Ima be honest with ya, I believe those cheaper yaesus are actually practically baofengs component wise. But, they are still a bit better due to some higher quality components and wayyyy better QC. Just wanted to throw this out there.
Just getting into Ham radio and SDR myself as of late, so cool and so fun to tweak around with. Got any recommendations for guides or articles to read and learn from? I'm brand new just got a SDR-RTL dongle 📡
I've been getting into primitive technology lately. It all started when I looked at my back yard and thought hey, if we call it red clay, then I should be able to make it into pottery. I take dirt from my yard, levigate it, add grog and wedge, hand-build pots, and fire them in my fire pit. Been making sharpening stones from river rocks. Crafting replicas of Roman machines. That sort of thing.
That is an epic niche. Primitive skills are awesome. Have you ever read The Toaster Project? It’s a story about the attempt to build a ‘simple’ modern appliance starting with raw materials and only using primitive methods. Very insightful look into how complex our built environment really is.
This could be niche, but I'm a fountain pen nerd. I love stationary, different types of papers inks and nibs and how they all influence the writing experience.
Fountain pens are also for some people more disability friendly. Handwriting has sucked for me as long as I remember as it causes a lot of pain and cramping. Fountain pens glide easier and I can write longer with one than with any other type of pen.
I'm Finnish. We also start with wooden pencils and graduate to either ballpoint pens or some kind of fineliner marker. I am the only person I know with a fountain pen who actually uses it for normal writing. Mainly because it hurts so much less.
In the US most kids learn with pencils. When I was a kid we used wooden pencils until mechanical ones were eventually allowed and ballpoint pen usage typically was discouraged until high school. I settled on smooth flow liquid ink ball point type pens for extensive handwriting nowadays.
i spent way too much buying my grail pen a couple years back (pilot namiki falcon with 14k soft flex nib) and it is an absolute dream… though i do still love my pilot metropolitan and cheap jinhaos!
ooh very nice… i better not look into it or i will be buying more pens… haha.
my biggest issue is finding paper that is not super expensive and can hold the ink well… bristol board is my favorite but loose sheets are annoying. i’ve found platinum’s carbon black to be the absolute best ink, after trying out many goulet and noodler’s blacks…
I used to do historical reenactment so would regularly fight with swords, spears, axes, knives etc. Great fun but the injuries start to really hurt over time. A broken knuckle and getting stabbed in the face with a semi-sharp sword that resulted in a hospital visit were my worst!
The broken knuckle was an unfortunate accident during a public show. The angle of the sword thrust happened to go up into my glove and popped a knuckle. The sword to the face was during training by someone who should have known better than to sneak a semi-sharp in. Still, scars to your face add character!
I've been on a hiatus due to some medical stuff making it hard for me to concentrate, but I'm a lock nerd. I collect cool locks ("cool" being very subjective here 😅) and pick / manipulate them.
edit: here's a tiny part of my collection. I'd upload more but I'm having a hard time with the mobile site and image uploads
I build custom mechanical keyboards. Got into it because of the Pandemic and now I have built 6 of them. /r/mk and /r/emk used to be some of my most visited subs on the other site. I'm now known as the goto for keyboard questions in my circles of friends.
I started getting into fidgeting more lately and took a liking to magnetic sliders and now have a few that I pretty much always have with me.
And that extended into me learning about begleri beads somehow so now I am attempting to learn that. I can do slips and 2 finger wraps and occasiaonal one finger or thumb wraps but not much else yet. I accidentally learned a stall because I messed up. I need to really learn transfers since that is one of the main things you do a lot of.
I think I am also amongst the hyperfixator group in this thread. I was previously into speedsolving Rubik's cubes and roasting coffee so I feel a lot of these answers lol.
How do you build a custom keyboard?
Do they sell every single part in different shapes? (I mean the "chassis", not the key caps). How custom can they be?
This is so true. I spent hundreds on this lol. I am currently typing this on a Ferris Sweep with custom dyed keycaps and I ordered my PCBs special just so I could have them in purple to match my micro-controllers.
To add to what @[email protected] said, you can also buy kits from sites like Keebio and Novelkeys. There is a Etsy store call BeeKeebs I will always suggest because Leo is a really cool dude and offers a lot of kits for stuff that you'd otherwise have to part yourself.
I print my own PCBs and aim for boards that don't require diodes. I have most of my boards with Choc Sunsets which are aftermarket custom low profile switches form loweprokb.ca. All my boards run on a fork of QMK called Vial and the hobby gets weird from there. If you are on discord there is a meckkeys server that has a ton of info.
For how custom they can be: Look up Ben Vallack's Piano2. It's an 18 key board that he uses for everyday use including writing code. QMK and it's forks are extremely powerful pieces of software that still blows my mind and I've been using it for 3 years.
Another sites I forgot to mention since I was half asleep when wrote that was kbfans. I have seen people that get into the hobby to the point of building their own get kits from them or Novelkeys. Both offer hotswap PCBs which means you don't need to solder the switches and can change them if you want. They offer 60% and TenKeyless which is probably where most people aim for so I think it's a good place to start.
Also if you want keycaps, Amazon, Ali and Banggood sell knockoff copycaps(lol) of a lot of designs for a lot cheaper. Look for "double shot" or "dye-subbed". Those are gonna last and you won't get fading legends like on cheap boards.
And don't get too overwhelmed with switch choice paralysis. If you break it down to linear, tactile, and clicky for feel and then light, medium, and heavy spring weight, it gets a bit easier to navigate to what you might want. Tactile will have a light bump or a heavy bump(popular in the last few years) but other than that, they offer testers and samples.
They can be as custom as you want! I've made a few by coming up with a layout I want, making the 3D model for the case, 3D printing it out and handwiring it up myself, then doing the firmware for it.
You can make something that once only existed in your head into something you use every single day!
Sorry if I sound stupid but still, what about the actual board (pcb?)? I mean, yeah, I guess you can get them in custom shapes as well, but sounds too advanced.
Another thing I'm failing to understand the possibilities of is about the firmware. What can different?
You can either design your own PCB or handwire. I handwire because it's cheaper, and I don't have to order min 5 pieces and have extra lying around after.
Look up QMK, you can do a million different things with the firmware.
Found any good lemmy communities similar to the old /r's? Used to love g what people came up with, especially with the trackball integrations and all that jazz
Obosob is one of the main mods from the ergo mech sub and they are running https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]. (I don't know crosslike communities on here yet) but that sub is picking up. There is also https://lemmy.ml/c/mechanicalkeyboards. Both are gonna be slower than what reddit was like of course but I kind of like that. I haven't seen much trackball stuff yet but right now there is a Fingerpunch board on the first page with one. I saw a Cirque build the other day too. and a hand full of sub-40% boards including one of mine!
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected], ![email protected]
Always though begleri beads looked fun but I never picked them up because I didn't think I'd be able to do it at my desk. It'd look to much like I wasn't working.
I have the luxury of working from home so fidgeting isn't an issue. I tend to not play with them when working as much since I end up spending most of my time picking them up off the floor. Also when you are on a phone call and hit your knuckles and blurt out an "ouch" it makes it a bit awkward lol.
Some more niche than others but basically...making stuff. Cross stitch, yarn crafts, sewing, needle felting, dicemaking, 3d printing, very occasional cosplay, I'm about to try my first macrame kit and a friend is planning for us to learn punch needle together.
There's something just so satisfying about making real stuff you can use, or wear, or wash yourself with or whatever (I also briefly got into soapmaking).
If you want to chat about basically any craft (or just lurk and look at pretty projects, that's ok too), I've been keeping a megalist of relevant communities and magazines here https://lemm.ee/post/224890. And if anyone reading this runs a related one that should be on the list please DM me to be added!
Oh weird! Been chatting to plenty of people so it works in general but maybe our instances are having issues today. I am not on Matrix yet, should probably sort that out this weekend really. Just sent you a test DM see if it's broken both ways
stealth camping. basically camping where your not supposed to / normally wouldn't want to, and have your presence remain unknown. it's great fun and breathed new life into "the outdoors" for me
Always wanted to try this but I’ve got all my gear themed orange and green. I would stick out like a sore thumb. Also I’m in northern Ontario so It would be silly
I ended up putting blaze orange cord on everything so I wouldn’t leave anything behind when I packed up camp. But my tarp is forest green so maybe I can do this…
either or! I don't do vehicle stealths myself but it's an equally acceptable part of the hobby. I personally like to camp under bridges, on abandoned structures and in the bushes on motorway interchanges. good fun
I'm pretty into conlanging, which is basically making up languages. There are tons of different approaches and ways people can go about it, but like probably most (or at least a plurality of) other conlangers, I generally go for something as naturalistic as possible. I'm also into linguistics so it serves as kind of an interesting way to explore different features and grasp them better, as well as just an excuse to do more research to find out more about something.
Oooh. Have you heard of that indigenous language that is the only one in the world that doesn't have a grammar structure that requires words? So it can be spoken, or whistled with the same functionality. It's stupid difficult to learn, but the thought of carrying entire conversations via whistling is incredibly intriguing to me.
I heard about it in an college anthropology class, and its been something I've marveled at occasionally ever since.
I like traditional slavic folk music and leatherworking (which is misleading what I do is more like crafting rather basic things out of leather, I don't tan or work the leather myself)
Although the overlap seems to point in that direction (and also the fact that I do enjoy the Witcher books and games very much) it's rather coincidental:
I actually prefer fully acapella, white-voice songs (but I do enjoy instrumental ones too)
And regarding leather I'm more into making gear like chokers, cuffs and whatnot (though I'm not trying to make any money out of it as I don't sell)
Ooh one of my fave small YouTubers is big into her leathercrafts, I've been living vicariously through her and [email protected] (Lemmy / Kbin) for a while but not quite taken the plunge yet myself. It's only a matter of time though 😅
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected]
Really like most of the hobbies from comments, you guys are interesting!
Mine are (I'm not sure if they are niche but):
Fountain pens. Writing with them feels very nice and smooth and it's a little piece of "retro" even though I don't have time for any other kind of "retro"
Lucid dreaming. It's an exercise of control over your dreams and a chance of doing something you like when you sleep. Or experience something new. There are forums with quests like "go to an art gallery in a dream and explore what your brain can give you as a painting" or "build yourself a dream homebase with all your favorite pieces of dreams from childhood" or "jump into a chalk painting and describe your experience"
you'd be shocked at how easy it is to grow most edible mushrooms. all you need to grow oysters is a syringe full of spores and some uncle bens pre-cooked vacuum sealed rice. If you want to do lion's mane or other more complex growing cycles like that, just add a rubbermade tub half full of vermiculite and coconut coir. You can be in this hobby for like $100 up front and then like $30/batch. And yes you can grow those mushrooms, where legal of course. I haven't tried it but it seems to be no more difficult than the ones I've successfully grown, and the rice trick actually comes from that community (google "uncle ben tek" for more info)
I’m really into electronics and plants. Together. I grew up on a farm with greenhouses so my interest in control systems, electricity and plants developed all together. I’ve built growth chambers, plant lights, automated waterers and yet none of that was for weed.
