Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
It’s new for me, but making youtube videos.
I use a free version of Davinci resolve and it’s difficult to find out all the tricks to make a video, but I hope one day I can accrue a small following.
What kind of videos do you make?
In order to minimize the risk of self-doxxing, I like to just to some random video essays, and they usually aren’t anything too political.
Fountain pens. Honestly, most people look at me more weirdly when I mention a nib’s feedback than when I mention the means of production.
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i love pinball and I’ve found that every single person I’ve introduced it to ended up finding it very cool. most people, like myself before I got into it a few years ago, don’t even know that there are really objectives and ways to advance the game on most tables, so once you start talking about specific shots and what to do people tend to get really excited about it - especially if you act encouraging and excited when your opponents in a hotseat game are doing well.
the tricky part is getting someone to a table to play 😅
Wow, didn’t expect the first comment I see to be my obscure hobby! Do you have places to play nearby or own any games yourself?
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Very cool!! Nice to be reasonably close to a place like that. Which pins do you play the most there?
I’ve been collecting for years, myself :)
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I do too! From the oldest to the newest, they all have something to offer. I just fixed up a 1976 Williams Grand Prix for a friend’s family and I can’t get over how much action that old game has under the hood. I mean that in 2 ways actually: it’s literally loaded with mechanicals, it’s considered one of the more complex games of its generation… But it also plays strong and fast, just needed some switches cleaned and adjusted and a flipper rebuild and some other odd tweaks/rebuilds and it plays better than it’s probably played in 25+ years. Check out the inlane/outlane setup–it’s pretty sneaky, I still lose a ball occasionally trying to trap it on the flipper :)
Nice variety of games on that list! Wheel of Fortune is a very interesting game, also dig Iron Man and definitely Attack from Mars. Dr. Who is cool too – though I’ll admit I don’t have too much experience with that game. Always loved the multi-level mechanism towards the back of the playfield–very cool feature!!
I’m personally drawn very much towards the late 70’s/early 80’s generation of games. For me, that era captures the perfect blend of art, playfield design, sounds, and nostalgia. Not to mention, they tend to be pretty consistent ass-kickers, not usually allowing very long ball times. I like my games very difficult, lol! Someday I’d like to get a ‘deeper’ game… But space is at a premium at this point and I’m not really looking to get rid of too many of the pins I have, so it’ll probably be a while before that happens…
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pinball
Giant Hexbear emoji below.
I think it’s retro enough you can consider it cool
Pinball is cool as heck. The only thing I miss about living in Massachusetts is the New England pinball league and all the places the were to play. Looping three-way combos into the piano on Twilight Zone is orgasmic
Contributing to localization in my language. (I use Localizor or weblate) I’ve helped translation for the Godot Engine and many released games. It’s a free hobby granted you have a PC and some knowledge. I’ve always liked translating stuff for those who can’t speak English. And it keeps my language skills sharp in both.
For me it’s being a witch and all witchcraft related things.
I like to wonder around the forest singing.
That and rock climbing but like traditional and aid climbing in the alpine. Most people lose interest when I start talking about various knots and their attributes in different situations.
Knots are wizardry I’d like to know.
The truly magical things are hitches. Those things look like they should just slip off and come undone and yet I’ll hang off a clove hitch all day
your name tracks then.
I love knots. The amount of extra rope I have lying around bothers my family. Knot adjacent story - I once tried out a knots app and found and error and told the developers and they gave me a coupon (it was a columbia app)
Nice. I do be playing with my ropes whenever I’m board at work. Oh boring meeting whip out my rope.
The name doesn’t lie ha
I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.
Is that how Gregg’s remember which are steak bakes, and which are chicken bakes?
I just looked that up. It does look like some sort of linguistic research.
Follow up with a small description, like a sub title. Like…
Gregg Shorthand: A Stenographer’s Worst Best friend
Or some nonsense.
I’m old enough to remember when shorthand was a required course for women in secretarial schools. I always though it was black magic and very cool.
Wow. How old are you?
In my 60’s. According to Internet sources, shorthand was taught in schools until the 1990’s. It’s likely that shorthand use declined as PCs became common in offices.
My mom grew up in the 80s and I remember her telling me I needed to learn it too in the 90’s so I could be a waitress someday if needed.
