Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.
You’ll be that guy that records old shows on VHS and when he died the only record of old shows was donated to an archive/museum. A priceless contribution to humanity.
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I’ve just learned that my firearms lock…yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same “internet hacker” stigma so I avoid talking about it.
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
If you’re familiar with the Lock Picking Lawyer, he has his own store and has some good kits.
https://covertinstruments.com/collections/lockpicks/products/learn-lockpicking-bundle
I’m not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it’s designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
I miss lockpicking, it’s so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
If the Lockpicking Lawyer has taught me anything, is that a number of electronic locks tend to be easy to bypass via hardware rather than software
Contributing to localization in my language. (I use Localizor or weblate) I’ve helped translation for the Godot Engine and many released games. It’s a free hobby granted you have a PC and some knowledge. I’ve always liked translating stuff for those who can’t speak English. And it keeps my language skills sharp in both.
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that’s it. (poor fish)
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I’m not even sure I owned a horse in the game.
Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don’t have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don’t even talk!
No idea why I am like this
I’m a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.
Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.
I think it’s fun, it’s not something I can really chat with others about.
If someone I knew made entire freaking games and didn’t tell me about it I’d be pissed! That’s really cool and you should wear it on your sleeve, imo.
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain “It’s Wikipedia, but a map” or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren’t worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics… Nothing is outside of my interest.
On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.
I train in swordfighting. It’s good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.
The funniest part is it’s actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body
I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.
The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.
The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.
Starting and abandoning hobbies.
For me it’s coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like “that’s not a hobby”.
You’re being too broad. Gotta specify what you’re doing with coffee at that point, and a slight expansion.
Basically, when bringing it up make it sound more interesting and mysterious, with the potential of a follow-up story.
For instance, people often ask me what brought me to Los Angeles. I tell them, “it’s lady Gaga’s fault”. Hooks 'em every time.
This is accurate, I am hooked, please explain.
This will have to be quick and ugly, because I’m on a phone:
- Learn about Lady Gaga on 4chan.
- Become obsessed fan.
- Help someone w/ lyrics, via voice recording.
- Many people tell me I should be in radio.
- Lose job in Texas.
- Move to LA to be in radio.
Model trains. I don’t bring it up because it’s obscure, but I’ve definitely found there’s a stigma. “Oh he’s the guy who plays with trains”. Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it’s not the first thing I bring up either
I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn’t look like random static) by running pictures I’ve taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to “trick” the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn’t get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.
On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people’s eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture
Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can
Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn’t look too bad
I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it’s hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.
mi ankaŭ parolas la internacian lingvon. ĉiuj miaj amikoj ne volas, ke mi priparolu ĝin
Vi ne estas sola, mi lernis iom da esperanto, sed estas malfacile lerni, cxar gxi sentas sin… senutila?
Saluton ! Mi klopodis apreni la lingvon per Duolingo kaj Lernu, sed beaŭrinde mi restis komencanton.
In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested “ah” IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as “watching YT without ads”, people often don’t care.
There was a time that I thought people didn’t understand the consequences. Now I realize that most people are just entirely apathetic.