I’ve found the Wemos D1 mini to be a better tool for automating larger numbers of things. They operate on similar principles but are actually internet capable, so they can have a simple web interface and keep accurate time. Software like Tasmota makes all that pretty easy. They can use a communication protocol MQTT to speak to each other and create really complex scenarios.
For instance, say your porch light is connected to one. You can have it announce to the network that the porch light just came on and have the other exterior lights listen for that announcement and then change their behavior accordingly.
It’s a lovely and attainable dream! I’m stuck in an urban apartment right now but I’ve automated my balcony garden to keep the plants healthy and watered even when I have to leave town.
I love puzzles like the ones from Huzzle. I should get more but have trouble sitting down and concentrating for longer periods of time if there is no screen in my face.
Same, I love the idea of cryptography and breaking it but I'm not that good and don't really have the time, so I dabble a bit and mostly enjoy from afar. I've made a few pen and paper ciphers but don't know how to have anyone test them.
Yeah I thought so, but I feel weird asking people to solve my random cipher (I feel like a Reddit sub had a rule against asking that). I don't actually know if it's good or bad or ridiculous. I barely know the terms. I will have to look around more I guess. I'm sure there people who are the opposite and want to break random ciphers.
I fly paramotors. Imagine a fan you strap on your back, a paraglider that goes overhead, and you run run run until you're airborne! Never fails to put a smile on my face when times are tough. And maintaining the engine and planning that next flight keeps me occupied when the weather doesn't cooperate.
Training was the way for me! I was a pilot beforehand, but it's such a unique and rather awkward movement that I probably would have really struggled without training.
Looking for and archiving recordings of old and modern announcements in commercial and industrial settings. Like mind the gap on trains or there has been a broadcast tower failure in your area or Pan Am boarding call welcome and instructions. these can be on reel to reel or 8 track tape.
I build guitar pedals! I don't design them, but I order the PCBs and solder the components myself. It's significantly cheaper than buying them premade, and how many people can say they made their own pedalboard?
I'm also an amateur Fossil Hunter. The area I live in is filled with fossils from the Ordovincian.
Some of mine maybe aren't that niche anymore, but:
Retro computing: no one needs more than 640k. Maybe no one needs more than 64k. Those old systems were the last time a single programmer could have control over the entire machine at a low level.
Ham radio: Oftentimes called a dying hobby, but a great foray into electronics in general, and also a pretty nice community (save for a few curmudgeons).
Analog audio: often thought of as a boutique thing, but really isn't. Lots of old equipment ready to be restored that can give you really unique auditory experiences.
Plastic modeling: especially if you start from a kit but add things to it, or if you build from scratch, or hell, even if you just build a kit as intended, there is a huge amount of personal expression and creativity.
Yes it can be done on a budget, although the more you get into it, the more alluring the expensive stuff is.
Even without a license, you can get started with some listening only stuff. For me, I picked up an rtl-sdr off Amazon for pretty cheap and started listening to NOAA weather satellites.
Before you start transmitting, you'll need to get your license. Hamstudy.org is a great place to start practicing for the exam.
Definitely can be done on a budget. As others mentioned, you do need a license, but study materials are free. The Technician license is the most basic.
Generally there will be an amateur radio club around most areas -- I'd do a search for your area. If there is one near you, and especially if they hold physical meetings, just get involved!
An SDR (software defined radio) is likely the cheapest way that you can start listening (not transmitting), and that can be helpful to hear how people communicate. Again, do a search and see if there are radio nets local to your area. The most basic antenna is a long strand of wire!
And finally, just a heads up: ham, not HAM. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't an acronym for anything.
Study for your tech license with https://ham.study/ and learn how to use a baofeng uv5r/gt5r handheld. That's how I started on a budget. Don't overspend on the baofengs on amazon. They should realistically be around $25 not $60 and they are all almost the same.
I'll always have a place in my heart for my first computer, the TI-99/4A. (If you really need more than 4k, you can get the 32k expansion!) I eventually progressed to writing programs in 9900 assembly and even sold a few, it was fun.
I got one a few years back. Such a unique machine! The CPU is 16-bit iirc, but the rest of the system is set up as 8-bit. And some kind of strange scheme with shared RAM that makes the whole thing ultimately very slow.
I never got too far into it since I didn't have a disk drive for it. I hear there are kits available now, since the originals are somewhat expensive.
I just like to experiment with Linux distros. I like to get into a problem and then fix it, even if it is really annoying. After solving a problem, it's satisfying to watch the Program or something like that run like a charm.
I freeline skate and have recently gotten into surfskating as well. They're good fun and nice leg workouts. Don't ask me to do any tricks though, I say "I prefer to cruise around", but really I'm just too pleb for that stuff.
A great way to get started IMO is to listing to Command Performance. During WWII, all of Hollywood came together to put together radio shows that were recorded and send to radio stations throughout the world. They were a combination of Hollywood stars, comics and great musicians coming together - here's a link to over 200 episodes - https://archive.org/details/command-performance-1948-12-25-xx-christmas-1948
Unicycling. It's hard to do, but super fun and great for balance and core strength. Plus, once you learn to ride, you can start getting all different kinds of them. Ones for doing tricks, jumping, off-road riding etc.
I like to make mistakes (yes, on cassette). It's a time to be with my music, think about it, maybe have a beer. I make the cover artwork and then later I can listen to something I made.
I’m unsure if this counts as a “hobby”, but I absolutely love the Mass Effect series so much that I enjoy just watching it as much as replaying. I love it so much that I’ve been recording my gameplay and editing it into a sort of Mass Effect “show”.
I could just watch the handful of streamers out there who play it, but few people play as FemShep and I’ve never seen anyone play a Shepard looking anything like mine let alone take the “right” choices and actions, so this Mass Effect “show” gives me a way to watch my Shepard’s story as often as I’d like.
The whole project has evolved into learning how to polish things in Premiere Pro and Photoshop, so I’m self-teaching as I go.
Is this a thing? Editing games playthroughs into tv shows? I'd love to watch this for games I'm interested in but would never play.
Also, FemShep is the only Shepard I've played (I only played the series the first time when the Legendary edition came out) and I can't image it any other way.
For Mass Effect, I’ve played the game enough times that I have my “ideal” story in mind each time I play. I’ve had to re-record playthroughs multiple times so that I can maximize the dialogue options and include everything that I’d like. For example, when it comes to the ME1 Virmire survivor, I decided that I liked a mix of the Paragon and Renegade responses when choosing to leave them, so I recorded with the Paragon response and then replayed that mission so I could do the Renegade response. Then, I edited the two so that it looks like a single cohesive scene.
When it comes to the combat, I’ve had to re-re-re-record some missions to ensure that I 1) didn’t die and 2) didn’t seem to be getting my butt kicked too much that it became distracting. For example, in ME2, I’ve had to record Jack’s mission a nauseating six times because I either got killed or there were just too many instances where I nearly died, even on Casual. I’ve also had to re-record missions because my first attempt had the “camera work” a little too janky and too hard to follow when just watching. I’ve since learned to play with a cinematic eye so that the combat is a lot smoother.
In the combat, I’ve also tried to minimize the “game” aspects wherever possible which meant editing around bringing up the different menus like changing weapons or directing powers/attacks. I’ve also spent a lot of time adding in some crossfades to speed up movement where applicable. For example, in ME1, running across the Citadel once can give a nice view for the first time, but there’s no reason to just watch my Shepard running back and forth across missions, so I’ll fade leaving Chora’s Den and running back to C-Sec or other places.
Overall, it’s been a pretty fun project. I’ve had to teach myself how to play with an eye for cinematography and how I’ll eventually edit things. It’s also been interesting to notice super niche things about how the games are put together because I’m observing scenes down to single frames when I’m editing.
I’ve been doing my recording off the original Mass Effect games since I’ll likely play Legendary Edition far more often than I’ll revisit the originals, so I’ll have my “show” for some added nostalgia as well. Right now, I’m in the middle of editing a full “re-record” of ME2’s combat to reduce some of the jankiness while also going through a first run of ME3. I’ll need multiple runs off what I loaded from ME2 to get all the right armor and weapons and play/record with reduced pop-ups for leveling up, etc.
If I can make a recommendation, I’d definitely recommend doing everything on PC if possible. I’ve done mine off Xbox which kept the files limited to 1 hour at a time, which has helped keep things easier to find, but it’s been heart breaking to get through a mission and then realize the recording stopped 10 minutes before I’d finished.
Final little question: have you got any examples of your work I can look at? Some of this is a little hard to envision, and I'd like to get a feel for how you're going about it.
Looks like I've got a project to start in any case!
Here’s an “episode” I loaded earlier this year. It’s still a little rough in parts, so it’s not really a public link and I was just sending to a couple friends to get some thoughts. This is generally what I’m going for when it comes to making it into a Mass Effect “show”: https://youtu.be/TndVqwA4NBI
When I’ve finally got it polished, the plan is to put all the episodes on YouTube, but hopefully this will give you some inspiration for your own project. Cheers!
Twisty puzzles, such as the Rubik's cube. Just to start with the basic Rubik's cube itself, there are a lot of ways to enjoy it. There are competitions for solving in a variety of different ways, from the standard speed solving, one handed, blindfolded, or fewest moves. Then there are tons of different puzzles that you can get, perhaps even hundreds of different ones. They can be different shapes, have different number of layers to turn, or turn in unusual ways. It can be fun and relaxing to get a new puzzle and figure out a solution by yourself.
One thing I really like about cubing is that it doesn't really require my full attention at this point, so I can get some practise in while listening to a youtube video where the visuals aren't that important, or a podcast or something (actually it's pretty much the only way I can bear to listen to a podcast lol).
I like finding obscure media and curating playlists out of them. Weird old commercials, music videos, tv spots, instructional/training videos, short films and animation, old tv shows.
My niche hobby is self-hosting and running my own home computer lab. It's tons of fun. The only thing I miss about reddit is the community of self-hosters and home labbers.
I do sport kite flying and kite making, and I love it. It's incredibly small and niche.
The kites are multi-line kites that can be controlled from the ground, and I typically fly to music and perform at kite festivals. I also build my kites myself by sewing together ripstop for the sails, cutting down carbon tubes for the frame, and 3d printing fittings.
Man thats super awesome. I remember going to parks in the early 2000's and seeing people flying those things, and they were always the coolest people there. Are there communities for it, or do you mostly just do it for gigs?
