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Comment by tetris11 | Hacker News Reader

I'm always fascinated by hobbyist's storage compartments. Some of the labels of the boxes in the background:

    - "Broken and Delidded Pis"
    - "Non-PI ARM SBCs"
    - "-ers"
    - "Pico and Arduino Microcontrollers"
    - "Breadboards" / "Electric Doodads" /
      "Pepp(?) boards"
    - "M.2 / NVMe"
    - "Blades" / "Home Lab / Soquartz"
    - "Small Windows PCS"

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I think of this as a Midwestern thing, where land is cheap and one can afford to devote a lot of space to hobbies. It seems to be the same thing in fabric arts, where people will have sewing rooms larger than the footprint of many UK houses. I could be totally be off base here. Maybe some actual Midwesterners can weigh in.

Small-town midwesterner here.

There's some truth to what you're saying. Even the smallest apartment I've ever had was big enough to dedicate space to some serious hobbies, and it was (at that time) very inexpensive to rent compared a much smaller place in a more-dense area.

My lifestyle isn't very compact because it has never needed to be compact. Compactness isn't a common expectation 'round these parts. I have space to keep collections of stuff that I find interesting, and to make use of it.

There's tradeoffs to this lifestyle, though. The corner store is only a short walk away, but it mostly just sells beer, soda, and smokes. There's no walking to get something like groceries, or a new shirt (or a used shirt, for that matter). There isn't much for local entertainment. It's 15 miles to the next-largest city, and there's zero public transportation aside from the buses that get kids to/from school.

(It's hard to imagine that there aren't areas of the UK that are of similar form, though, with roomy housing, space for things, and with very limited services and/or options for commerce nearby.)

There are certainly places with very limited services! As for roomy houses, though, that is much harder to find. I did a little searching and found a UK govt report on housing sizes [1]. For a point of comparison, average house size broken out by house type is smaller for all types than the average across all house types for Missouri [2; taken as a random exemplar of the Midwest]. Only when we break out to detached houses built in particular time periods (p.18) does the average become roughly equal to Missouri, and remember this is across all housing in Missouri (IIUC).

The UK settlement pattern is quite weird. About 1/6 of the population lives within the South-East, which is roughly the area commutable to London by train. Then another 1/6 of the population lives in London. So land is very expensive there. The rest of the UK is on average a lot poorer. So the UK in general is not conducive to large housing. You can certainly find old farm houses out in the sticks, and small villages that are mostly expensive large houses. These are a tiny fraction of the housing, though. I believe UK houses are on average the smallest in Europe. (I think the UK would benefit a lot from some decentralisation, but that's a different topic. Side eye in cancelled HS2 lines.)

[1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDSQUFEEMO

To be fair, you can also live small town, Midwest and be a block from a grocery store if that is something that you want to choose.

In fact, I am walking to the grocery store as I dictate this to my phone

There is indeed one grocery store remaining here. This particular town is lucky in that way: Over the past couple of decades it has gone from 3 or 4 grocery stores to 1, instead of from 1 or 2 to 0 like many surrounding communities.

In terms of choice: No, not really. The housing market is very tight these days. So for now, at least: While I must live somewhere, I don't necessarily get to live where I want. I must instead make do with living where I can (and I suppose optionally also maintain hope for a better day tomorrow).

As an EU resident with a modestly large flat who's dedicated 1/3 of it to a large living room because we prioritized room to relax and spend time together, I pine for the chance to have more than a pair of IKEA KALLAX to store (and pile upon) all my electronics stuff and 3D printer(s).

You know, I realized the same thing after seeing a guy in one of our 3D print communities consistently printing life-sized models scaled with LuBan for his students. He had a garage full of Bambus, a bunch of photos of his models in an apparently high-trust community elementary school, and it just clicked when he said "rural Kansas".

We operate one of the largest print farms in the nation, and I can count the number of human-scale or larger sculptures we've put out in the past decade on one hand.

It's all true, when I moved to the west coast from the midwest I was struck by the way everyone just piled their possessions into a heap in the middle of their workspace rather than placing them in labeled containers. At times the heaps reach the ceiling.

Not just the Midwest, but most of the US outside the East Coast cities tend to have pretty large homes and apartments compared to most of the rest of the world in terms of home sizes. The US is pretty huge, with much of it livable and relatively less total density than other nations.

Of course, the US has also done a lot more than many places to preserve natural wilderness with national and ngo parks/reserves.

My house in Phoenix, AZ, USA is relatively typical 3br/3ba and just over 2K sqft (around 192 M^2), and I know a lot of people with larger homes than this.

Yeah, I've seen some youtube recommendations pop up for videos about "tiny homes" that would be fairly standard sized homes here.

I mean, yes, housing and land is cheaper in the midwest US, but you mostly have to get at least an hour away from a major city before it becomes what I consider "cheap." (Otherwise you're still looking at more desirable suburban or bedroom community housing prices.)

But to defend Jeff, the pictures in the article show like a 4x4 corner of a room, even if we extrapolate to say, 8x8x8, that amount of space can usually be found in even a 1-bedroom apartment. I have seen many pictures of amazingly complete electronics/hacking workbenches from around the world that easily fit into much smaller spaces.

Jeff is a bit more than a hobbyist, between him & his father, they are rather accomplished professional radio + electric engineers.

Jeff is a hobbyist in that he has no formal technical training or professional experience with electronics engineering (unless you count youtube shenanigans as such).

Not much of a hobbyist in the sense that he earns (part of) his income from dabbling with RPis. And for the rest of his income, uses them to simulate larger clusters, which he writes books and consults about.

Generally, hobbies are activities where one sees loss not profit.

That's "perf boards" as in perforated. Single-use, solderable prototyping board.

> "Pepp(?) boards"

"Perfboards", perhaps?

...and they have time and access to label maker, as opposed to sharpie. That's some dedication to having order.

Label makers aren't all that expensive, even for relatively high volume and fancy options. It's been relatively useful IMO to have bins and labels available. That said, my own office space is a bit cluttered right now with a handful of half-completed projects that I've been too lazy to finish.

A label maker is about $20. I’m not sure that speaks to intense dedication all by itself.

I wonder if they have a drawer labeled "Label Makers".

The first thing I have always done with any label maker I have touched is printed a test label saying "label maker" and stuck it to the gadget.

I do, and the back of the P-Touch also has a label, "P-Touch" :)

I painstakingly type out MAC addresses etc. on a retro embossing-style label maker beacuse I prefer the aesthetic. I think that's the point to start making personality judgements!

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