vacuums, why would I spend 100€ on a shopvac when I could do it myself for 200€ or even more?

• Audio engineering. How to take a bunch of tracks that sound like hot shit and make them into beautiful music. How to record an awesome performance, probably in a shit space with shit acoustics and shit gear. How to work my “magic” on a track to somehow do the impossible. More recently, how to analyze and design analog outboard gear and digital plugins that emulate them in real time. I would do it for free if I had the time. I used to mix people’s tracks on Reddit (different username) before I went back to school.

• Music, particularly writing and playing shitty bedroom black metal guitar. So I guess not that weird other than the music choice…

• Automation, particularly AI and Control Theory. I approach AI from a dynamic viewpoint, i.e. using machine learning to analyze and control systems that “move”. I’m still working on unpacking the mathematical fundamentals of AI, especially because the dynamic applications I’m interested in require much more careful understanding of the assumptions that typical machine learning paradigms make about the input and output signals.

• Math. Calculus, linear algebra, dynamical systems, and high- or infinite-dimensional problems. Both theory and applications. I read textbooks and watch open course lectures. I use this math to back up my intuition in all the above subjects. Even people who say they like math find my interest in the subject obsessive.

My hobbies mostly sit at the intersection of plants and electronics/programming esp. microcontrollers and managing fleets of them.

Im obsessed with making things grow and relatively simple types of automation can make a huge difference to a plant. A trickle of water applied at the right frequency can turn an unforgiving sun-scorched balcony into a garden.

Im currently working on prototypes of a device destined for mass production. It’s a power unit for a temporary immersion bioreactor used in plant tissue culture. The benefit of my approach is that the power unit can work with almost any growing container and the unit doesn’t need any power hookups.

The unit is powered by the plant grow lights and my Mark I prototype proved it can harvest enough energy to perform any published temporary immersion protocol I have seen.

I think this qualifies as ‘weird’ because it usually requires explanation to justify the ‘why’ of this project. Plant tissue culture is not a common interest.

But if you want to plant a trillion trees and ‘save the planet’, we will need to develop some new propagation methods. This is my little attempt to address some of that need.

Falconry. It’s really more of a lifestyle than a hobby now though. I’ve been doing it for a little over 10 years now and am currently flying a cast (group of birds flown together) of 3 Harris’s Hawks.

Quick faqs:

• I use the glove and everything
• It’s a hunting sport, we catch rabbits 3-5 times a week
• We all go out together, I flush they catch
• No, they do not bring what they catch back to me, I go to them
• They don’t eat the whole rabbit, I trade them a small reward
• They are completely free flighted when doing this
• I’ve trained them just enough to get them back and work with me, they know how to do bird things naturally
• They don’t really go for your eyes, and getting bit hurts 50x less than getting footed
• They are not rescues and are perfectly healthy
• Mine are captive bred, but some are wild trapped
• Wild trapping has 0 effect on native populations, 50-90% of raptors don’t make it through their first year
• Even though mine are captive bred they are still wild animals, they are just tamed.
• This is the most regulated sport in the US

Birbs:

My latest obsession is sashiko, a Japanese form of embroidery with beautiful repeating geometric patterns. It’s a folk art that evolved to strengthen cloth, extend its lifespan, and repair torn clothes. Rather uniquely it’s also intended to be stitched with the fabric in your hands rather than in a hoop.

One thing I really love about it from a technical sewing standpoint is that traditionally you don’t use knots at all, but it’s still a strong stitch. Quilters do something similar with what’s called a waste knot that gets snipped away, but this skips the knot step entirely.

There are specific paths you follow while stitching these patterns so that you don’t waste thread. They vary in complexity from simple lines, triangles, and curves, all the way up to tiny repeating patterns that practically replace the cloth with thread.

I don’t have nearly enough patience to do the complex ones like that, but the more simple stitches are so relaxing.

Hit me with your top flashlight fact.

