What Are Some of Your Hobbies?

[Kishkumen]

My brain feels itchy, which means I need a new hobby to distract myself for a spell. Figured what better way to find the next thing, that see what some of my favorite humans like to do.

A few of my past hobbies:

- Bred and raised poison dart frogs.
- Built cryptocurrency mining computers.
- Gold prospecting.
- Aquascaping.
- Created a new hybrid freshwater shrimp species that survives in very hard water (pretty sure Trop Aquarium here in Vegas still carries some of them).
- Built a mobile recording studio (that one was paid for by the crypto hobby... only hobby that paid for itself, and then some).
- Styrofoam sculpting.
- Making blanket chests.
- Bringing back an old Chevy K1500 back from the dead.
- Making bath bombs (my crowning achievement was one called "The Balm of Gilead" which I distilled essential oil from a Mastic tree to create).
- Fermented, and distilled brandy (always ended up just distilling every batch down to vodka... always tasted "off").
- Learned to read/write with the Deseret Alphabet (a skill that I've totally lost now).

Wow! Cool! And I can say that I know this guy who does all of this amazing stuff.

[msnobody]

My brain feels itchy, which means I need a new hobby to distract myself for a spell. Figured what better way to find the next thing, that see what some of my favorite humans like to do.

A few of my past hobbies:

- Bred and raised poison dart frogs.
- Built cryptocurrency mining computers.
- Gold prospecting.
- Aquascaping.
- Created a new hybrid freshwater shrimp species that survives in very hard water (pretty sure Trop Aquarium here in Vegas still carries some of them).
- Built a mobile recording studio (that one was paid for by the crypto hobby... only hobby that paid for itself, and then some).
- Styrofoam sculpting.
- Making blanket chests.
- Bringing back an old Chevy K1500 back from the dead.
- Making bath bombs (my crowning achievement was one called "The Balm of Gilead" which I distilled essential oil from a Mastic tree to create).
- Fermented, and distilled brandy (always ended up just distilling every batch down to vodka... always tasted "off").
- Learned to read/write with the Deseret Alphabet (a skill that I've totally lost now).

I’m curious. How did the styrofoam sculpting start?

[Doctor Steuss]

I’m curious. How did the styrofoam sculpting start?

For the poison dart frog habitat, rather than a traditional drainage layer, I wanted to have a waterfall with small pond to add some dwarf shrimp to, and then where a drainage layer would be would just be extra water volume in the recirculation system to help maintain the modest bioload. At first I tried manipulating some cork bark, and "Great Stuff" expanding foam, but it just wouldn't get to the shape I wanted.

On a whim, I picked up some foam insulation panels at Lowes, and started trying to work with them. From there, it kind of snowballed into me buying the different hot wire sculpting tools. For the waterfall, I just coated it with some course grout, and then painted it in a few places. I had so much fun with the sculpting part of it (and the panels were fairly inexpensive) that I started seeing what different things I could create. Made two puppet head bases for a friend (that were admittedly incredibly poorly done), and some various background and cave things for friends and family who had bearded dragons and leopard geckos. Tried a few heads/busts, but my intention tremors would always thwart any detail work. Naturalistic stuff was really easy because if my tremors were really bad, those little unintended "flaws" actually made it more realistic.

[canpakes]

I currently have the involuntary hobby of looking after a horse. It's time-consuming and expensive but it is interesting.

Ooh, lots of stall mucking, there.

Another partly involuntary hobby is appliance repair.

‘Involuntary’, lol. : D

I understand this ‘hobby’ given how we try to make things last as long as possible around our own house.

A hobby which I am only trying to pursue is beer brewing. It turns out to be quite hard to brew good beer. I've only even tried once, but I've signed up to try again soon.

Related, I’d love to try winemaking, as it has the added bonus of working with grape vines, which are beautiful plants. We had a couple of trellises planted with ‘eating’ grapes in our prior home but the weather there wasn’t suited for wine varieties. The same problem exists where we moved to afterwards but I’ll likely end up putting a few vines in the ground anyway just to enjoy the look of them.

When you attempt your next brew batch, will you be growing some of the grain, or purchasing that from elsewhere? I imagine one could tend a small hobby-sized plot of barley for it, but that might be a tad impractical for most home brewing fans.

