Is 3D printing still niche? If so, 3D printing, otherwise nothing.
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.
Okay, this sounds cool as hell. Please post photos of this.
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.
As someone with fear of flying, I really need to look into this.
The Mentour Pilot channel makes documentaries about aviation accidents using the official reports, and it has helped many nervous flyers, because he explains it fully and also goes over the recommendations of the reports. I recommend checking it out.
Mentour Pilot’s reviews are broadcast level quality. They are SO good and, yeah, paradoxically the best thing a nervous flyer could watch, as they show not just the incident but also the follow-up and changes. Highly recommended.
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)
Actually seen someone grow (regular, culinary) mushrooms off of these yellow blocks. They were definitely oyster types, but don’t ask me which, or which color. The memory’s gone.
What wasn’t gone from my memory tho, was the size and time it took to grow. Like, I saw them prepare those blocks one night. Next day… Nothing. The day after, still nothing visible.
Then I actually slept there, and the morning after… Like, man… I was actually scared when I first saw it. The sprouts or whatever… They were bigger than my hands. And I have pretty big, pianist hands. A single night and the whole thing just… Just… jutting out off the side, as if a hole had been there all along. And then they grew more and more over the next three days. The full thing ended two times the size the yellow block, and at least larger than its original volume.
wild, isn’t it? it happens that way because what we call the “mushroom” is only a small part of the organism. All those days when nothing seemed to be happening, what was really happening is an underground network of living threads called mycelia were establishing themselves in the soil and beginning to extract nutrients much like plant roots. What you saw are the fruiting bodies, which generate spores and release them to create new mycelia. With a well-established mycelium network the fruiting bodies can go from pinning (just barely visible above the surface) to massive in a day or two.
The magical ones are nice too (•‿•)
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.
Making custom home automations with Home Assistant. Sure, a lot of it is unnecessary but it sure is a lot of fun.
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’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
what’s up fellow locksport nerd?! I think people would be shocked how easy rudimentary picking is.
A-ha, I knew there have to be lock nerds on Lemmy.
But yeah the basics are dead simple, you just need to have a light touch and listen to your fingers 😄
And so much of the stuff applies for the majority of lock mechanisms. A lot of it boils down to “apply tension, feel for pins / disks / sliders / wafers / whatever that don’t want to move and then you make them move, while leaving the other pins / etc. alone. Repeat until done”
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.
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But how does it work. I mean, you sometimes are an NPC and sometimes you are a player?
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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.
Right, you’ve already convinced me. How and where do I start? Can you recommend some links/resources please?
PedalPCB is where I order my boards from. They have clones of pretty much any pedal you’d want.
I usuallyorder my components from DigiKey, but depending where you livethere may be others you can use.
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 read a post that mentioned the community migrated to Lemmy.
It’ll pop back up here. Data Hoarder needs a new spot
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
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
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
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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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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.
Ham radio! It’s relaxing. My favorite activity is to take my portable gear to parks and operate Parks on the Air.
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.
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
I had no idea about Parks on the Air. Thanks! I’ll be checking out.
Just getting into this myself! Got any recommendations for guids/videos/articles? I’d be happy to check anything out 👍
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)
There’s also !amateur_radio@lemmy.radio which is reasonably active.
