? 9? I don't really remember. I didn't like it and never rode at all really. A few years later I met a friend who was into BMX riding (same friend from the fishing story, BTW) and begged my parents for a BMX bike. They didn't want to buy me one at first since I never rode the earlier bike, but somehow, by hook or by crook, I managed to convince them to buy me one. I started doing dirt jumps and some flatland freestyle stuff and was hooked. Riding Mountain Bikes came years later when I was in my late 20's or early 30's. A few years after that I bought a road, nominally for "cross training" to support my MTB hobby. But over the last couple of years I've started to see roading biking as something I do for its own sake as well.
Electronics - I was just always into taking stuff apart and tinkering with innards from a young age. Electronics and electricity always fascinated me. I found a good "basic electronics" book in the library at my high-school when I got to that age, and started actually studying some of the theory. For quite a while I thought I would major in electrical engineering in college... different factors led me to major in computer science instead, but I always kept that interest in electronics.