What are you currently passionate about it interested in? What are some cool things about that thing, or interesting stuff that you've learned?
To start things off, I've recently gotten back into Legos for the first time since I was a child and dragged my SO in with me. We've been building sets together, posing them, and decorating my apartment with some of them like the autumn center piece and bonsai tree. I'm also starting to show them how you can mix things together or go off script, changing and customizing a set to fit your own needs or tastes. It's been really fun and I'd recommend it if you are looking for something to do with someone else.
I've also gotten into professional wrestling for the first time and been having a blast. My SO used to watch WWE/WWF as a kid and I asked them to watch a pay per view with me and it was like they got ripped back in time, getting super hype and cheering on the people they wanted to win. We've now started watching AEW and it's been really fun when they point out the people that they recognize from when they were a kid and what they think of them.
I don't think it has ever changed for me. I may sure to grab 2 - 3 books everytime I drop by the library. I try to finish them in three weeks and the cycle continues.
Great bonsai! Just can't do that at my house due to the kids.
Nice, thanks to audiobooks I've been able to keep up with reading somewhat, but not as much since I was a kid. What is your favorite genre or style of book?
I'm big into hobby game development at the minute, got into it during the pandemic because I'd been wondering how video games work since I was about 4 years old, and it turns out it's quite complicated! But I spent a couple of years dipping a toe in here and there, learning one of the big popular engines (Unity), and putting out some truly godawful games as game jam entries.
Then after some frustrations with Unity a few weeks back, Mastodon convinced me to give Godot a try instead. So now I'm learning a whole new engine that works in a very different way, but it's going sort of ok considering.
I just love to make stuff, so there's the games but in my other life I'm a craft YouTuber so also obsess over knitting, crochet, cross stitch, sewing, needle felting, air dry clay...you name it I'll probably give it a whirl. Making stuff is the BEST!
Guitar. I just started a few years ago and I think I'm good enough to start writing some songs and recording at home. It's been good for me mentally as well, I haven't had a real creative outlet in years.
Probably one that will only interest me lol I wrote a story years ago, and /nosleep kept not letting me post it, so I decided to try a different approach. It was going to be an idle-city management type thing but it turned into a crude rpg. I'm proud that I'm working on it, but I don't even know if I'll share it. Guess it depends on what the family says after they play it.
Designing and building mechanical keyboards. Over the pandemic I asked the dumb question to my group of friends who are engineers "Hey how do keyboards work? You think I can build one from scratch?" One of my friends is a electrical engineer and I'm a computer engineer so basically we had both skillsets needed to build and design everything from scratch. The only "out of the box" thing we used was the firmware but that was based on an open source firmware (QMK) but we had to contribute to the project to get our keyboards to work. The PCB was custom, the case was custom and 3d printed on my own 3d printer.
I've been using the keyboard we built for over two years and it's worked flawlessly (unless I'm messing with the firmware). There's things I would have done differently but that's what this current rendition is but now kinda off the walls because why not.
What's a recent tool/machine you've restored? I really appreciate old machines and try to keep them going, but I've not really gone too much into the restoration side.
I have a few side projects stemming from it but I am most passionate about falconry. Once you start really getting into it it's pretty much all consuming. It's not an exaggeration to say that falconry is one of my top considerations when making life decisions. Transportation - have a truck for ease of cleaning bed, housing - bought a house with a big yard for a mews (and no hoa), job - flexible hours and cool boss means I can fly them during lunch (house also near job), family - I can manage one baby but 2 would severely hinder me (among other reasons, like money and first one didn't sleep for shit and still doesn't).
Right now I'm getting a server ready for bird video storage, security cameras, and to host a lemmy server for falconry as I didn't see one, and almost done building a mews for my wife. I love it.
Bit of a cliché but I am getting back to gaming, I spent last 10+ years half-assing mmo's and only now discovered there really was some cool games released during that time. Got a good start with finishing some last few months and intending to continue.
That's a good question.
I thought about it, and it seems that I have none.
I enjoy certain hobbies and activities and can get quite invested, but I'm currently not, or no longer passionate about them.
I've reached a point with many of the things I do where progress is slow and often cumbersome.
Maybe I require something new or a change in perspective.
Mechanical wrist watches. You get a bit of history, a bit of technology, a bit of art. I can see how some people can spend hours shopping. It's kind of soothing.
Can you still find fully mechanical wristwatches at more affordable prices? I know there's plenty of "analog" watches still sold, but I'm pretty sure they're often not mechanical in the original sense.
Gonna sound stupid, but local government. Specifically on relation to road planning and land use.
Like i have all of the state’s/city’s design manuals saved on my computer & review road projects against them. I make a list of questions along the lines of “this section of the planning manual says that 2 lanes are sufficient for the traffic volumes you are designing to, why does your design have 4 lanes?”.
Take these questions to the public meetings to ask. It sounds so dry and boring, but has actually been quite fun!