There's a bit of a community, but it is too small to show up much on most social media. Almost all of it is on Facebook these days, which is the only reason I have a FB account.
There's a few groups out there like Sport Kite Pilots Longe that are pretty good spots for online conversation. Otherwise, we mostly meet up at Kite festivals. My next event will be the Washington State International Kite Festival during the 3rd fill week of Aigust
The most niche thing I probably do (badly) is making chocolate. Not like, just tempering chocolate, but putting nibs and milk powder and sugar and cocoa butter in my countertop melanger and letting it work for like 24 hours until it's nice and smooth. I haven't really perfected it at all and my chocolate recipe is currently mediocre, and i need to experiment with better nibs and roasting them myself, but it's an interesting process that I enjoy.
Otherwise uh, IDK I do everything. I love cooking/baking, and most types of art, I'm huge into fabric arts like nuno felting and needle felting, embroidery is one of my absolute favorite things, I'm pretty decent at sewing, I also like to draw and I am really itching to get into sculpey jewelry crafting and maybe miniatures, I've dabbled in wire jewelry (meh at it), I built (with help) a coffee table where the top comes up so you can turn the base on its side to become a dining table, I'm sure there a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting... oh I guess I'm really good at laundry? I can get stains out of almost anything at this point.
It's not super niche, but I've never met anyone outside of the hobby that even knows it exists.
Anyway, I enjoy car audio competitions a lot. One version is SPL (sound pressure level) where the goal is to build a system that can get as loud as possible. Then there's SQ (sound quality) that's more about making the best sounding system you can, which is also fairly artsy (make it look pretty).
There's a lot of people who are assholes about it, they're the kid down the street blaring his music at 10 o clock at night. Every who does it for a hobby are very respectful of other people and recognize that the vast majority of people don't wanna hear your music.
I enjoy it for a few reasons. Firstly, I just love music. Music is a while body experience. It's not just your ears, but your skin reacts to the vibrations as well, and you just aren't gonna get that experience with cheap speakers. The car is a great place to feel music because it's enclosed and you can generally go somewhere to not bother people.
The other part, is that its very hands on and problem solving. You're doing woodworking, electrical design, maybe fiberglass. Lots of different engineering.
Can’t believe I got all the way to the end and no one has posted about flight simming.
It’s an amazing hobby, with tonnes of gear, software, community and a wealth of knowledge. I’m nowhere in as deep as some, but find an immense pleasure in nerding out about it.
I was never worried about flying for real (as a passenger) but during turbulence I’d sometimes get a bit clammy-handed. Flight simming has completely cured it. There are SO many layers of safety and the more you understand - and in fact the more accident reports you read and see what the follow-up improvements were - the less I get bothered about even heavy turbulence or unsteady landings. Pilots know their stuff.
My neighbor has ducks and they are indeed disgusting and charmingly cute. I've seen one get up to follow me for food and she was sitting in a large pile of her waste. Also duck rape is awful. Some have died from the duck gang rapes I was told :(
I think you do transfer too much! Lots of animals have a mating ritual that involves overpowering a mating partner. It’s not pleasant to look at, but then neither is watching a chimp rip an unborn fawn out of a deer, while the deer is still alive. Nature is nature and there are lots of situations where there is direct violence between males and females as part of mating:
Hyenas, where female hyenas are larger than males, necessitating them to submit to female dominance during mating.
Many species of spiders and praying mantis where the female eats the male after mating.
Antelopes, where males often overpower females before mating.
Dolphins, where groups of males isolate females using herding techniques.
Hermaphrodite slugs where one partner will eat the penis of the other partner to prevent it mating further afterwards.
Idk about niche so much as, not nearly as popular as it used to be. Circle track asphalt racing. My whole family is in on it. My grandpa did it, my dad and my uncle's did it (and are helping us) now my brother's and I are carrying the legacy. Used to be 17 people from our town showing up to the track every weekend. Now there's 2 of us crews that show up.
We're racing what's called a sportsman series. We're actually running a specific engine, crate 602 that's regulated so you can't change anything so it keeps it cheaper. We're running that on an 88 Chevy Monte Carlo frame. To keep costs down the track does a tire bank. You get 6 tires at the beginning of the season then you earn 1 tire for every 2 races you race.
I don't know if this necessarily counts; but indie wrestling! I wrestle in the indies and the love and passion our people have in our community is absolutely wonderful. Not too many of friends that I had before have actually come to shows, and I would love if they would!
I never took an interest in wrestling at all before I saw my first show, but the brutality and theatrics had me spellbound.
Collecting & restoring mechanical calculators, slide rules and old electronic calcs. I sucked hard at math in school btw. Today I love it. Weird life, eh?
Curta's are a special case, I'm not a watchmaker and I wouldn't dare to try at this point in my skill progress, but for example I had some sprocket wheel ones for which I made new cogwheels, pouring rain with powder in it or casting it in brass and filing it down. But Curta's - I don't know. Maybe if it's the last chance, but what kind of insane SOB brakes a curta? :)
Large format film photography. It's a awesome hobby, although expensive, that requires a lot more indepth knowledge of the basics of photography to nail the shot. You can also get way better quality for way cheaper if you get the right films.
I bought a load of FPV stuff, but didn't really take into account I live right next to an airport... Haven't flown in a about a year, but I should really get back into it!
I love flying FPV! Just started getting into the hobby, and have only flown in the sim (goggles otw), but it's really fun, especially when flying to music
It sounds like the absolute worst, and everyone I know who's ever been into it has been kind of crazy in other ways too. But hey whatever floats your boat 😄
It's definitely not for everyone that's for sure. I've been underground with new cavers who swore they weren't claustrophobic until we reached a squeeze, then reality comes calling!
Harder as in access to caves, or age related aches and pains?! Access to most caves in the UK is pretty straight forward if you are a member of a club. Many caves are protected and require permissions. The age related issues just keep getting worse each year 🙄
Lockpicking. I’ve been a longtime watcher of content like the lockpicking lawyer so for Christmas I asked for a set of picks and tools from my wife. Ever since I just sit around and blindly fidget with old padlocks. You can get a decent starter set for $60 and a never ending supply of locks that have long since lost their keys.
I play an Irish sport called hurling and I am neither Irish nor I am in Ireland. So nobody knows this sport so I have to explain a lot what it is. But it is so much fun!
I do clothing embroidery with a machine. It's a small business, but I basically break even. It's a great way for me to have a creative outlet, and share the geek and outdoorsy designs with others that appreciate it.
What I unintentionally have done is locked in what everyone I know gets for every Christmas gift for the foreseeable future.
I forage for food. It's a lot of fun trying new things. But it's also really dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.
If you want to do this hobby safely start small. Identify plants in your own yard/park exct. I use an app called plant net, Wikipedia, duckduckgo, Google Earth, foraging sites, to find out where to go. Knowledge of when they grow and what condions they like helps.
Being 100% sure on what you are going to eat is a life and death choice. When in doubt, throw it out.
Feel free to ask me anything if you have questions.
I love the satisfaction of completing a film list like the AFI top 100 or Sight and Sound's top 100. I enjoy watching, discussing, and learning more about the films.
Impressive! I'm more than halfway through the AFI 100 Years...100 Movies list now myself, slowly but surely. Started posting on Letterboxd too. Quite fun!
Awesome! I recommend that you listen to the Unspooled podcast as you go along. It's nice to hear some critical (and funny thoughts) about the films, especially the really laborious ones like Intolerance. Good luck and happy viewing!
Offroading in a full size vehicle. Most people on trails have moved to Side by Sides which takes half the fun out of wheeling. I prefer difficult technical trails where we are crawling along at 5-10mph.
The things is it's half the actual wheeling and half the building of the rig. There's nothing more satisfying than spending all week building something then having it work properly on the trail over the weekend
Lemmy seemed to eat my last reply so here I go again. I think so far I'm liking the fan automation I set up where my ceiling fans and can turn on when my house gets to a certain temperature range before the AC turns on. My next project is to automate my garage doors with some Shelly devices and reed switches. My girlfriend also got into it and set up some auto-watering system for some plants while were away but it still needs some work before we trust it.
Not sure if it's niche anymore but mechanical keyboard is a fun rabbit hole to dive into. There's so much variety and diversity in term of customization. You can really build a keyboard that fit your preference in term of looks, feels and sounds. The hobby has been booming after covid so now you can get some really nice starter stuff at affordable price.
I'm a semi-secretive LARPer. I pack my stuff at night, don't talk to my coworkers about it, and just go about my life as if I don't.
I've found people are pretty judgy about it, so I just don't mention that I enjoy getting into a neat costume, playing some little mini-games, having a drink or six, camping, and (most importantly) seeing my friends once a month in a structured activity.
It's fun stuff if you find the right group. That last part is hard.
Honestly, I don't know why people rip on other people's hobbies just because it's something they wouldn't do. As if their opinion has any bearing on other people's happiness. I'm glad you've found something that makes you happy and gets you out of the house.
Seriously, you'd think people could just be happy for someone's happiness, instead of being miserable. I'm over those feelings. You don't have to like the same stuff to get along.
Primary motto:
Do your best not to hurt anyone, but otherwise do what you want. Enjoy life while you have it.
Secondary motto:
Enjoy seeing other people's happiness. Sometimes giving up something (small) you want for someone else to have something they really want (or even need) feels even better.
Have fun, and do good. Thanks for your kind words 😊
Every LARP has a different system, which in our game is light-touch(1) and kinda light-hearted. We use latex weapons like those from Forgotten Dreams and Mytholon (two manufacturers I know of off hand), and there's a hit point system, and vocally called damage and skills with different effects.
Example:
Hitting an opponent and calling "Strength 5" indicates to the opponent that they need to take 5 steps away from the attacker in the direction the attacker chooses. They also take basic weapon damage of 1 HP in this transaction.
While every LARP has its own system, there is a lot of overlap because of the limitations presented by a physical (ie. in-person) system. You can do a way larger swath of things in a tabletop.
Look for LARPs in your area online, and I'm sure you'll find a few.
(1)Different games handle it differently, but we have players stemming from single digits to upper double digits, and we try to be accommodating to the needs of a diverse age group with varying degrees of disability.
Painting miniatures, I'm new at this (less than one year) but I not so bad at this, and recently started to play street fighter 6 and really sucks buts is fun
I revisited an old hobby, emulating niche systems. I got an Acorn emulator with Risc OS 5 and some development tools, and I wrote a snake game in BBC BASIC and a calculator in pure ARM assembly, both of which are new to me. It was a blast.
I looooooove Beat Saber
I used to play a ton of Guitar Hero and recently got Clone Hero running and loving it so much, the nostalgia is real!!! I got all the Guitar Hero songs in there, are there some other good music packs or websites you'd suggest I visit to get more songs in there?
modern boardgames. I've been fascinate by them since before I could write. I would draw my own roll and move boards and my mom would write down my instructions of what space would do what. From there it only grew and now I have more games I can play.
rpgs. The most recent addition. I had always dismissed them as a potential hobby because it was advertised to me with videos of actors basically doing 99% improv and 1% gameplay. Turns out it doesn’t have to be like this.
