Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?
In 2022 I was toying around with OpenAI's RL Gym, right when the first non-instruct GPT3 model came out. I was thinking about getting into ML a lot more, but hesitated. Before that it was 3D printers, mechanical keyboards, drones, etc. All of these have exploded, and while they are still very interesting, I do love my Browns and manage Prusas for my local hackerspace, they have just, for the lack of a better term, industrialized. I'm also now in a position where I have time and money for it, not like when I was 15 and rating Ender motherboard upgrades I knew I'd never buy.
Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem. There's also biohacking, and while designing chips to go into my body is really interesting, I only have one, and don't want to push it too far. One promising idea is a kind of 'Personal Computer 2', where people try to innovate HCI, and while I really like that and do have some research ideas, I'd like to explore a bit more before delving deep into it.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadI play chess but not chessboxing but hey, you asked for some interesting niche hobbies!
It seems that what you do is mostly related to computers within the niche hobbies but what if you can do something else too?
> Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem
Not everything should be done for the end-result, sometimes its the process which matters, there was a great hackernews post about it (https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/)
If you want something niche, perhaps make some portal-2 mods or make more efficient versions of using GlaDOS TTS within browser etc. (this is just something that I want to be honest, but I feel like it can be a niche hobby in its regards seeing your interests)
Let me know if you want more ideas and have fun and have a nice day man!
You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning, kind and full of interesting insights and hobbies, although perhaps difficult to socialize with, at least until they get to know you're well-meaning too.
These challenges come with the territory. You end up talking to people you'd otherwise never meet in the normal course of your life, and it's neutral at worst and wonderful at best.
I made a big effort about 12 years ago to go to a bunch of these (like three meetups a week and trying out a variety of different meetups), but now I mostly stick to a couple of them as I don't have as much time or energy for it anymore. But I've met most of my current friends through those meetups.
Find one you like and keep showing up until you're a regular, and get to know people slowly, and if they like you they start inviting you to things outside of the meetup, and then eventually you end up being friends.
I've done this with three different groups over the years and despite naturally being shy and an introvert I've ended up making friends at each one.
At the height of me doing this (like ten years ago), it got to the point where I'd go about my daily life and about once every other month I'd run into random people I've met at meetups also out and about. Like go out to dinner and spot someone I knew from a meetup also showing up to the same place, or run into them shopping at a Best Buy or something.
Meetups where you do a shared activity seems to be the best, like hikes or movies (+ dinner afterwards) or board games, since you can always focus on the activity if you don't feel like being social, and you have that activity you can always talk about as a subject.
How have you handled this in past meetups?
Basically the same way you handle the exact same situation outside of organizing meetups, but maybe a bit extra on the friendly-and-try-to-not-traumatize-people-who-might-be-trying side of things.
E.g. people who register to take up a (free) spot and then don't show up after multiple reminders, people who are especially rude to somebody fragile, even people who are unconstructively / loudly negative (picture the equivalent of walking into an auditorium of 800+ people, picking up the microphone on stage to yell "this meetup sucks!" then walking out).
This policy is controversial and I'm always trying to find the balance between being as welcoming as possible to people who aren't neurotypical or are going through a hard time and need the social interaction (e.g. me, multiple times in my life)... and people who just come off as jerks and are a net negative to the group.
I'm in multiple groups myself and I always measure myself by whether my showing up that day was a net positive, neutral or a net negative. If the latter, I don't belong there... at least not until I fix whatever was wrong.
I've been to a lot of meetups and it's definitely hit or miss and obviously depends on the sociability of the people that show up. The better ones I've attended are generally ones where people aren't trying to network for work purposes and are there literally to just socialize. The networking ones I find very dull as it's people just talking shop and career and if you've nothing to offer them on the career front, they move on quickly.
It will save both sides a lot of time.
Yep, thats me.
I'd love to organize something like this in my local community but somehow am not sure where or how to start really.
Thanks for unlocking a new anxiety for me.
