@CrevsDaak when I was young I was totally the same! New LEGOs were just new pieces to a larger puzzle. Step One: Build Lego on the box cover Step Two: WRECK IT FOR SPARE PARTS Step Three: Create entire new universes in your young mind
@CrevsDaak when I was young I was totally the same! New LEGOs were just new pieces to a larger puzzle. Step One: Build Lego on the box cover Step Two: WRECK IT FOR SPARE PARTS Step Three: Create entire new universes in your young mind
Great times
Step four: Get a cat who raids your lego box for toys (but won't accept it to be given to him, it has to have been stolen)
I draw and paint, write, program, bake, play strategy board games and trading card games (MtG and the GoT card game)...and there's a whole ton of stuff I haven't done much lately: marital arts, running, dance (ballet, tap, jazz, modern, etc), yoga, running tabletop RPGs (mostly D&D and White Wolf), face painting... and on and on. I have so many hobbies that I miss but I have no time lately.
I haven't painted anything in a couple years, but it's something I always come back to eventually and look forward to doing to the exclusion of nearly everything else if I ever make enough money to retire. My wife and I took up fencing awhile back, we do that twice a week now. It's surprisingly good exercise, but brutal if you have any knee issues.
Other than that, it's TV, comics, and books for me when I'm not working (I'm not counting non-videogame writing as a hobby--if I was it would definitely take the #1 slot). Unless walking the dog counts.
Does skydiving count as a sport? It's certainly the laziest activity I've ever participated in - I mean, anyone can fall, it's just stopping that's the tricky bit (and definitely not good for the knees).
Not reallly a "hobby," maybe, but one of my goals this summer is to learn to drive a standard. My friend has a car she claims is easy to learn on and she's going to teach me.
Not reallly a "hobby," maybe, but one of my goals this summer is to learn to drive a standard. My friend has a car she claims is easy to learn on and she's going to teach me.
A standard as in a manual? if so It's not too hard so long as your teacher knows what they're doing (a nice gearbox helps too)
It's odd that some countries favour manuals and some prefer automatics.
Not reallly a "hobby," maybe, but one of my goals this summer is to learn to drive a standard. My friend has a car she claims is easy to learn on and she's going to teach me.
A standard as in a manual? if so It's not too hard so long as your teacher knows what they're doing (a nice gearbox helps too)
It's odd that some countries favour manuals and some prefer automatics.
Standard? Huh. Never heard that one before. I learned on a diesel:P fun. They're much less forgiving. Still learning, but I can get around pretty well now. I actually prefer it to automatic. I like cars, and it's a lot more involved. Driving an automatic is kinda... Boring.
Being British I cut my teeth on manuals and still find it just feels 'wrong' when I drive an automatic (and I would never drive an automatic off-road where precise clutch control and gear selection are vital), but having said that, automatics are perfect for inner city stop/start crawling.
Given that automatics are lousy for fuel consumption it's always been my understanding that they are so popular in the U.S. because historically the price of fuel there is so much lower there than elsewhere in the world (and they are after all a lot easier to drive, just not affordable for ordinary mortals).
I've owned and enjoyed both. No doubt a stick (standard, manual...) is more engaging. It forces you to think more about your driving and be more a part of the process. But if you have to deal with city/rush hour driving the automatic is vastly easier. My first five cars were sticks, but now my last two have been automatics, so I do have many miles on both types. If I didn't have to deal with city driving so much I would probably still prefer the stick.
HOWEVER, be aware, that on newer cars the automatic is both MORE fuel efficient and faster. This was not true for many years, but modern gear boxes with many gears (or CVT) can pick the right gear and shift points for any situation more efficiently and faster than a human driver. And any kind of performance car will probably offer the best of both worlds that will let you manually select gears if you disagree with the automatic choice. The paddle shifters on my Challenger make it easy to downshift when I want to punch it to get around traffic. Of course by the same measure, sticks are smoother and easier than ever. This is very much a golden age for automotive technology. Whichever way you go driving should be a ton of fun.
On the subject of both gearboxes and hobbies, my 'something to do in my spare time' Land Rover restoration project has turned into a monster of my own making. My kitchen has engine parts on every surface, my wardrobe is now defined by two categories of clothing (oil stained/not oil stained) and when I'm not crawling around underneath The Beast I'm on the phone or internet scavenging original spare parts from all over the UK. I'm currently awaiting the arrival of some specially mixed paint so that I can re-spray it in it's original colour, and in the process of rubbing it down in preparation I've discovered three layers of completely different paint underneath!
Edit: (much later) It's just occurred to me that I've painted a picture of myself as some sort of mad necromancer building a steel golem in my laboratory.
I'm currently awaiting the arrival of some specially mixed paint so that I can re-spray it in it's original colour, and in the process of rubbing it down in preparation I've discovered three layers of completely different paint underneath!
are you going for the classic green or something else?
@wubble The short answer is "yes", but which 'classic green' depends on which era of manufacture you're referring to - in this case it's "Middle Bronze Green".
@Dunbar do you write the blog Skarach's World? I read several scale modeling sites, of which that is one. But he's also doing a 1/1 scale Land Rover restoration.
@atcDave. I'd never heard of Skarach's World before but now that I've had a quick look at it I'll be spending more time there (thanks for the 'heads up'). I'm doing similar work in that I've just started on the coachwork and interior - I was originally only intending to do the oily bits but, as I mentioned before, it sort of got out of hand. My Series 3 though is quite a bit older than his Defender so it doesn't so much dismantle as, fall to pieces.
I've recently started collecting a variety of interesting things, such as mannequins, statues, posters, stuff like that. Only small stuff, though. I don't have room for anything larger.
