I just realized that ebook collectiong has become something of a hobby for me. I think I like that lol. I am currently sifting through saved browser tabs of book recommendations that I have amassed over the last month in an attempt to clean up my browser sessions.
I've even developed a system of sending all tabs to my computer from my phone to create a list to check with libgen, then add to Calibre and sideload to my ereader from there. I hadn't really thought of it as a hobby since reading is a hobby but I think this might be close to data hording?
I also have 90 GB of roms that I have collected that cover all eras up to N64. Do I play any of them? No, but I got them. I did start playing Mario RPG and Earthbound during Indigenous Genocide Day.
So what are your weird but interesting hobbies that have snuck into your lives?
I saw a Goliath beetle the other day. Those things are as big as a pigeon lol.
Are the pictures from before or after you eat them?
Also, I do the same thing lol
Geocaching.
Playing Ingress - almost all of the Poke stops here in town are from me and a friend who were heavy into Ingress some years ago. Niantic just reused all of the locations from one game to the next.I tried playing Ingress a few years back but my phone couldn't handle the game and there wasn't a lot of stuff in my area. Might check it out since Pokemon Go got big. Figured they would reuse the data so that could be a thing.
Geocaching is a ton of fun. My wife and I had a kid free date day the other week and we actually found a few after years of not doing it. We had one cache that we def weren't stealthy about lol. The groundskeeper guy thought we were lost or something and we awkwardly explained the whole geocaching thing. He was like oh I saw that on tiktok, which was funny because he was sort of a older rural looking guy lol. He ended up finding it too!
thats funny. Ive had a few folks look at me odd when i tell them im hunting for caches. Ive had one person tell me they geocache also. Ive been caching a long time, since pen/paper/standalone gps. Its so simple carrying a phone to do it on now.
Ingress is sort of boring now. The number of players has gone downhill in the last 5 years or so. I mostly quit playing when it went from fully f2p to p2p. I have a high level account and it irked me to no end that all the crap i ‘worked’ for was just given away if you have the dollars in your bank account. I just check in on occasion, then log back out. Its just not as fun as it used to be.
My biggest hobby by far is learning. I find myself going down research rabbit holes on a daily basis, to the point where I sometimes forget that I was actually supposed to be doing something else.
Want to learn a new recipe to cook something? Sure, but why does that specific temperature or cooking method matter? Now I'm reading about the underlying science regarding pasteurization or chemical reactions taking place. Then I end up looking at what other things that applies to. Whoops, now it's too late to make the meal and I have to eat a sandwich instead.
Ha, I feel this lol. It's really nice that we have the Internet at our fingertips for this sort of thing too. I just wish info wasn't behind paywalls and ad spam though.
It's also nice when you can use it as a focus tool too. I'm trying to write a horror story currently and am planning on watching a catalog of slashers to get a better understanding of pacing and story telling. In also taking a much needed break from reading theory and am reading some horror novels and such for the same reason.
Yeah, for real. LibGen has helped, as has adblockers.
The project I was working on is a game world centered around the use of a network connecting nodes (stations, ships, etc) and moving between them using a terminal interface. I was refining my original design and ended up making a low-level implementation of physical networking devices that doesn't make sense for a game.
I'm now taking time to not focus on it so I can go back to it being a game and not a simulation.
Well now I'm curious about this game lol. Sounds like a cross between Transport Fever and Hacknet. That could be pretty dope actually.
I sort of wanna try and learn Godot or something just to make a game I've hand an idea for for a while but no real drive to do so right now. The game would bu a platformer/walking sim that is about living with severe depression and such. I suck at programming so now I am pretending to be a writer instead. Which of course lends itself to learning as a hobby.
Hacknet is definitely an inspiration, as is hackmud. It's something I've been toying with for years, getting iterations to different states of completeness and then failing to push it any further.
Godot is awesome! I would also recommend checking out GameMaker as they just updated their license terms to allow the full engine for free (non-commercial use), including all of their asset packs. If you choose to sell the product, it's a one time $99.99 license fee (royalty free). It's one of the best engines for 2D games, and you can use their visual scripting system instead of writing code.
I'm hella behind the times and just saw that the beta version of GMS has a build for Ubuntu. Maybe it's time I actually check it out. Gonna look more into it for sure.
Hell yeah, Mario RPG and EarthBound are good. Similar thing with my digital game hoarding I guess. I keep telling myself that once I have all the games I'm interested in I can just buckle down and actually play the games but it hasn't happened yet. Same thing for anime torrents, I guess, but I'm doing slightly better with that.
Gaming on more than one home console and one portable console needs to be made
.I have a few handheld emulators that I was hoping would rekindle my love for retro gaming but I just end up stressing over the battery life of the devices because they aren't great. I'm considering telling Santa I want the new Anbernic handheld that looka like a Genesis controller and migrating everything to that and possibly getting rid of my others.
I think Mario RPG and Earthbound will be my holiday games when I'm not reading. I'm also currently playing Tales from the Borderlands and BL3 so probably won't get far in Mario or EB.
I do also need to finally play Disco Elysium and also go back through FF1-6 tho at some point.
