Ask HN: What is the newest hobby you have picked up? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the newest hobby you have picked up?

22 pointskzisme51 comments

I'm generally looking for new things to try and things to get into. I'm just curious what others do in their spare time.

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Swimming in the river Rhein before going to the office. I started last Summer. And just didn't stop as it got colder. I just wanted to know if I can pull this. This winter was pretty mild but still the water temperatur "peaked" at 4°C (39°F) in february. Now it's getting warmer again. Yay!

What made you want to do this? Exercise?

No, not exercise. It was just refreshing in august. Then for some time there was no reason to stop. Like "it's one degree less than last week. Why should I stop now?". At some point I just wanted to know if I could keep on doing it throughout the winter. When it was 4° I wasn't in the water for longer than 30 seconds. Just a few swim strokes, a dunk the head and out again. And it feels really good right after. A little bit like right after sauna.

Bird watching. I'm no huge enthusiast but I've found it enjoyable to learn the names & calls of the wildlife around my house. It's nice to get away from anything technology related too.

Otherwise, I'm tempted to purchase a short-wave radio. It would be great to hear a numbers station live rather than through poor internet recordings.

Check out web software defined radios. There is a very good one at the University of Twente (Nederlands) http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ which runs on a very fine piece of equipment and has a wide range of bands to listen to (probably much wider than you could install at home.)

The only drawback is you're listening to signals somewhere else in the world instead of your very "own" RF spectrum, but it's very convenient where installing a gigantic antenna might not be feasible.

Oh fantastic! Thank you for sharing this.

Rubik's cube twisty puzzles. Far beyond the original 3x3x3 cube, which I've known for years. There's been a boom lately in newly designed puzzles of pretty much every polyhedral shape you can imagine. It feels amazing to deeply grasp the mathematics of them and see patterns in generalizing and applying techniques from one puzzle to new variations.

Here's some recent examples:

http://www.mefferts.com/products/details.php?lang=en&categor...

Best community site: the forums on http://www.twistypuzzles.com/

3D printing with my kids. We built a RepRap Prusi i3 and have had a lot of fun printing printer upgrades and other fun things. We've designed a few things ourselves but often someone else has already designed something that we can use on places like Thingiverse.

Printing 3D printer hardware upgrades from the same 3D printer is an incredibly cool concept.

How much did it cost you to build?

What kind of materials does it use? Does it heat up plastic or apply something to get the material to harden or how does it work? Are the input materials reasonably priced?

I've found: http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_i3 which says ~$150, is that accurate from your experience?

Also:

https://github.com/josefprusa/Prusa3 http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_i3_Build_Manual http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_i3_Buyers_Guide http://www.ebay.com/bhp/prusa-i3

Does anyone know of any similar or better types of open-source 3D printers?

What a great question. Other people's hobbies are always so diverse and interesting. I like to joke that once you have kids, they become your only hobby, but seriously, that's far from the truth.

Right now I'm trying to get into wood turning (essentially making bowls and things by spinning wood really fast and then carving it). My father is a master wood turner so it's a great way to spend some time with the old man.

That's really cool! I've only tried my hand at some small wood working tasks. The price of tools makes me stay away from it generally.

Weight lifting specifically, but trying to be more healthy generally speaking. I'm addicted. I feel great, and am starting to change appearance. If anyone is interested, I use bodybuilding.com's excellent database of exercises and try to avoid injury with good form, low weight at first, and watching out for bad pain.

Highly recommend it to all. Especially mostly sedentary knowledge workers like myself.

Growing plants, building furniture, and photography are all minor hobbies.

Over previous years I used to tinker with repairing, building, and modifying small steam-engines, but I seem to have lost interest in that a fair bit. I've only got a couple of interesting and unusual examples in my home, and I rarely fire them up.

What kind of furniture have you built thus far?

Just simple things so far; desks, tables, and book-cases.

One of the more enjoyable jobs was fitting some bookshelves beneath a recessed window, complete with a secret compartment!

Electronics, building an FM transmitter and hooking it up to a Raspberry Pi to act as a base station for music.

You don't even need a FM transmitter for this: http://makezine.com/projects/make-38-cameras-and-av/raspberr...

I started my own independent press. We have two books out with an anthology of poetry / prose / visual work on the way plus two more titles before the end of summer.

It has been a lot of fun and a great way to meet new people as well as be exposed to a variety of works.

Lindy Hop (swing dance) lessons! Great way to meet new people in a very diverse environment which often lacks guys, and also gets you active. Two things I think it's safe to assume most here (me included) miss during our regular routine.

you can try dancing,illustration or writing ,me i have always wanted to write my own comics now i'm trying to do just that,think of something you always wanted to do or learn and start from that.

piano improv, used to be a huge enthusiast of that, it's a great feeling getting to play just about anything that comes to mind. Considering recording and sharing them on a regular basis too. Then I never realized how this whole "wanting to be a real programmer" thing have dragged me away from it, or from any of my hobbies really. Never gained much other than putting more stress on myself and developed a more negative attitude towards everything. Now I've decided I should get back to doing things that I enjoy :)

Whitewater kayaking. I used to be damn good, had a spate of shoulder dislocations which basically prevented me from doing any for around 5 years. I am rediscovering it as a sport.

How did you deal with your shoulder issues?

I dislocated my shoulder learning to kayak a long time ago, and it popped out about once a year until I got surgery. I spend a good deal of time in the wilderness, and I am hoping I never have to deal with a remote dislocation that won't go back in.

Surgery as well. So far so good.

I plan to take up whitewater kayaking sometime soon. Looks like shoulder injury is common amongst paddlers. Any tips to avoid it?

Also any idea if ACA courses are any good?

Good technique, elbows low.

http://www.paddling.net/guidelines/showArticle.html?148

No idea about ACA as I am in Europe. In my experience, getting out with other good paddlers is better than any courses, but then I did learn the basics quite a while back. Most instructors in the UK seem to want a (teaching) qualification to prove they were good. Most good paddlers didn't need a qualification.

Makes sense. Thanks.

I'm spending most of my time on ice, learning figure skating

Astronomy though its quite limited to the weather.

Sailing. Small J24's.

I live in Sydney. There's nothing quite like sailing in our harbour. Truly is breathtaking.

Archery. But I have decided to take a break because of back problems (which originated at work)

Photography and trying my hands at post processing. Bought Nikon D 3200 sometime back

Playing Golf..what a way to relax and have a great game with friends.

Hacking LibreOffice.

What specifically are you hacking away at?

I'm trying to untangle VCL.

Playing the banjo

Curious, is it your first instrument?

No, I already play guitar and bass guitar.

Raising poultry, specificall hens.

kickboxing / muaythai

Carp Fishing.

Brewing beer.

Is this hard to do correctly? How did you start?

How easy is it to get into this?

Speed Cubing

chemistry

Consumable?

Not sure what you mean. I'm mainly watching 2 Youtube channels for a refresher right now (CrashCourse and Periodic videos). I find it captivating like programming or startups. In fact, if it wasn't for the expensive cost of chemicals, lab equipment etc I bet a chemistry startup would be much more exciting then a web startup. :-)

flying

Airplanes? Helicopters? Gliders? Balloons? RC? Paragliding? Something else?

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