I took a typing class instead! Worked great for me lol
I think it was still taught to business students up until the mid-90’s in my country. That’s also how I got my hands on an old Gregg shorthand textbook. That, and typing (via a typewriter) which was the one I learned when I was in high school.
Had I had a choice, I would have chosen to learn shorthand instead.
Hey! Someone left an old Gregg Shorthand textbook (anniversary edition, if I remember it correctly) in our house back when I was a child, and I tried learning it. Still kinda interested in it up until now.
Tried learning it again back during the lockdown days, but it went nowhere unfortunately.
And now that I’ve discovered it I’m going to add that somewhere in a secret society in my DND adventure
I only know about it because of my fountain pen hobby; back in the mid 20th C, Esterbrook made fountain pens with replaceable nibs and offered a wide variety including a Gregg shorthand nib. I guess the Gregg shorthand people licensed the name for marketing. It was basically a normal non, but branded.
That’s pretty cool. Basically the same as enciphering something nowadays.
That depends on your dance skills
For me it’s coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like “that’s not a hobby”.
It’s absolutely a hobby and a huge money pit.
^Askmehowiknow
I like the secondary aspect of coffee, finding niche roasteries and indie coffee shops, talking to the owners about their passion for coffee and to keep buying the expensive beans from them and then drinking them.
Coffee brings up associations with hot swill at diners. Craft coffee or coffee nerd brings up a barista image, so maybe that’s a good start.
Just explain that if cooking can be a hobby, so can coffee.
Or beer. There are levels of interest, research, and enjoyment.
Right? Mixology is a thing. There’s gotta be a similar word for coffee making.
you could call someone who makes coffee a barista.
True. And there’s mixologist. What’s the name for what baristas do?
I googled and only found “coffee preparation” lol
Might be more like baking bread
You’re being too broad. Gotta specify what you’re doing with coffee at that point, and a slight expansion.
Basically, when bringing it up make it sound more interesting and mysterious, with the potential of a follow-up story.
For instance, people often ask me what brought me to Los Angeles. I tell them, “it’s lady Gaga’s fault”. Hooks 'em every time.
This is accurate, I am hooked, please explain.
This will have to be quick and ugly, because I’m on a phone:
- Learn about Lady Gaga on 4chan.
- Become obsessed fan.
- Help someone w/ lyrics, via voice recording.
- Many people tell me I should be in radio.
- Lose job in Texas.
- Move to LA to be in radio.
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I’ve just learned that my firearms lock…yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same “internet hacker” stigma so I avoid talking about it.
I miss lockpicking, it’s so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
I got into it a bit during COVID and practiced a bit on a practice lock that I could repin myself. After being able to regularly open it without too much trouble, I decided to try my front door lock - thinking it would be a much harder challenge since it was a real lock.
Nope. Shit popped open almost instantly. It blew my mind! After watching Lock Picking Lawyer, I figured that a skilled attacker could get into most locks eventually, but I didn’t realize that most house locks require virtually no skill to open. And it’s literally easier (and significantly less attention grabbing) than breaking a window!
Sorry police officer, but the door was open ajar so hrem I just wanted to check if everything was alright you see?
Had a guy just being mind blown for the whole evening lock picking my way into my apartment, and then open some lock he had on his luggage (all very basic).
Saw him a year later when I had forgot about it and he still was startled about the evening 😁😅
Lol that just reminded me of something only vaguely related. Back in the day I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft with a friend. One day in the middle of a gaming session, he went “HOLY SHIT! There’s a naked guy sleeping on my couch!”
A couple things to note:
- His couch and his gaming setup were both in his living room, barely 3 feet apart.
- We had been playing for at least 2 hours at this point.
My friend woke naked guy up, who was very drunk and confused. Apparently my friend kept his apartment door unlocked and naked guy stumbled in at some point, thinking it was his apartment, stripped down, and then passed out on the couch. Still don’t know how long he was there for, but probably several hours before my friend noticed
So yeah, lock your doors people. They might not keep out a thief, but at least you won’t have a random naked dude pass out on your furniture.