My weird hobby is reading textbooks on forensic medicine and other forensic sciences. Like how to perform an autopsy, how to identify the cause of death, how to take and interpret fingerprints from different surfaces and such. I am a trained toxicologist but unfortunately only had basic training in forensic toxicology as part of my curriculum (and not working in that field now). 🙂

Lockpicking isn’t just for committing crimes! It’s a whole hobby! You can’t prove that I’ve ever picked open a lock to get into someone’s apartment… Mainly because I still can’t get into this damn Abus 72/40, let alone trying someone’s front door

If you want something I can talk to you about for hours, get me started on Kerbal Space Program. You know, there’s really no “getting good” at KSP, only learning, and for all the planets and moons, there are only like five challenges: Taking off without blowing up, getting to orbit, orbiting the Mün, landing on the Mün, orbiting Minmus, and landing on Duna. Each of those requires a bit more knowledge than the last, and everything after those is just a remix of what you learn from those. To get to orbit, you have to take off successfully. To get to the Mün you have to learn about transfer windows and bi-impulsive transfers. To land on the Mün you need to build a ship capable of getting to and landing on the Mün. To get to Minmus, you need to learn how to match inclinations. To land on Duna you need to learn how to do all of that, but on an interplanetary scale. Everything else–landing on Dres, the Jool 5, returning from Eve–it’s all just more advanced versions of those five things.

Of course, there’s skill in making these missions as cheap as possible, as low part count as possible, as complicated as possible (see Matt Lowne’s YouTube channel), and there are SSTOs to figure out, but ultimately the game itself is about exploring, and to do that you just need to learn those five things. This is just one of many rants I can go on about the game

Have you seen the Flashlight community on lemmy.world yet?

• Photography. Analogue or digital.
• Computing.
• Electronics.
• Music, learning how to play and read sheet music.
• Bushcraft.
• Hockey.
• Pens, collecting stationery.

Flashlights are an interesting one. I somehow ended up in [email protected] and it’s definitely a unique hobby. I’m not sure if I’m willing to really join all of you yet, but reading the posts can be pretty cool.

For me, it’s probably CRTs, other display technologies and old hardware in general. It’s fun to tinker around with stuff. And playing games, be it new or old, on CRTs is what I live for.

Leather working. I inherited my grandfather’s old hatchet and knife from when he was a boy scout, these 80+ year old relics had their original leather sheathes that were totally disintegrating and stiff. After looking fruitlessly for replacement sheathes I decided it couldn’t be that hard to make my own, and now I’m hooked. I have leather cases for all of my devices, leather bags for different traveling needs, and leather wallets and trinkets make the absolute best gifts. People are always blown away by hand made leather products.

operating systems

I’ve been out of it for a while now, but I spent a number of years Nerfsmithing. Which is to say, I modified Nerf blasters. I upgraded the internals to get longer range and higher rates of fire. My real fun, though, was modifying the exteriors to see just how silly I could get. I made a lot of different designs, but below is my masterpiece.

I attached a real red dot sight, after carefully painting it to look like a Nerf accessory. I attached a real laser sight and tactical light, after mounting them inside the case of what had been an official Nerf light. The 10-round straight magazine was replaced with a 35-round drum magazine. A rifle strap (in bright yellow) and a Nerf bipod finished off the main unit (a Nerf Stampede).

Then I attached a Nerf Magnus pistol, still fully functional, as a front grip. And I attached a Nerf Zombie Strike Machete under that as a bayonet.

It looks overbuilt and ridiculous, which is what I was trying for, but it was also an absolute terror in the office Nerf wars. I had a lot of fun building it.

Lately I’ve really been into making and integrating home automation devices.

Mostly I’m just trying to ensure my privacy in an increasingly non-private world, but it’s a fun medley of skills to deploy - 3d printing, soldering, electrical engineering, a bit of programming, and even some carpentry work.