[Molok]

My main hobby for the last year or so has been writing a Call of Cthulhu one shot that will be self published. I grew up watching X files, and it has had a major influence on it. Essentially the players are sleeper agents called back into duty to investigate the strange goings on in a small town. It's about 90% done and I'm about to start playtesting it. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm very much ready to be done with it. After that my new hobby for a while will be checking out if any really good video games have come out lately. lol.

[Doctor Steuss]

My main hobby for the last year or so has been writing a Call of Cthulhu one shot that will be self published. I grew up watching X files, and it has had a major influence on it. Essentially the players are sleeper agents called back into duty to investigate the strange goings on in a small town. It's about 90% done and I'm about to start playtesting it. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm very much ready to be done with it. After that my new hobby for a while will be checking out if any really good video games have come out lately. lol.

Arc Raiders gave me a pretty good run of fun. Extraction shooter, but they have an algorithm that sorts player lobbies. If you prefer to play PvE (like me), it sorts you predominantly into friendly lobbies, and if you prefer playing PvP, it sorts you into more aggressive lobbies. You'll still get PvP players into the PvE lobbies on occasion (people who game the system to have an easy looting run ratting players), but I liked it much more than DMZ and other extraction shooters that are full of angsty teens looking for an outlet for their aggression.

Minecraft was my jam for a long time (played quite a few long seasons on servers), but just got burned out on it and now that there have been so many updates, it just doesn't "feel" the same.

[Physics Guy]

When you attempt your next brew batch, will you be growing some of the grain, or purchasing that from elsewhere? I imagine one could tend a small hobby-sized plot of barley for it, but that might be a tad impractical for most home brewing fans.

I'm a long way from that level. Both my previous and my next attempts at brewing are of the "sign up for a seminar" kind, where I just mess with stuff that someone else provided. Some day I want to become more independent than that, but the only good home-brewed beer I've ever tried has been made by a former professional brewer who knows exactly what he is doing. So I have the idea that there's quite a learning curve.

[msnobody]

I’m curious. How did the styrofoam sculpting start?

For the poison dart frog habitat, rather than a traditional drainage layer, I wanted to have a waterfall with small pond to add some dwarf shrimp to, and then where a drainage layer would be would just be extra water volume in the recirculation system to help maintain the modest bioload. At first I tried manipulating some cork bark, and "Great Stuff" expanding foam, but it just wouldn't get to the shape I wanted.

On a whim, I picked up some foam insulation panels at Lowes, and started trying to work with them. From there, it kind of snowballed into me buying the different hot wire sculpting tools. For the waterfall, I just coated it with some course grout, and then painted it in a few places. I had so much fun with the sculpting part of it (and the panels were fairly inexpensive) that I started seeing what different things I could create. Made two puppet head bases for a friend (that were admittedly incredibly poorly done), and some various background and cave things for friends and family who had bearded dragons and leopard geckos. Tried a few heads/busts, but my intention tremors would always thwart any detail work. Naturalistic stuff was really easy because if my tremors were really bad, those little unintended "flaws" actually made it more realistic.

I actually thought about you when I passed the styrofoam merchandise in Walmart’s craft section this evening. Great stuff has a mind of its own.

[Kishkumen]

My main hobby for the last year or so has been writing a Call of Cthulhu one shot that will be self published. I grew up watching X files, and it has had a major influence on it. Essentially the players are sleeper agents called back into duty to investigate the strange goings on in a small town. It's about 90% done and I'm about to start playtesting it. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm very much ready to be done with it. After that my new hobby for a while will be checking out if any really good video games have come out lately. lol.

Really cool, Molok!

[¥akaSteelhead]

My main hobby for the last year or so has been writing a Call of Cthulhu one shot that will be self published. I grew up watching X files, and it has had a major influence on it. Essentially the players are sleeper agents called back into duty to investigate the strange goings on in a small town. It's about 90% done and I'm about to start playtesting it. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm very much ready to be done with it. After that my new hobby for a while will be checking out if any really good video games have come out lately. lol.

Oh nice. I played a bit back in the 80s and my kid plays now with his school group. When you get that published let us know so we can buy a copy.