I love lockpicking! It’s got a really nice tactile click when the lock opens. Too bad there’s not a lot of locks to practice on (legally, anyways)
And yeah, I agree - locks are really more of a psychological hindrance rather than an actual hindrance. Although, for what it’s worth, I don’t know of that many people who can lockpick, so in that sense, a lock at least decreases the number of people who can get through
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
Check out toool. It’s where I started when I got into the hobby.
I’ve had this small 5 piece set in my backpack since before instructions for anything could be easily found on the internet. It had to have been $10 or less.
If you’re familiar with the Lock Picking Lawyer, he has his own store and has some good kits.
https://covertinstruments.com/collections/lockpicks/products/learn-lockpicking-bundle
I’m not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it’s designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
Covert Instruments sells a kit with a pick, rake, turning tool, and a practice lock for about $10
I bought the Covert Instruments FNG (* new guy) set for $10. The Genesis set is $28 and is more full featured.
You almost only need the tension prybar + like 2-3 pins IMO. U bought a whole kit (cheap) and I use only the orybar + one of the pins.
Well…I enjoy what I have. Some locks are smaller so smaller rakes and torsion bars would help.
The lockpick known as 4Chan
That’s forbidden knowledge among the mechanics in my union local, lol. One of the shop mechanics at my training center was teaching some of my peers how to pick locks when we had completed our training and were just killing time helping the shop guys out. Had some downtime and he brought out a couple sets and some locks.
Apparently it’s sort of an unspoken tool of the mechanic trade when you work around machinery like that. Never know what you’ll have to get access to and you never know if anyone will have the right key. You’d think the ignition key would suffice to open, say, an access panel or storage cabinet, but some of these machines use a different key entirely for such a thing.This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
If the Lockpicking Lawyer has taught me anything, is that a number of electronic locks tend to be easy to bypass via hardware rather than software
Yeah I’m going to need to know more about your hobby.
I’ve done research on ciphers and cryptography a little bit, so based on my understanding I made up some operations you can do on paper (not needing a computer) to transform text into something seemingly random, but also it has to be reversible with a key. I try to make it so that it doesn’t fall into the common traps that some older ciphers fell into like double letters are the same like with simple substitution ciphers. Also I wanted it to be reusable unlike with a one-time pad, in my case I like when the key is hidden in the encrypted message.
I haven’t found anyone to test out any ciphers yet, but I also haven’t looked too hard. I’m sure some people enjoy deciphering for fun (I don’t have the smarts or at least the time for that).
Enigma comes to mind, but probably too complex to use like that, but the idea behind it is interesting maybe a simpler version could do it?
And to break it you can build a Turing Bomb!
ha yeah. I don’t do anything that complex, but I suppose I could just drop everything and dedicate my life to it now and I might get 1/10th of the way there
I’m a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.
Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.
I think it’s fun, it’s not something I can really chat with others about.
You’re amazing and your students are lucky to have you. Thank you for being you!
How the hell is this not the only thing you talk to others about‽ This is fucking cool!
You are awesome. Thanks for being a good teacher and making math as interesting as it is for your students. And your hobby is fucking cool too.
I am a programmer (as in it’s my job) and I can’t really program anything in Godot. I’ve done the dodge the creeps tutorial and did some more tries, but I don’t really get game dev. It’s definitely a unique skill.
That’s amazing! I am really impressed.
I’m into macro photography: Just taking pictures of tiny stuff.
Where are some fun places to shoot? Do you go out in nature or stage things?
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I do that too. But when I show it to other people, I usually get “Eww why would you show me dick pics you disgusting pig I’m calling HR you twisted muppet”
We live in a society, etc.
Nope, they’re called macro.
Macro is fun. Would you want to share any of your favorites?
I never post OC on this account, but it’s out there. I appreciate you asking though!
No problem. Enjoy your shooting
Model trains. I don’t bring it up because it’s obscure, but I’ve definitely found there’s a stigma. “Oh he’s the guy who plays with trains”. Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it’s not the first thing I bring up either
As a grown man who still likes Pokemon, I understand. I’m sure lots of people assume you’re in a state of arrested development.