It's much more structured, with a facilitator to help reduce the possibility of dangerous behaviours. It forced me to confront aspects of myself I otherwise might never have. It also (I think) gave me greater insight into what might be behind people's public faces.
It’s how I met my wife, how I met a whole bunch of people who still feature in my life decades on, how businesses got started, and so much came out of it for everyone involved. It probably helped that we did it over beer and burgers, as one was a social lubricant and the other robbed people of an excuse to leave early. Plus afterwards it transformed into poker back at my place, which was how I really got to know people fast.
Talking to strangers is fun - as is figuring out which strangers will like which other weirdos you’ve got to know and buddy them up.
My hobby is also going to the pub.
Recommendation -- don't stall the glider at heights between 10 and 25 feet from the ground. Also, avoid barbed wire fences.
That community had a tendency to walk around - if they could walk around - in casts for a large part of their life.
He also ended up having a heart attack mid-glide, which was no fun at all. (He survived it, though!)
Do you have any interest in digital humanities? Knowledge work where verification is still important but not as black-and-white as does the math check out, does the code run.
Do you have any interest in family history or genealogy?
https://vibegenealogy.ai/p/the-genealogical-research-assista...
I didn't really plan to build HCI as a hobby, but I have a strong interest in hardware engineering and eventually I wanted to switch back to building things that anyone can physically see.
Years ago I built a hemisphere keyboard and now I've built an LED globe with a viewing portal. I started building visible things again because I had a vision and it's very satisfying to use the result. I spend more time using it now than I did originally building it, although it is definitely a work in progress. I want to build it again for a 2.0 version.
I'm sure there are field that should be absolutely crowded but where you can do something meaningful.
If I had free time, I would write an app to learn foreign languages I'm interested in. I'm pretty sure that there are good apps, but I tried a few ones, and none really fit my needs.
There are also software that I use a lot, like transcribe! which works well, but that I could see how to improve.
So as others mentioned, do something that you would be interested in.
Pokémon Champions just came out, so I might give up cards for the video game. We'll see.
I flipped it, and made suits and pants that I could wear everyday.
The fast fashion stores were crap quality, my body is not a template size and I care about fabric and comfort.
The process was to learn how to sketch, to determine fabrics, colors and fit. I made pants that stay comfortable even after I eat food, I made suits that I can wear casually.
I don’t stitch myself, for that I worked with multiple workshops, until I found one that works for me.
Took me about 3 years to reach a point where all my wardrobe is designed by and for me.
There were multiple side effects on my confidence, my life, and the opportunities coming my way.
For example, the waist of almost every pant became uncomfortable when I sat down after eating food.
The area below arm pits and close to thighs was always tight. The length of pants was always long for the waist.
- To determine my taste, I looked at various styles of women clothing (on Pinterest).
Then for the models I found most attractive, I imagined what would the clothes they have put on look like if they were men. That led me to the realisation that I like formal aesthetic, reserved and subtle colors.
Everything else was experimental
The waist is fitted, but with elastic bands on the side for added comfort (my belly gets bigger during evening, when I sit down and after I eat).
How do you source materials? I'm usually very picky about the material, especially if it touches my skin, and usually the heavier the better. The best T-shirts I ever owned was a military surplus made from organic cotton, and was more than twice the weight of my other T-shirts, but I couldn't find anything like it anywhere.
Kudos for living this lifestyle, those pants look really sick..
Fly fishing has been around for a long time. They used to build rods by hand out of bamboo - a specific species of bamboo native to southern China - before factories started making them out of graphite, fiberglass, etc. for cheap.
Modern fly rods are a few hundred bucks. If you try to buy a bamboo rod in a store, they run $2K-$5K. They take a lot of time and meticulous work to build, and the result is a functional work of art.
Woodworking is a ton of fun, and challenging. Bamboo rod making is a niche within a niche, and there are not a whole lot of people who still do it ... mostly retired guys with a lot of time. It's a great tradition, and it's about as far away from computers and technology as I can get.
I didn't even know how to fly fish until I built my first bamboo rod.