I also collect gemstones. Started as a kid when we came across an old quarz find on a hike. I was hooked by the shiny and have been collecting on and off ever since.
Longboarding is a hobby I picked up a few years ago and it’s a ton of fun. Just riding along you feel like you’re floating over the pavement and the feeling is addicting. You can get e-boards if you’re not into pushing but I haven’t gone down that road yet since they seem heavier and more expensive. Also, most of them you can’t push and you have to rely on your battery and motor so if you run out m, you’re stuck. Some companies like the one I bought my board from (Bustin) make hybrid boards but they’re pricey.
I kinda wonder if my husky would be good at that. Before I moved, she would tear ass through the backyard around all the crap I kept out there like an obstacle course.
I'd probably have a harder time keeping up with her than her doing all those jukes and doing the course lol
It's definitely worth the shot. Many agility trainers will do an evaluation with the owner and the dog to see how well they would react on a course.
You'd ideally want to have a near perfect recall, as well as being able to command from a distance. If you could do both then it will be easy for your dog to learn the obstacles.
There are quite a lot of videos of high end competitions and theirs at least one of every breed.
Code golf on the cgcc stack exchange. I don't do it too often, but the community is pretty small and when I see a good one I can't stop thinking about it.
I'm really into calligraphy and snowboarding. Luckily there's a snowboarding presence here on lemmy, but I have not the time to start a calligraphy one.
Church bells being ring to produce songs but changes specifically are precise ringing procedures that often involve complex math in their creation.
I'm with op it's super neat. Before I find out about it I never knew some church bells can stand on their heads bell mouth up and complete full rotations like so.
I find people who develop deep passions for things you never consider in daily life to be incredibly fascinating. This is especially true for things that others might find boring.
I always want to understand why they find so much pleasure in something others might consider mundane.
Brickfilming! I make films with Lego using stop motion animation. Takes a lot of patience and my perfectionism is my worst enemy, but it's super rewarding, and there's a really cool community online around it. And yes, my profile picture is from my most recent Brickfilm!
I collect plushies/stuffed animals (to the point where I'm running out of room for more) and I've played Tabletop RPG games like Pathfinder, Shadowrun and GURPS for a good few years.
I build various random number generators, and then use them in elaborate practical jokes.
Solid-state particle detectors, zener avalanche noise, etc. Many failed designs (or failed... So far).
Sometimes I put them in sinister looking cases. Sometimes behind an API. Sometimes I design a coffee maker that brews coffee in a quantum superposition of caffeination states.
I'm working on one that is a Lemmy bot. It won't be done particularly soon though.
I’m learning to play the talkbox. It’s tons of fun and it’s totally a valid way to make up for the fact that I can’t sing my way out of a paper bag, lol.
I haven't done much with it in a while, but I'm also not giving up on it, so I suppose it's still valid lol.
I collect LaserDiscs
I got started with the format around 2010, and it was super neat to delve into this old, but strangely good, format. I found that most players and films were super cheap, and as a poor family with really no ability to move to HD yet, the SD format picture was clearly worse than DVD, but not so much so that it was unwatchable or anything.
I spent a lot of time collecting new films, looking at players, etc. etc., but I took a break while in college. Turns out that in that time everything went wild, and now the format is expensive to collect for. So much so that I've basically stopped at the moment. It's still a super neat format though, and I'm not about to offload all my kit just yet.
For anyone looking for info about the format, I'd recommend Techmoan on YouTube. Matt does a lot of interesting tech videos, and the handful he's done on LaserDisc are quite good.
Coffee brewing! It's not super niche (a lot of people enjoy coffee), but I'd love to get to the point where I could host free coffee for friends and be able to make just about anything one could ask for and make it well. It'd be nice to share it back just out of the love of doing it.
Right now I’ve mastered the pour over and the cold brew, but I’ve been recently figuring out how to dive into the espresso machines. That’s been the main set back to opening up the free friends coffee shop out of my apartment lol, don’t know the right one to get and all of that.
Ham radio! It's relaxing. My favorite activity is to take my portable gear to parks and operate Parks on the Air.
My brother used to be really big into his ham radio. It got smashed in his move and he never bought another one =\
I am waiting for my exam. After that I will have my own call sign. Ham radio is cool
How do you decide on a call sign?
It is assigned to me I cannot choose call sign unfortunately
What do you think about the baofeng radios with ham? Pretty good to start out with?
They are fine for starting out with, but you'll probably want to upgrade soon. There are better radios for around $75 if you can afford it.
What would you recommend? Is there a good mega thread here?
Most activity, I've seen here: ![email protected] but there's a lemmy bug that's not showing a bunch of posts. That should be resolved soon.
These are good cheaper radios (The price has gone up a bit)
https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-016123
https://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015573
Ima be honest with ya, I believe those cheaper yaesus are actually practically baofengs component wise. But, they are still a bit better due to some higher quality components and wayyyy better QC. Just wanted to throw this out there.
They’re pretty much baofengs with much better filtering, so you don’t get front end overloading which can be frustrating.
yup
There's also ![email protected] which is reasonably active.
I had no idea about Parks on the Air. Thanks! I'll be checking out.
Just getting into Ham radio and SDR myself as of late, so cool and so fun to tweak around with. Got any recommendations for guides or articles to read and learn from? I'm brand new just got a SDR-RTL dongle 📡
You should check out Ham Radio Crash Cpurse on YouTube. Lots of great info there.
Hell yeah, came here to say this. 73 friend.
Just getting into this myself! Got any recommendations for guids/videos/articles? I'd be happy to check anything out 👍
I've been getting into primitive technology lately. It all started when I looked at my back yard and thought hey, if we call it red clay, then I should be able to make it into pottery. I take dirt from my yard, levigate it, add grog and wedge, hand-build pots, and fire them in my fire pit. Been making sharpening stones from river rocks. Crafting replicas of Roman machines. That sort of thing.
Okay, this sounds cool as hell. Please post photos of this.
That is an epic niche. Primitive skills are awesome. Have you ever read The Toaster Project? It’s a story about the attempt to build a ‘simple’ modern appliance starting with raw materials and only using primitive methods. Very insightful look into how complex our built environment really is.
are there other people doing it?
would be cool to see what you do and the various techniques!
Yessss. There's somethig incredibly satisfying about understanding the raw materials around us.
This could be niche, but I'm a fountain pen nerd. I love stationary, different types of papers inks and nibs and how they all influence the writing experience.
Fountain pens are also for some people more disability friendly. Handwriting has sucked for me as long as I remember as it causes a lot of pain and cramping. Fountain pens glide easier and I can write longer with one than with any other type of pen.
So fountain pens are not the default tool for getting into handwriting everywhere? What did you use to learn to write with as a child?
I'm Finnish. We also start with wooden pencils and graduate to either ballpoint pens or some kind of fineliner marker. I am the only person I know with a fountain pen who actually uses it for normal writing. Mainly because it hurts so much less.
In the US most kids learn with pencils. When I was a kid we used wooden pencils until mechanical ones were eventually allowed and ballpoint pen usage typically was discouraged until high school. I settled on smooth flow liquid ink ball point type pens for extensive handwriting nowadays.
I'm starting to think fountain pens aren't all that niche, especially given the lovely community at [email protected]
Oh nice, didn't know that was a community. I'll head on over.
It's such a nice community!
i’ll have to check it out — back about five years ago r/fountain pens was a great community!
+1 for fountain pens!
Ooooh I've inherited a Pelikan Meisterstück from my father and it is glorious.
I'm totally on board with inks and different paper textures... It is cool to see and experience all the little details.
oh, absolutely!
i spent way too much buying my grail pen a couple years back (pilot namiki falcon with 14k soft flex nib) and it is an absolute dream… though i do still love my pilot metropolitan and cheap jinhaos!
Oh don't feel bad, my personal favorite and most expensive is my Pilot Custom 823. It holds a ton of ink and the nib is amazing
ooh very nice… i better not look into it or i will be buying more pens… haha.
my biggest issue is finding paper that is not super expensive and can hold the ink well… bristol board is my favorite but loose sheets are annoying. i’ve found platinum’s carbon black to be the absolute best ink, after trying out many goulet and noodler’s blacks…
Used to be sword fighting, but difficult after I got into an accident and can barely use my hand anymore...
I used to do historical reenactment so would regularly fight with swords, spears, axes, knives etc. Great fun but the injuries start to really hurt over time. A broken knuckle and getting stabbed in the face with a semi-sharp sword that resulted in a hospital visit were my worst!
"I used to be an adventurer like you. But then I took an arrow into the knee.."
“But then I took a sword to the face…” idk which one is worse!
Damn :c... Such a shame :/
I'm sorry this happened to you. It does sound like you and your group went way too far for the equipment you were using.
Usually theres a tradeoff between historical accuracy, safety equipment and sparring intensity.
If you have no adequate hand protection for historical reasins, you either need lower intensity or explicitly forbid hand hits.
If you want to fight at full intensity of you need to fall back on less accurate protection and maybe even still adjust rulesets.
If you want accurate swords with no rolled / flared point, you must change how thrusting works.
I got a fencing mask imprinted on my forehead once because we also went too intense with polearms for the gear we had.
The broken knuckle was an unfortunate accident during a public show. The angle of the sword thrust happened to go up into my glove and popped a knuckle. The sword to the face was during training by someone who should have known better than to sneak a semi-sharp in. Still, scars to your face add character!
Sounds like this is not dangerous at all.
I hope you get well soon my friend
My condolences. I also lost a bunch of hobbies due to hand injuries. It's depressing
What kind? Doing HEMA myself, though not as much as I'd like
I've been on a hiatus due to some medical stuff making it hard for me to concentrate, but I'm a lock nerd. I collect cool locks ("cool" being very subjective here 😅) and pick / manipulate them.
edit: here's a tiny part of my collection. I'd upload more but I'm having a hard time with the mobile site and image uploads
growing chillies in beer cans
Left is a ghost pepper, right is a 7 Pot Congo
Ever try growing Pepper X?
Nah, never seen the seeds for them from a reputable seller sadly! I’ve got reapers and a couple of naga varieties in the garden though
Nice. Do you use grow lamps?
I thought about getting one but opted not to. I’ve got south facing windows so all my plants through spring are able to get all the sun they need!
Do they bear fruit in such small containers?
So the chillies part is obvious enough, but why in beer cans?
Do you have any problems with gnats?
This is awesome and I need to find a way to do it.
