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.
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.
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
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
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I’ve always wanted to do this mut know nothing about electriconis. Do you have any good resources to get into it?
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It’s shocking how easy it is. I’ve gotten in the habit of stripping out the caps from old electronics before I recycle them. Makes repairs a lot easier when you’ve got spare parts.
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”
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.
lol
I don’t think I have the patience nor the money and time, but it does sound fun.
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 @denton@lemm.ee 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Ham radio! It’s relaxing. My favorite activity is to take my portable gear to parks and operate Parks on the Air.
I am waiting for my exam. After that I will have my own call sign. Ham radio is cool
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.
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: !amateurradio@lemmy.ko4abp.com 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)
Just getting into this myself! Got any recommendations for guids/videos/articles? I’d be happy to check anything out 👍
Hell yeah, came here to say this. 73 friend.
Left is a ghost pepper, right is a 7 Pot Congo
Do they bear fruit in such small containers?
This is awesome and I need to find a way to do it.
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!
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.
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.
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.
What kind of cooking do you do?
I wrote out a huge response to this and connect crashed that day and lost it, I meant to reply again but forgot until now. TLDR: everything I can in a home kitchen
I love most kinds of foods, my favorite food has been steamed artichokes dipped in hollandaise sauce pretty much my entire life. My more recent favorite food is jjajangmyeon, I mostly use Maangchi’s recipe but I tried another early on that added mirin and cabbage so I add those now too because they’re just so good in it.
My favorite recipes though are cheap, easy, quick, and delicious. Instant pot stuff has been great as I had a baby in January and it lets me make pretty decent stuff with very little work. The air fryer is also fantastic and we use it regularly for all kinds of things.
I finally got my 12" cast iron to a great state of seasoning so I’ve been making omelets and now more recently toast omelet things (basically dip bread in the eggs and flip over, then flip the whole thing once eggs are set, put filings in and close up and cook the bread to a nice golden brown on each side). I also love making beef jerky and oh boy is it way better than store-bought. Grilling is also fun, i smoke our turkey every year in my weber (got a rotisserie thing for it last year!), and I like to bake - pineapple upside-down cake is my favorite, but I’m also partial to sour cream pound cake (served as strawberry shortcake), and St. Louis gooey butter cake.
I’m always looking for new things to try, and my meal planner has more recipes than I’ve ever made saved in it haha (I should really clean it up).
I love mapping on openstreetmap.org
Same. There’s at least two of us!!!
Remote control tanks. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing the suspension on the tracks of an RC tank actually react to bumps
This sounds awesome, how did you get into it?
I think I originally stumbled across them on eBay when I was looking for scale models. Then I finally found one I liked and ordered it.
Most people start with a Heng Long pro edition tank because they’re relatively cheap and have metal tracks