Here's a great video showing the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfTvRxcTuV0
I got back into making electronic music a while ago, and you can dig in deeper by getting into hardware synthesizers. And go deeper by getting into hardware modular synths. And go deeper by building modules from kits. And go deeper by learning electronics and designing your own modules.
It's like a big branching tech tree or tech graph.
With fishing, you can get into fly fishing. And when that's too easy, you start tying flies, or maybe tenkara, or, I guess in your case, making fly rods.
I love it.
I got a bunch of cane[0] rods off eBay for relatively cheap[2] (but that was ~2010.) Sadly my fishing activities were strongly curtailed around 2012[1] (due to a family divorce) but I'm hoping to get back to it one day.
When I did get a chance to use them, they were much nicer (to me) than my companion's fancy new rods (even if the bend when fighting a fish was absolutely terrifying.)
[0] I'm not sure if there's any bamboo ones - it's been a while since I've seen them due to [1]
[2] Inspired, as many people are, by Chris Yates.
I lived in a town where on any sunny day I could go for a walk and be almost guaranteed to spot a water mains leak I hadn't seen before, which I'd then report and see how long it would be before it was fixed.
The record was over a year for one of them.
( Yes, it was a Thames Water area. )
Think of all the jobs that have to be done to run a railway and you will be able to find a museum that does it: heavy maintenance, boiler work, fitting and turning, blacksmithing, woodwork, upholstering, painting, catering, engine driving, fireman, signalling, customer service, ...
It's a great way to meet people, learn new skills and work with physical things.
Bonus: You get to eat the stuff you grow :)
Can you share some useful sensors? Any good pH sensor that can work for some period of time without manual maintenance (cleaning the probes etc)?
It's actually a complex discipline with a huge range of bows and projectiles to choose from, each having unique characteristics you have to train for.
Training using VR equipment is picking up steam, as typically you need a sizeable amount of real estate to practice when the weather is bad.
If you have English-style tower bells near you, it's worth checking out, even if only to listen.
A lot of people think of it as looking for paw/hoof marks in the mud, but tracking can actually be quite involved, requiring you to understand the environment and ecology as a whole.
For example, tracking birds is outrageously difficult and when I first started out I didn't think it was possible. But the more I learned about birds, their habits (per species), their environment, I started to see signs everywhere. It really got my eyes open and I started seeing the same old places in completely new ways!
And in terms of contributing something, there are all sorts of apps/organization that can help you identify different species and in turn you give them data in the form of pictures, location, etc. I use iNaturalist myself, but there are others.
Nowadays there are nice, cheapish groove boxes that are perfect for noodling on the couch. I started with the Novation Circuit Tracks, and also really enjoy the Teenage Engineering EP-133. Not to say that I am any good at this, but it's an enjoyable hobby! Bonus if you are friends who are also into it and you can jam together :)
It's probably because the main measuring instrument (a probe thermometer) doesn't provide any feedback about fat rendering, moisture, etc. Plus, every brisket cut has different fat ratios and thickness, which means a recipe can't guarantee identical inputs like bread baking. I'd love for someone to throw some over the top engineering & experimentation at this.
I started a few years back and have been doing it off and on since. It's challenging but a lot of fun.
I shoot a lot of older style "recurve" bows, but the main style I shoot are horsebows, that is, bows that were historically shot from horseback.
They're very lightweight and you can shoot much more rapidly than you can with a more modern/mechanical recurve or compound. Right now I shoot around 20-25 arrows a minute. Not amazing compared to experienced archers, but a lot of fun.
I have a number of bows, but here are my favorites:
Assyrian: https://www.bogararchery.sk/image/cache/catalog/product/boga... Buryat: (No longer available)
I also shoot an English longbow from time to time.
The horsebows use a technique called "thumb draw" which is very different from the way most bows are shot in the west.
Here's a great YouTube channel if you want to explore getting into it: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminHirmer
Now on the other side of the Bay I have a couple spots, not as dense a network. About an hour away there are masses.