I build custom mechanical keyboards. Got into it because of the Pandemic and now I have built 6 of them. /r/mk and /r/emk used to be some of my most visited subs on the other site. I'm now known as the goto for keyboard questions in my circles of friends.
I started getting into fidgeting more lately and took a liking to magnetic sliders and now have a few that I pretty much always have with me.
And that extended into me learning about begleri beads somehow so now I am attempting to learn that. I can do slips and 2 finger wraps and occasiaonal one finger or thumb wraps but not much else yet. I accidentally learned a stall because I messed up. I need to really learn transfers since that is one of the main things you do a lot of.
I think I am also amongst the hyperfixator group in this thread. I was previously into speedsolving Rubik's cubes and roasting coffee so I feel a lot of these answers lol.
How do you build a custom keyboard? Do they sell every single part in different shapes? (I mean the "chassis", not the key caps). How custom can they be?
Beware brave traveler, you are asking questions that may result in a journey you did not wish to embark.
This is so true. I spent hundreds on this lol. I am currently typing this on a Ferris Sweep with custom dyed keycaps and I ordered my PCBs special just so I could have them in purple to match my micro-controllers.
lol
I don't think I have the patience nor the money and time, but it does sound fun.
To add to what @[email protected] said, you can also buy kits from sites like Keebio and Novelkeys. There is a Etsy store call BeeKeebs I will always suggest because Leo is a really cool dude and offers a lot of kits for stuff that you'd otherwise have to part yourself.
I print my own PCBs and aim for boards that don't require diodes. I have most of my boards with Choc Sunsets which are aftermarket custom low profile switches form loweprokb.ca. All my boards run on a fork of QMK called Vial and the hobby gets weird from there. If you are on discord there is a meckkeys server that has a ton of info.
For how custom they can be: Look up Ben Vallack's Piano2. It's an 18 key board that he uses for everyday use including writing code. QMK and it's forks are extremely powerful pieces of software that still blows my mind and I've been using it for 3 years.
Holy Molly.
That's a lot of possibilities.
I found some really good looking custom keyboards.
Another sites I forgot to mention since I was half asleep when wrote that was kbfans. I have seen people that get into the hobby to the point of building their own get kits from them or Novelkeys. Both offer hotswap PCBs which means you don't need to solder the switches and can change them if you want. They offer 60% and TenKeyless which is probably where most people aim for so I think it's a good place to start.
Also if you want keycaps, Amazon, Ali and Banggood sell knockoff copycaps(lol) of a lot of designs for a lot cheaper. Look for "double shot" or "dye-subbed". Those are gonna last and you won't get fading legends like on cheap boards.
And don't get too overwhelmed with switch choice paralysis. If you break it down to linear, tactile, and clicky for feel and then light, medium, and heavy spring weight, it gets a bit easier to navigate to what you might want. Tactile will have a light bump or a heavy bump(popular in the last few years) but other than that, they offer testers and samples.
They can be as custom as you want! I've made a few by coming up with a layout I want, making the 3D model for the case, 3D printing it out and handwiring it up myself, then doing the firmware for it.
You can make something that once only existed in your head into something you use every single day!
Oh, right! I forgot about 3D printing.
Sorry if I sound stupid but still, what about the actual board (pcb?)? I mean, yeah, I guess you can get them in custom shapes as well, but sounds too advanced.
Another thing I'm failing to understand the possibilities of is about the firmware. What can different?
You can either design your own PCB or handwire. I handwire because it's cheaper, and I don't have to order min 5 pieces and have extra lying around after.
Look up QMK, you can do a million different things with the firmware.
Ok, I just watched a video of Ben Vellack's Piano that @roux recommended. Damn!
Found any good lemmy communities similar to the old /r's? Used to love g what people came up with, especially with the trackball integrations and all that jazz
Obosob is one of the main mods from the ergo mech sub and they are running https://lemmy.ml/c/[email protected]. (I don't know crosslike communities on here yet) but that sub is picking up. There is also https://lemmy.ml/c/mechanicalkeyboards. Both are gonna be slower than what reddit was like of course but I kind of like that. I haven't seen much trackball stuff yet but right now there is a Fingerpunch board on the first page with one. I saw a Cirque build the other day too. and a hand full of sub-40% boards including one of mine!
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected], ![email protected]
Good bot!
This is amazing
Does anyone else always have the links from this bot as broken? Like there's an extra carriage return after the ! or something
lol I love it!
Always though begleri beads looked fun but I never picked them up because I didn't think I'd be able to do it at my desk. It'd look to much like I wasn't working.
I have the luxury of working from home so fidgeting isn't an issue. I tend to not play with them when working as much since I end up spending most of my time picking them up off the floor. Also when you are on a phone call and hit your knuckles and blurt out an "ouch" it makes it a bit awkward lol.
Some more niche than others but basically...making stuff. Cross stitch, yarn crafts, sewing, needle felting, dicemaking, 3d printing, very occasional cosplay, I'm about to try my first macrame kit and a friend is planning for us to learn punch needle together.
There's something just so satisfying about making real stuff you can use, or wear, or wash yourself with or whatever (I also briefly got into soapmaking).
If you want to chat about basically any craft (or just lurk and look at pretty projects, that's ok too), I've been keeping a megalist of relevant communities and magazines here https://lemm.ee/post/224890. And if anyone reading this runs a related one that should be on the list please DM me to be added!
Are you on matrix? It is not letting me DM for some reason.
Oh weird! Been chatting to plenty of people so it works in general but maybe our instances are having issues today. I am not on Matrix yet, should probably sort that out this weekend really. Just sent you a test DM see if it's broken both ways
Dice making is cool! I’ve been wanting to get a 3d printer to print some components for my skates!
You'll buy it to make one thing and suddenly you're printing everything and your whole life is made of plastic. Totes worth it though lol.
This sounds so cool and I wish I had the time to try it all but I hardly have the time to knit as much as I used to :D
stealth camping. basically camping where your not supposed to / normally wouldn't want to, and have your presence remain unknown. it's great fun and breathed new life into "the outdoors" for me
Steve, is that you?
certainly inspired me :)
Always wanted to try this but I’ve got all my gear themed orange and green. I would stick out like a sore thumb. Also I’m in northern Ontario so It would be silly
it can still be done but you might need some camo or something. highly recommend it!
I ended up putting blaze orange cord on everything so I wouldn’t leave anything behind when I packed up camp. But my tarp is forest green so maybe I can do this…
i believe in you! a lot of my gear isnt 'stealthy' either, part of the fun is making it work and good site selection
Like in a van or do you mean camping out in cities or something?
either or! I don't do vehicle stealths myself but it's an equally acceptable part of the hobby. I personally like to camp under bridges, on abandoned structures and in the bushes on motorway interchanges. good fun
I'm pretty into conlanging, which is basically making up languages. There are tons of different approaches and ways people can go about it, but like probably most (or at least a plurality of) other conlangers, I generally go for something as naturalistic as possible. I'm also into linguistics so it serves as kind of an interesting way to explore different features and grasp them better, as well as just an excuse to do more research to find out more about something.
Oooh. Have you heard of that indigenous language that is the only one in the world that doesn't have a grammar structure that requires words? So it can be spoken, or whistled with the same functionality. It's stupid difficult to learn, but the thought of carrying entire conversations via whistling is incredibly intriguing to me.
I heard about it in an college anthropology class, and its been something I've marveled at occasionally ever since.
Whoo! I've been spending the last year getting into Esperanto, and been slowly getting obsessed with how language works
Have you listened to this? It's available on Audible and I found it mind blowing.
The Story of Human Language by John McWhorter, The Great Courses
I like traditional slavic folk music and leatherworking (which is misleading what I do is more like crafting rather basic things out of leather, I don't tan or work the leather myself)
Found the Witcher costume maker
Although the overlap seems to point in that direction (and also the fact that I do enjoy the Witcher books and games very much) it's rather coincidental:
I actually prefer fully acapella, white-voice songs (but I do enjoy instrumental ones too) And regarding leather I'm more into making gear like chokers, cuffs and whatnot (though I'm not trying to make any money out of it as I don't sell)
Ooh one of my fave small YouTubers is big into her leathercrafts, I've been living vicariously through her and [email protected] (Lemmy / Kbin) for a while but not quite taken the plunge yet myself. It's only a matter of time though 😅
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: ![email protected]
Roasting and brewing the best coffee I possibly can.
Installing open source operating systems or firmware on every device I can.
What's your coffee setup(s) like? Pour over, espresso, drip?
Gene Cafe roaster, Hario hand grinder and brewer. I usually do pour over, I do own a French press. If I want espresso, I'll go out for it.
I'm pretty sure you're a long lost mutal friend, haha. A lot of my friends like this sort of thing too :)
Ask one what's their favorite flashed device...
I'll have to!
Have you ever gotten GNU/Hurd running on hardware?
Only on a VM. Like a lot of less common OSs, drivers are a problem.
I love mapping on openstreetmap.org
Seems interesting, what do you do exactly?
I add shops, restaurants and other places of interest around my hometown.
Same. There’s at least two of us!!!
Really like most of the hobbies from comments, you guys are interesting!
Mine are (I'm not sure if they are niche but):
Fountain pens. Writing with them feels very nice and smooth and it's a little piece of "retro" even though I don't have time for any other kind of "retro"
Lucid dreaming. It's an exercise of control over your dreams and a chance of doing something you like when you sleep. Or experience something new. There are forums with quests like "go to an art gallery in a dream and explore what your brain can give you as a painting" or "build yourself a dream homebase with all your favorite pieces of dreams from childhood" or "jump into a chalk painting and describe your experience"
you'd be shocked at how easy it is to grow most edible mushrooms. all you need to grow oysters is a syringe full of spores and some uncle bens pre-cooked vacuum sealed rice. If you want to do lion's mane or other more complex growing cycles like that, just add a rubbermade tub half full of vermiculite and coconut coir. You can be in this hobby for like $100 up front and then like $30/batch. And yes you can grow those mushrooms, where legal of course. I haven't tried it but it seems to be no more difficult than the ones I've successfully grown, and the rice trick actually comes from that community (google "uncle ben tek" for more info)
I’m really into electronics and plants. Together. I grew up on a farm with greenhouses so my interest in control systems, electricity and plants developed all together. I’ve built growth chambers, plant lights, automated waterers and yet none of that was for weed.
If I ever settle down, I want to set up a backyard greenhouse w/ aquaponics. Using arduino to automate everything is the dream.
Two things:
Never settle!
I’ve found the Wemos D1 mini to be a better tool for automating larger numbers of things. They operate on similar principles but are actually internet capable, so they can have a simple web interface and keep accurate time. Software like Tasmota makes all that pretty easy. They can use a communication protocol MQTT to speak to each other and create really complex scenarios.
For instance, say your porch light is connected to one. You can have it announce to the network that the porch light just came on and have the other exterior lights listen for that announcement and then change their behavior accordingly.