My biggest hobbies are things I've been doing impulsively practically from the moment I learned to hold a pencil. I write more than anything else, probably. I love language. It is my playground. Countless hours of my life have been spent studying and inventing languages or writing fiction. Lately, I've been using my knowledge of Persian to create a more developed version of the Forgotten Realms language Alzhedo. Haven't got anywhere with my novel for a few months, to my shame. I'm stuck on design decisions for a sort of sea monster, among other things. Anyway, I'm quite enthused that there are other writers lurking about around here. I sometimes affectionately refer to writers collectively as "my people".
The other thing I really spend a lot of time on is drawing, a skill which I developed primarily to create visuals for the stories in my head. My avatar is an example of my work. In high school, I had such a compulsive need to draw that my 11th grade English teacher thought I was distracting myself, so she banned me from taking out my sketchbook in her class. Joke's on her; I doodled in my notes instead. I like drawing mainly with Pilot G2 pens, but I also use a tablet for digital work. It's exciting that there are other artists around here as well. Nothing brings people together like mutual understanding of the struggle that is The Other Eye.
Aside from that and the obvious gaming, I occupy myself with a smattering of reading, music composition, knitting, baking, sewing, movie/TV watching, cosplay, and of course wasting my life on the internet. I also enjoy acting, especially voice acting, but I never get the opportunity outside of scaring people with the Batman voice (I normally have a very soft, boyish voice, so no one suspects that I'm capable of making deep sounds, and one time I completely freaked out my entire German class by saying "I am the night" in German in the Batman voice. One lady thought I was possessed for a moment. Oops).
I sometimes affectionately refer to writers collectively as "my people".
I usually point and yell "COMRADE!" behind the safety of my computer screen, foaming affectionately at the mouth like that one psychotic vampire that Zero kills in that one episode of Vampire Knight.
I pick the strangest scenes out of animes to clearly remember...
Nonnahswriter, which anime is this scene? I've been having really diverse hobbies lately: learning Blender for fun; trying to get in Maya; some advanced mathematics which could be applicable in deeper way; failed experiment with LED diode;wanting to make a perfect game; playing some games.
I'm actually almost finished with a set of seven fantasy novels. It starts with an energetic young farm girl who teams up with a ditzy undead psychopath to steal a WMD/time machine from the medieval equivalent of Kim Jong-il...
I'm actually almost finished with a set of seven fantasy novels. It starts with an energetic young farm girl who teams up with a ditzy undead psychopath to steal a WMD/time machine from the medieval equivalent of Kim Jong-il...
Comments
Step One: Build Lego on the box cover
Step Two: WRECK IT FOR SPARE PARTS
Step Three: Create entire new universes in your young mind
Great times
Other than that, it's TV, comics, and books for me when I'm not working (I'm not counting non-videogame writing as a hobby--if I was it would definitely take the #1 slot). Unless walking the dog counts.
During the pre club basketball mess around.
It's odd that some countries favour manuals and some prefer automatics.
Given that automatics are lousy for fuel consumption it's always been my understanding that they are so popular in the U.S. because historically the price of fuel there is so much lower there than elsewhere in the world (and they are after all a lot easier to drive, just not affordable for ordinary mortals).
But if you have to deal with city/rush hour driving the automatic is vastly easier. My first five cars were sticks, but now my last two have been automatics, so I do have many miles on both types. If I didn't have to deal with city driving so much I would probably still prefer the stick.
HOWEVER, be aware, that on newer cars the automatic is both MORE fuel efficient and faster. This was not true for many years, but modern gear boxes with many gears (or CVT) can pick the right gear and shift points for any situation more efficiently and faster than a human driver.
And any kind of performance car will probably offer the best of both worlds that will let you manually select gears if you disagree with the automatic choice. The paddle shifters on my Challenger make it easy to downshift when I want to punch it to get around traffic.
Of course by the same measure, sticks are smoother and easier than ever.
This is very much a golden age for automotive technology. Whichever way you go driving should be a ton of fun.
Edit: (much later) It's just occurred to me that I've painted a picture of myself as some sort of mad necromancer building a steel golem in my laboratory.
I read several scale modeling sites, of which that is one. But he's also doing a 1/1 scale Land Rover restoration.
The other thing I really spend a lot of time on is drawing, a skill which I developed primarily to create visuals for the stories in my head. My avatar is an example of my work. In high school, I had such a compulsive need to draw that my 11th grade English teacher thought I was distracting myself, so she banned me from taking out my sketchbook in her class. Joke's on her; I doodled in my notes instead. I like drawing mainly with Pilot G2 pens, but I also use a tablet for digital work. It's exciting that there are other artists around here as well. Nothing brings people together like mutual understanding of the struggle that is The Other Eye.
Aside from that and the obvious gaming, I occupy myself with a smattering of reading, music composition, knitting, baking, sewing, movie/TV watching, cosplay, and of course wasting my life on the internet. I also enjoy acting, especially voice acting, but I never get the opportunity outside of scaring people with the Batman voice (I normally have a very soft, boyish voice, so no one suspects that I'm capable of making deep sounds, and one time I completely freaked out my entire German class by saying "I am the night" in German in the Batman voice. One lady thought I was possessed for a moment. Oops).
I pick the strangest scenes out of animes to clearly remember...
I've been having really diverse hobbies lately:
learning Blender for fun; trying to get in Maya; some advanced mathematics which could be applicable in deeper way; failed experiment with LED diode;wanting to make a perfect game; playing some games.
I'm actually almost finished with a set of seven fantasy novels. It starts with an energetic young farm girl who teams up with a ditzy undead psychopath to steal a WMD/time machine from the medieval equivalent of Kim Jong-il...
And then the story gets kind of strange.