My dad has been into model trains since before I was born. We built a train layout in the early 2000s when I was in middle school or so. Working on that project helped get me into electronics as we made PCBs for signals and control circuits. Now, 20 some years later, I work in software engineering. My dad wanted to get back into working on the layout and I’m helping him with Arduino programming and Raspberry Pi stuff. He built a stepper motor controller for the turntable and then we built some turnout and light control boards that interface with DCC. We set up JMRI on a Raspberry Pi to drive trains from phones and automate stuff. I also got him into 3D printing and he’s printed a ton of new scenery for the layout after buying his own Ender 3 after using mine quite a bit. We’ve learned various CAD/modeling programs to make 3D prints.
I also finally got to do something I always wanted to do as a kid, which is to drive the trains from a first-person view. We have gone through a bunch of different variations of putting a Raspberry Pi Zero and camera module on an HO scale railcar. We did some different designs. Our latest design uses an SG-90 micro servo to control the camera angle so you can look left and right. I also 3D printed an enclosure for a regulator, battery charger, and battery that takes track power and powers the Pi.
It’s pretty fun to be able to sit on the couch with a phone, watching the view on the TV, and drive the train from the other room including operating turnouts. Haven’t yet tried to drive the trains over the Internet yet but I want to, since I live a state away from my parents where the layout is.
Edit: Here’s a video of the camera car in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls-Rg1TlDOA
Very cool! Sounds pretty much like what I have started on mine, I went the full DCC++ route, have an arduino and rpi running the whole layout, with a few other boards helping along the way. At some point I’d love to do full automation of the setup but that’ll be a while. What camera did you use for the rpi and train? I’m running n scale so I’m assuming yours would be larger
We built the layout when DCC was first coming out after going to a train show. We ended up picking up one of Digitrax’s first systems (Empire Builder IIRC, with DB150 base station). That’s still what we use for DCC. I designed a LocoNet to serial adapter (MS100 compatible, but very cheap and simple) in college (2010 ish) and we’re using that to connect it up to a Pi 3 running JMRI. Our layout is HO scale. N scale is probably too small for even a Raspberry Pi Zero with camera module, as the setup barely fits on an HO scale car.
I have set up a DCC++ Ex setup at my house for testing and experiments. Just got a loop of EZ Track on the floor with an Arduino as the base station and another Pi with JMRI that is configured similarly to the real layout.
Here is an early picture of the camera car design with the servo. I’ve since condensed everything on to one car with a custom 3D printed design. I want to publish it eventually but haven’t had time. I even 3D printed trucks with power pickups in my latest design (just had to buy metal wheel sets to put in them). I also made a tiny Python webserver that has buttons for different servo positions so you can easily move the servo from a browser.
https://mastodon.social/@CalcProgrammer1/110456485998532640
For the DCC controlled turnouts, lights, and turntable, I built up an Arduino Nano based DCC decoder from a design I found online and a DCC decoder library that is available in Arduino. Since the layout spans multiple tables, instead of putting a DCC decoder for each table/PCB I just had the one decoder echo the DCC commands as serial messages over a serial bus that spans all the tables. The other boards (turnout controllers, light controllers, and turntable controller) all just have their RX pins wired to the decoder’s TX and can receive commands that way. Turnout controllers are a mix of SG90 micro servo based ones and L293D motor drivers for Tortoise switch machines. Light controllers use transistors to switch 12V outputs on and off to drive bulbs and LEDs. Turntable controller is an EasyDriver based stepper controller with some pre-programmed position offsets for each turntable track (each track position is mapped to a DCC function address).
Ha, and judging by the avatar you play video games with trains too! I adore Satisfactory
Most hours in a game by far, I think I’m closing in on 2 thousand. I’m slowly trying to kickstart !satisfactorygame@lemmy.ml again, come and join us!
Train gang needs no justification
this is a hobby I would absolutely love to get into but do not have the space (and renting a garage would probably not be realistic at this point for me). looks amazing dude I’m jealous of you! awesome hobby
Let’s see those train pics, my dude! Let that conductor-freak flag fly here.
Not quite ready unfortunately, still in the “lots of pink fiberboard and paper mache” phase, but oh I will when we’re done. We’re probably too small for a model trains community, but I’ll probably be hanging out in !trains@lemmy.ml
I think of trains as bullets flying on tracks and wheels of steel.
If you can figure out how to relate model trains to the average person, then it becomes really interesting.
Like if your experiences have showed to you about why a trip cross-country in 1 country is so long compared to another. Maybe city planning, or at-grade issues that need resolution are the culprit, etc.