It’s a lovely and attainable dream! I’m stuck in an urban apartment right now but I’ve automated my balcony garden to keep the plants healthy and watered even when I have to leave town.
I ride electric scooters for fun and plan to learn lockpicking. I'm a sucker for cryptographic puzzles but not really good at it.
I made a replacement cipher for my friend. I sent him a very short story and he was able to decipher it! Made me happy!
Lockpicking is a blast, you've inspired me to bring my kit back out
I love puzzles like the ones from Huzzle. I should get more but have trouble sitting down and concentrating for longer periods of time if there is no screen in my face.
Same, I love the idea of cryptography and breaking it but I'm not that good and don't really have the time, so I dabble a bit and mostly enjoy from afar. I've made a few pen and paper ciphers but don't know how to have anyone test them.
There's got to be Internet people that will!
Yeah I thought so, but I feel weird asking people to solve my random cipher (I feel like a Reddit sub had a rule against asking that). I don't actually know if it's good or bad or ridiculous. I barely know the terms. I will have to look around more I guess. I'm sure there people who are the opposite and want to break random ciphers.
I fly paramotors. Imagine a fan you strap on your back, a paraglider that goes overhead, and you run run run until you're airborne! Never fails to put a smile on my face when times are tough. And maintaining the engine and planning that next flight keeps me occupied when the weather doesn't cooperate.
Does this require any type of license?
Nope!
Been thinking about this. Did you train anywhere or just get a wing and motor and just go for it?
Training was the way for me! I was a pilot beforehand, but it's such a unique and rather awkward movement that I probably would have really struggled without training.
Looking for and archiving recordings of old and modern announcements in commercial and industrial settings. Like mind the gap on trains or there has been a broadcast tower failure in your area or Pan Am boarding call welcome and instructions. these can be on reel to reel or 8 track tape.
Do you just record them with a mic, or do you track down the actual audio files/records/tapes/etc?
both
Sounds like a great resource for game devs.
I build guitar pedals! I don't design them, but I order the PCBs and solder the components myself. It's significantly cheaper than buying them premade, and how many people can say they made their own pedalboard?
I'm also an amateur Fossil Hunter. The area I live in is filled with fossils from the Ordovincian.
Some of mine maybe aren't that niche anymore, but:
Retro computing: no one needs more than 640k. Maybe no one needs more than 64k. Those old systems were the last time a single programmer could have control over the entire machine at a low level.
Ham radio: Oftentimes called a dying hobby, but a great foray into electronics in general, and also a pretty nice community (save for a few curmudgeons).
Analog audio: often thought of as a boutique thing, but really isn't. Lots of old equipment ready to be restored that can give you really unique auditory experiences.
Plastic modeling: especially if you start from a kit but add things to it, or if you build from scratch, or hell, even if you just build a kit as intended, there is a huge amount of personal expression and creativity.
I really want to get into HAM radio. Is it something thatcan be done on a budget? Do you have any resources for a interested beginner?
Yes it can be done on a budget, although the more you get into it, the more alluring the expensive stuff is.
Even without a license, you can get started with some listening only stuff. For me, I picked up an rtl-sdr off Amazon for pretty cheap and started listening to NOAA weather satellites.
Before you start transmitting, you'll need to get your license. Hamstudy.org is a great place to start practicing for the exam.
Definitely can be done on a budget. As others mentioned, you do need a license, but study materials are free. The Technician license is the most basic.
Generally there will be an amateur radio club around most areas -- I'd do a search for your area. If there is one near you, and especially if they hold physical meetings, just get involved!
An SDR (software defined radio) is likely the cheapest way that you can start listening (not transmitting), and that can be helpful to hear how people communicate. Again, do a search and see if there are radio nets local to your area. The most basic antenna is a long strand of wire!
And finally, just a heads up: ham, not HAM. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't an acronym for anything.
Study for your tech license with https://ham.study/ and learn how to use a baofeng uv5r/gt5r handheld. That's how I started on a budget. Don't overspend on the baofengs on amazon. They should realistically be around $25 not $60 and they are all almost the same.
I'll always have a place in my heart for my first computer, the TI-99/4A. (If you really need more than 4k, you can get the 32k expansion!) I eventually progressed to writing programs in 9900 assembly and even sold a few, it was fun.
I got one a few years back. Such a unique machine! The CPU is 16-bit iirc, but the rest of the system is set up as 8-bit. And some kind of strange scheme with shared RAM that makes the whole thing ultimately very slow.
I never got too far into it since I didn't have a disk drive for it. I hear there are kits available now, since the originals are somewhat expensive.
Is 3D printing still niche? If so, 3D printing, otherwise nothing.
I just like to experiment with Linux distros. I like to get into a problem and then fix it, even if it is really annoying. After solving a problem, it's satisfying to watch the Program or something like that run like a charm.
I freeline skate and have recently gotten into surfskating as well. They're good fun and nice leg workouts. Don't ask me to do any tricks though, I say "I prefer to cruise around", but really I'm just too pleb for that stuff.
I like to yoyo. The other site had a "throwers" community that I enjoyed lurking in. I haven't seen one show up here yet.
Where my throwers at?
maybe it's time for you to make one
Yeah, I've considered it, I just don't think I could commit to moderating it.
I feel the same way about so many topics
Sub rehab might have it!
https://sub.rehab/
Already checked :/
Damn. Lemmy is still pretty new.
Old Time Radio (OTR) - amazing to learn history by listening to the radio programs of the day
How would one get into this? Any websites you recommend?
On an app called Podcast Addict there are old time radio channels available. They even do old comedy and sci-fi shows.
Check it out
I like falling asleep to them at night.
A great way to get started IMO is to listing to Command Performance. During WWII, all of Hollywood came together to put together radio shows that were recorded and send to radio stations throughout the world. They were a combination of Hollywood stars, comics and great musicians coming together - here's a link to over 200 episodes - https://archive.org/details/command-performance-1948-12-25-xx-christmas-1948
YouTube has a ton of them, as does Archive.org. Old Gameshows from the 50's are a great time too.
You bet your life with Groucho Marx is great - https://archive.org/details/you-bet-your-life-1952-02-20-160-secret-word-heart
I've been into designing boardgames and worldbuilding with the intention of running a Tabletop RPG.
For my current boardgame project, it's a Roll-n-Write style game where you travel the map in order to collect random critters.
My worldbuilding project, at the moment, consists of a sort of airship & steampunk world with sci-fi undertones.
Unicycling. It's hard to do, but super fun and great for balance and core strength. Plus, once you learn to ride, you can start getting all different kinds of them. Ones for doing tricks, jumping, off-road riding etc.
I read that as unrecycling at first. I like to remove bottles and paper from the bin and throw it in the trash.
I've tried unicycling once, there were people who did trials and Muni, very difficult!
My daughters can ride unicycle and I am just in awe how they do it. It's against all proper laws of physics. And you madperson even do tricks?
I like to make mistakes (yes, on cassette). It's a time to be with my music, think about it, maybe have a beer. I make the cover artwork and then later I can listen to something I made.
Mixtapes?
Looks like they make mistakes too lol
I’m unsure if this counts as a “hobby”, but I absolutely love the Mass Effect series so much that I enjoy just watching it as much as replaying. I love it so much that I’ve been recording my gameplay and editing it into a sort of Mass Effect “show”.
I could just watch the handful of streamers out there who play it, but few people play as FemShep and I’ve never seen anyone play a Shepard looking anything like mine let alone take the “right” choices and actions, so this Mass Effect “show” gives me a way to watch my Shepard’s story as often as I’d like.
The whole project has evolved into learning how to polish things in Premiere Pro and Photoshop, so I’m self-teaching as I go.
Is this a thing? Editing games playthroughs into tv shows? I'd love to watch this for games I'm interested in but would never play.
Also, FemShep is the only Shepard I've played (I only played the series the first time when the Legendary edition came out) and I can't image it any other way.
Oh man you've never heard of "machinima"? May I introduce you to Red vs Blue. It's going to be a fun day for you
I know Reddit had/has a GamesTheMovie subreddit. I believe this is exactly what you want, though I've never actually watched any of them.
Tbh I find the whole "the movie" thing to be too lengthy, would love hour-long "episodes" of various games as an alternative.
Might have to give making them a shot...
Saw this idea and tbh now I wanna do something similar, but for Dragon Age.
I guess I need to learn how to actually edit this shit together though, I used to livestream, so that kind of editing was never really necessary
Out of curiosity, how do you select what scenes to keep and what to cut? Are you freecamming things like combat?
Now you raise this, I kinda wanna try it with the Dragon Age trilogy
For Mass Effect, I’ve played the game enough times that I have my “ideal” story in mind each time I play. I’ve had to re-record playthroughs multiple times so that I can maximize the dialogue options and include everything that I’d like. For example, when it comes to the ME1 Virmire survivor, I decided that I liked a mix of the Paragon and Renegade responses when choosing to leave them, so I recorded with the Paragon response and then replayed that mission so I could do the Renegade response. Then, I edited the two so that it looks like a single cohesive scene.
When it comes to the combat, I’ve had to re-re-re-record some missions to ensure that I 1) didn’t die and 2) didn’t seem to be getting my butt kicked too much that it became distracting. For example, in ME2, I’ve had to record Jack’s mission a nauseating six times because I either got killed or there were just too many instances where I nearly died, even on Casual. I’ve also had to re-record missions because my first attempt had the “camera work” a little too janky and too hard to follow when just watching. I’ve since learned to play with a cinematic eye so that the combat is a lot smoother.
In the combat, I’ve also tried to minimize the “game” aspects wherever possible which meant editing around bringing up the different menus like changing weapons or directing powers/attacks. I’ve also spent a lot of time adding in some crossfades to speed up movement where applicable. For example, in ME1, running across the Citadel once can give a nice view for the first time, but there’s no reason to just watch my Shepard running back and forth across missions, so I’ll fade leaving Chora’s Den and running back to C-Sec or other places.
Overall, it’s been a pretty fun project. I’ve had to teach myself how to play with an eye for cinematography and how I’ll eventually edit things. It’s also been interesting to notice super niche things about how the games are put together because I’m observing scenes down to single frames when I’m editing.
I’ve been doing my recording off the original Mass Effect games since I’ll likely play Legendary Edition far more often than I’ll revisit the originals, so I’ll have my “show” for some added nostalgia as well. Right now, I’m in the middle of editing a full “re-record” of ME2’s combat to reduce some of the jankiness while also going through a first run of ME3. I’ll need multiple runs off what I loaded from ME2 to get all the right armor and weapons and play/record with reduced pop-ups for leveling up, etc.
If I can make a recommendation, I’d definitely recommend doing everything on PC if possible. I’ve done mine off Xbox which kept the files limited to 1 hour at a time, which has helped keep things easier to find, but it’s been heart breaking to get through a mission and then realize the recording stopped 10 minutes before I’d finished.
Mate, this is fantastic help! Thank you so much!
Final little question: have you got any examples of your work I can look at? Some of this is a little hard to envision, and I'd like to get a feel for how you're going about it.
Looks like I've got a project to start in any case!
Here’s an “episode” I loaded earlier this year. It’s still a little rough in parts, so it’s not really a public link and I was just sending to a couple friends to get some thoughts. This is generally what I’m going for when it comes to making it into a Mass Effect “show”: https://youtu.be/TndVqwA4NBI
When I’ve finally got it polished, the plan is to put all the episodes on YouTube, but hopefully this will give you some inspiration for your own project. Cheers!
Fantastic mate, I really appreciate it! Definitely got a better sense of how you're going about it now!
Twisty puzzles, such as the Rubik's cube. Just to start with the basic Rubik's cube itself, there are a lot of ways to enjoy it. There are competitions for solving in a variety of different ways, from the standard speed solving, one handed, blindfolded, or fewest moves. Then there are tons of different puzzles that you can get, perhaps even hundreds of different ones. They can be different shapes, have different number of layers to turn, or turn in unusual ways. It can be fun and relaxing to get a new puzzle and figure out a solution by yourself.
One thing I really like about cubing is that it doesn't really require my full attention at this point, so I can get some practise in while listening to a youtube video where the visuals aren't that important, or a podcast or something (actually it's pretty much the only way I can bear to listen to a podcast lol).
I like finding obscure media and curating playlists out of them. Weird old commercials, music videos, tv spots, instructional/training videos, short films and animation, old tv shows.
My niche hobby is self-hosting and running my own home computer lab. It's tons of fun. The only thing I miss about reddit is the community of self-hosters and home labbers.
I do sport kite flying and kite making, and I love it. It's incredibly small and niche.
The kites are multi-line kites that can be controlled from the ground, and I typically fly to music and perform at kite festivals. I also build my kites myself by sewing together ripstop for the sails, cutting down carbon tubes for the frame, and 3d printing fittings.
Man thats super awesome. I remember going to parks in the early 2000's and seeing people flying those things, and they were always the coolest people there. Are there communities for it, or do you mostly just do it for gigs?
There's a bit of a community, but it is too small to show up much on most social media. Almost all of it is on Facebook these days, which is the only reason I have a FB account.
There's a few groups out there like Sport Kite Pilots Longe that are pretty good spots for online conversation. Otherwise, we mostly meet up at Kite festivals. My next event will be the Washington State International Kite Festival during the 3rd fill week of Aigust
The most niche thing I probably do (badly) is making chocolate. Not like, just tempering chocolate, but putting nibs and milk powder and sugar and cocoa butter in my countertop melanger and letting it work for like 24 hours until it's nice and smooth. I haven't really perfected it at all and my chocolate recipe is currently mediocre, and i need to experiment with better nibs and roasting them myself, but it's an interesting process that I enjoy.
Otherwise uh, IDK I do everything. I love cooking/baking, and most types of art, I'm huge into fabric arts like nuno felting and needle felting, embroidery is one of my absolute favorite things, I'm pretty decent at sewing, I also like to draw and I am really itching to get into sculpey jewelry crafting and maybe miniatures, I've dabbled in wire jewelry (meh at it), I built (with help) a coffee table where the top comes up so you can turn the base on its side to become a dining table, I'm sure there a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting... oh I guess I'm really good at laundry? I can get stains out of almost anything at this point.
It's not super niche, but I've never met anyone outside of the hobby that even knows it exists.
Anyway, I enjoy car audio competitions a lot. One version is SPL (sound pressure level) where the goal is to build a system that can get as loud as possible. Then there's SQ (sound quality) that's more about making the best sounding system you can, which is also fairly artsy (make it look pretty).
There's a lot of people who are assholes about it, they're the kid down the street blaring his music at 10 o clock at night. Every who does it for a hobby are very respectful of other people and recognize that the vast majority of people don't wanna hear your music.
I enjoy it for a few reasons. Firstly, I just love music. Music is a while body experience. It's not just your ears, but your skin reacts to the vibrations as well, and you just aren't gonna get that experience with cheap speakers. The car is a great place to feel music because it's enclosed and you can generally go somewhere to not bother people.
The other part, is that its very hands on and problem solving. You're doing woodworking, electrical design, maybe fiberglass. Lots of different engineering.
Can’t believe I got all the way to the end and no one has posted about flight simming.
It’s an amazing hobby, with tonnes of gear, software, community and a wealth of knowledge. I’m nowhere in as deep as some, but find an immense pleasure in nerding out about it.
I was never worried about flying for real (as a passenger) but during turbulence I’d sometimes get a bit clammy-handed. Flight simming has completely cured it. There are SO many layers of safety and the more you understand - and in fact the more accident reports you read and see what the follow-up improvements were - the less I get bothered about even heavy turbulence or unsteady landings. Pilots know their stuff.
Remote control tanks. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing the suspension on the tracks of an RC tank actually react to bumps
Raising ducks. I love it. They're disgusting creatures, but great.
How are they disgusting? When I see them they look quite cute.
I had a friend as a kid who had ducks as and I can answer this. They poop. Everywhere. A lot. Also they're loud as hell sometimes.
My neighbor has ducks and they are indeed disgusting and charmingly cute. I've seen one get up to follow me for food and she was sitting in a large pile of her waste. Also duck rape is awful. Some have died from the duck gang rapes I was told :(
Aside from their propensity to gang-rape, ducks are pretty cool. I’m not being edgy. Look it up.
I think you do transfer too much! Lots of animals have a mating ritual that involves overpowering a mating partner. It’s not pleasant to look at, but then neither is watching a chimp rip an unborn fawn out of a deer, while the deer is still alive. Nature is nature and there are lots of situations where there is direct violence between males and females as part of mating:
Drive by the duck farms in North Jersey and get back to me.
Idk about niche so much as, not nearly as popular as it used to be. Circle track asphalt racing. My whole family is in on it. My grandpa did it, my dad and my uncle's did it (and are helping us) now my brother's and I are carrying the legacy. Used to be 17 people from our town showing up to the track every weekend. Now there's 2 of us crews that show up.
Excuse my ignorance, is that kind of like NASCAR racing?
Yes but generally the tracks are smaller. We're running 1/4 mile but we've also got 1/3 and 1/2 mile tracks somewhat close to us.
Oh cool! Is it fairly expensive? I can imagine you're going through a few sets of tyres? What cars are you racing? (sorry, 20 qs!)
We're racing what's called a sportsman series. We're actually running a specific engine, crate 602 that's regulated so you can't change anything so it keeps it cheaper. We're running that on an 88 Chevy Monte Carlo frame. To keep costs down the track does a tire bank. You get 6 tires at the beginning of the season then you earn 1 tire for every 2 races you race.
I don't know if this necessarily counts; but indie wrestling! I wrestle in the indies and the love and passion our people have in our community is absolutely wonderful. Not too many of friends that I had before have actually come to shows, and I would love if they would!
I never took an interest in wrestling at all before I saw my first show, but the brutality and theatrics had me spellbound.
Indie wrestling is awesome! You ever try catch wrestling?
I have! Our school incorporates a lot of catch/grapple wrestling. Our shoot fight nights are so much fun.
Collecting & restoring mechanical calculators, slide rules and old electronic calcs. I sucked hard at math in school btw. Today I love it. Weird life, eh?
Can you repair Curtas? I think there's a niche market demand for that. I'd certainly want it if mine ever broke.
Curta's are a special case, I'm not a watchmaker and I wouldn't dare to try at this point in my skill progress, but for example I had some sprocket wheel ones for which I made new cogwheels, pouring rain with powder in it or casting it in brass and filing it down. But Curta's - I don't know. Maybe if it's the last chance, but what kind of insane SOB brakes a curta? :)
Large format film photography. It's a awesome hobby, although expensive, that requires a lot more indepth knowledge of the basics of photography to nail the shot. You can also get way better quality for way cheaper if you get the right films.
Caving (although not so much these days) and FPV drone flying
I bought a load of FPV stuff, but didn't really take into account I live right next to an airport... Haven't flown in a about a year, but I should really get back into it!
Yeah, that could be problematic!
Only slightly!! 😂
I love flying FPV! Just started getting into the hobby, and have only flown in the sim (goggles otw), but it's really fun, especially when flying to music
It is a great escape from the day to day
Caving is really cool! One of my friends is super into it. There are some beautiful crystalline caverns underground. :)
Caving as in getting inside of caves and exploring them as stuff? That kind of caving?
Yes, usually referred to as potholing in the UK. Squeezing through tight spaces underground for fun!
It sounds like the absolute worst, and everyone I know who's ever been into it has been kind of crazy in other ways too. But hey whatever floats your boat 😄
It's definitely not for everyone that's for sure. I've been underground with new cavers who swore they weren't claustrophobic until we reached a squeeze, then reality comes calling!
Ah spelunking in the US. Why has it gotten harder?
Harder as in access to caves, or age related aches and pains?! Access to most caves in the UK is pretty straight forward if you are a member of a club. Many caves are protected and require permissions. The age related issues just keep getting worse each year 🙄
Fpv drone flying is so fun. I fucking love flying them so much.
Lockpicking. I’ve been a longtime watcher of content like the lockpicking lawyer so for Christmas I asked for a set of picks and tools from my wife. Ever since I just sit around and blindly fidget with old padlocks. You can get a decent starter set for $60 and a never ending supply of locks that have long since lost their keys.
I play an Irish sport called hurling and I am neither Irish nor I am in Ireland. So nobody knows this sport so I have to explain a lot what it is. But it is so much fun!
Hurling is no joke, one of the fastest field games in the world, mind your head!
Good god your shins must be made of solid steel by now.
I rarely drink this much anymore...
Quake Champions is an awesome PC shooter that almost no one has heard about. Has a small pro-league and everything
Never have played QC, but I am a fan of ut and quakelike afps!
Oh wow, it's still going? I really thought the game got shut down! It's a cool shooter, definitely fun to mess around in.
I do clothing embroidery with a machine. It's a small business, but I basically break even. It's a great way for me to have a creative outlet, and share the geek and outdoorsy designs with others that appreciate it. What I unintentionally have done is locked in what everyone I know gets for every Christmas gift for the foreseeable future.
I have a lot because ADHD hyperfixations. Here are some of the more niche ones:
SCUBA diving 3d printing Woodworking Finger drums Martial arts Power lifting FPV drone building and flying Board games and tabletop RPGs
I'm sure there are more, but these are the more recent ones that are really hard to get anyone to join other than my wife.
+1 Also there needs to be a powerlifting community on lemmy if it isn't already. I'd settle for posts like "lifted heavy circle".
Play any Gloomhaven? I'm in the process right now of resetting my game board to get a new group going and am super excited for it.
Yes, I have the physical edition, but mostly play digital because setup is so involved. It's a brutal game.
Damn, this sounds like me… I wonder if I have some ADHD/hyper fixation stuff.
-Making sprite art and turning it into perler/ the plastic bead things.
-Chiptune and synthesizers
-Tabletop RPGs
-Card games
I have a very dangerous and lame hobby.
I forage for food. It's a lot of fun trying new things. But it's also really dangerous if you don't know what you are doing.
If you want to do this hobby safely start small. Identify plants in your own yard/park exct. I use an app called plant net, Wikipedia, duckduckgo, Google Earth, foraging sites, to find out where to go. Knowledge of when they grow and what condions they like helps.
Being 100% sure on what you are going to eat is a life and death choice. When in doubt, throw it out.
Feel free to ask me anything if you have questions.
[email protected] is one of my hobbies. I mod this community too! Join our hot lap challenge! :D
I love the satisfaction of completing a film list like the AFI top 100 or Sight and Sound's top 100. I enjoy watching, discussing, and learning more about the films.
Impressive! I'm more than halfway through the AFI 100 Years...100 Movies list now myself, slowly but surely. Started posting on Letterboxd too. Quite fun!
Awesome! I recommend that you listen to the Unspooled podcast as you go along. It's nice to hear some critical (and funny thoughts) about the films, especially the really laborious ones like Intolerance. Good luck and happy viewing!
Offroading in a full size vehicle. Most people on trails have moved to Side by Sides which takes half the fun out of wheeling. I prefer difficult technical trails where we are crawling along at 5-10mph.
The things is it's half the actual wheeling and half the building of the rig. There's nothing more satisfying than spending all week building something then having it work properly on the trail over the weekend
Not that niche, but tabletop role-playing games that are not Dungeons and Dragons!
Making custom home automations with Home Assistant. Sure, a lot of it is unnecessary but it sure is a lot of fun.
I’m deep into HomeKit, but haven’t gotten into HomeAssistant. What’s the automation your most proud of setting up?
Lemmy seemed to eat my last reply so here I go again. I think so far I'm liking the fan automation I set up where my ceiling fans and can turn on when my house gets to a certain temperature range before the AC turns on. My next project is to automate my garage doors with some Shelly devices and reed switches. My girlfriend also got into it and set up some auto-watering system for some plants while were away but it still needs some work before we trust it.
I was about to share some of mine but then comparing to everyone in the comments I realize mine are basic as hell
Not sure if it's niche anymore but mechanical keyboard is a fun rabbit hole to dive into. There's so much variety and diversity in term of customization. You can really build a keyboard that fit your preference in term of looks, feels and sounds. The hobby has been booming after covid so now you can get some really nice starter stuff at affordable price.
I'm a semi-secretive LARPer. I pack my stuff at night, don't talk to my coworkers about it, and just go about my life as if I don't.
I've found people are pretty judgy about it, so I just don't mention that I enjoy getting into a neat costume, playing some little mini-games, having a drink or six, camping, and (most importantly) seeing my friends once a month in a structured activity.
It's fun stuff if you find the right group. That last part is hard.
Honestly, I don't know why people rip on other people's hobbies just because it's something they wouldn't do. As if their opinion has any bearing on other people's happiness. I'm glad you've found something that makes you happy and gets you out of the house.
Seriously, you'd think people could just be happy for someone's happiness, instead of being miserable. I'm over those feelings. You don't have to like the same stuff to get along.
Primary motto: Do your best not to hurt anyone, but otherwise do what you want. Enjoy life while you have it.
Secondary motto: Enjoy seeing other people's happiness. Sometimes giving up something (small) you want for someone else to have something they really want (or even need) feels even better.
Have fun, and do good. Thanks for your kind words 😊
Is that a Role Play game in real life, or what?
Big ol' post below:
Every LARP has a different system, which in our game is light-touch(1) and kinda light-hearted. We use latex weapons like those from Forgotten Dreams and Mytholon (two manufacturers I know of off hand), and there's a hit point system, and vocally called damage and skills with different effects.
Example: Hitting an opponent and calling "Strength 5" indicates to the opponent that they need to take 5 steps away from the attacker in the direction the attacker chooses. They also take basic weapon damage of 1 HP in this transaction.
While every LARP has its own system, there is a lot of overlap because of the limitations presented by a physical (ie. in-person) system. You can do a way larger swath of things in a tabletop.
Look for LARPs in your area online, and I'm sure you'll find a few.
(1)Different games handle it differently, but we have players stemming from single digits to upper double digits, and we try to be accommodating to the needs of a diverse age group with varying degrees of disability.
But how does it work. I mean, you sometimes are an NPC and sometimes you are a player?
Painting miniatures, I'm new at this (less than one year) but I not so bad at this, and recently started to play street fighter 6 and really sucks buts is fun
I revisited an old hobby, emulating niche systems. I got an Acorn emulator with Risc OS 5 and some development tools, and I wrote a snake game in BBC BASIC and a calculator in pure ARM assembly, both of which are new to me. It was a blast.
I play rhythm games. Like a lot. Maybe to many?
What are your favourites?
I enjoy osu!, ADOFAI, Beat Saber, Clone Hero, and a few others
I looooooove Beat Saber
I used to play a ton of Guitar Hero and recently got Clone Hero running and loving it so much, the nostalgia is real!!! I got all the Guitar Hero songs in there, are there some other good music packs or websites you'd suggest I visit to get more songs in there?
The chorus.fightthe.pw website is a great place to search for songs. There's also CustomSongCentral which has a lot of music packs. Finally there's the google spreadsheet with a lot of packs. Don't forget to join the official Clone Hero discord!
You're a real one, thanks a ton! I'm going to absolutely load up on these now :)
Guitar hero back in the scorehero.com days was peak gaming.
Various degrees of niche-ness:
Longboarding is a hobby I picked up a few years ago and it’s a ton of fun. Just riding along you feel like you’re floating over the pavement and the feeling is addicting. You can get e-boards if you’re not into pushing but I haven’t gone down that road yet since they seem heavier and more expensive. Also, most of them you can’t push and you have to rely on your battery and motor so if you run out m, you’re stuck. Some companies like the one I bought my board from (Bustin) make hybrid boards but they’re pricey.
Electric Longobards are silly. You can propel them by pumping, no need for putting your feet down.
I really miss longboarding though. I used to ride every day for hours, but now I live in a rural area with no safe roads :(.
K9 Agility
I kinda wonder if my husky would be good at that. Before I moved, she would tear ass through the backyard around all the crap I kept out there like an obstacle course.
I'd probably have a harder time keeping up with her than her doing all those jukes and doing the course lol
It's definitely worth the shot. Many agility trainers will do an evaluation with the owner and the dog to see how well they would react on a course.
You'd ideally want to have a near perfect recall, as well as being able to command from a distance. If you could do both then it will be easy for your dog to learn the obstacles.
There are quite a lot of videos of high end competitions and theirs at least one of every breed.
Code golf on the cgcc stack exchange. I don't do it too often, but the community is pretty small and when I see a good one I can't stop thinking about it.
Sing in chamber choirs
I'm really into calligraphy and snowboarding. Luckily there's a snowboarding presence here on lemmy, but I have not the time to start a calligraphy one.
English change bell ringing
What is that
Church bells being ring to produce songs but changes specifically are precise ringing procedures that often involve complex math in their creation.
I'm with op it's super neat. Before I find out about it I never knew some church bells can stand on their heads bell mouth up and complete full rotations like so.
https://youtu.be/khc-iA0FZEY
You'll notice their all up because the first thing you do is flip the bells so they're all mouth up like so.
https://youtu.be/nWVXlWOe7J4
Cool, so the inverted bell of jondo from Blasphemous was an actual thing church bells could be
I find people who develop deep passions for things you never consider in daily life to be incredibly fascinating. This is especially true for things that others might find boring.
I always want to understand why they find so much pleasure in something others might consider mundane.
I guess blacksmithing would be considered niche? Not doing it very regular. But once every view months.
Brickfilming! I make films with Lego using stop motion animation. Takes a lot of patience and my perfectionism is my worst enemy, but it's super rewarding, and there's a really cool community online around it. And yes, my profile picture is from my most recent Brickfilm!
I collect plushies/stuffed animals (to the point where I'm running out of room for more) and I've played Tabletop RPG games like Pathfinder, Shadowrun and GURPS for a good few years.
Yarn dyeing started as a hobby and turned into my job quite quickly :)
It's fun and satisfying to see the colours evolve on yarn and how the colours act differently depending on the fibre blend you're dyeing.
I build various random number generators, and then use them in elaborate practical jokes.
Solid-state particle detectors, zener avalanche noise, etc. Many failed designs (or failed... So far).
Sometimes I put them in sinister looking cases. Sometimes behind an API. Sometimes I design a coffee maker that brews coffee in a quantum superposition of caffeination states.
I'm working on one that is a Lemmy bot. It won't be done particularly soon though.
I really love this thread. It's great to see people sharing things they enjoy!
I’m learning to play the talkbox. It’s tons of fun and it’s totally a valid way to make up for the fact that I can’t sing my way out of a paper bag, lol.
Mag fishing. Tonnes of fun for little entry cost.
I haven't done much with it in a while, but I'm also not giving up on it, so I suppose it's still valid lol.
I collect LaserDiscs
I got started with the format around 2010, and it was super neat to delve into this old, but strangely good, format. I found that most players and films were super cheap, and as a poor family with really no ability to move to HD yet, the SD format picture was clearly worse than DVD, but not so much so that it was unwatchable or anything.
I spent a lot of time collecting new films, looking at players, etc. etc., but I took a break while in college. Turns out that in that time everything went wild, and now the format is expensive to collect for. So much so that I've basically stopped at the moment. It's still a super neat format though, and I'm not about to offload all my kit just yet.
For anyone looking for info about the format, I'd recommend Techmoan on YouTube. Matt does a lot of interesting tech videos, and the handful he's done on LaserDisc are quite good.
Coffee brewing! It's not super niche (a lot of people enjoy coffee), but I'd love to get to the point where I could host free coffee for friends and be able to make just about anything one could ask for and make it well. It'd be nice to share it back just out of the love of doing it.
What’s your brewing equipment?
Right now I’ve mastered the pour over and the cold brew, but I’ve been recently figuring out how to dive into the espresso machines. That’s been the main set back to opening up the free friends coffee shop out of my apartment lol, don’t know the right one to get and all of that.
I love loomknitting, but I dont know if its niche enough 😅
Collecting signatures in 20 states protecting us from intoxicant psych chemical cruelty https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_initiative