Thread: Your hobbies outside of computers

  1. #16
    and the hat of copycat stevesmithx's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by brewbuck View Post
    Pretty standard hobbies for people living in my area: hiking, backpacking, mountaineering. I ride a bike but it's more of a commuting thing than a hobby. I hunt for and eat wild mushrooms. I am somewhat proficient in stick, sword, and knife combat.
    You sir, just lost your geek title.

    Seriously though, I couldn't believe you guys have so many other hobbies. Note to self: I should get out more
    Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted
    - Albert Einstein.


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  2. #17
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by stevesmithx View Post
    Note to self: I should get out more
    Not strictly necessarily.

    I used to have a whole lot of outdoor activities when I was younger. Most notably biking, swimming, volleyball and snorkel diving; My all-time sports passions. So, folks talking in here about their bikes really mushes my eyes. But with the years, I've been gradually retiring to home and I no longer feel that craving for staying outside.

    I found other hobbies that eventually replaced my former ones. I didn't name them in here because they are currently on hold while I'm staying in Africa. But in the way of hints, here are two hobbies I have been engaged on and that I love to pieces (literally): Jigsaw Puzzles and modelling. Try those two out.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  3. #18
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    I'm constantly picking up new hobbies, but am not always so good at dropping the old ones, meaning I have way too much crap lying around that I can't quite get rid of.

    Things I used to do but rarely do now:
    surfing, hiking/camping/backpacking, rock climbing, triathlons, scuba diving, restoring my old car (68 Firebird), brewing, drinking beer, playing guitar and singing, skateboarding

    Things I'm currently doing:
    this forum (seriously, this forum takes up a significant portion of my waking hours, but I love it), woodworking (for building furniture), playing rugby, running and swimming (more for health than for fun), working on my house/yard/garden

    Also, not sure it's really a hobby, but I've been very lucky in life, and it's always been important to me to spend at least some of my extra time volunteering. Working with special needs kids has been the one that I've been most consistent with, but I've done (and really enjoyed) building homes in Tijuana. Next up is a soup kitchen or similar.

    I'm sure there's things I'm missing

  4. #19
    Registered User rogster001's Avatar
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    Probably the non-computer hobby I've gotten the farthest in is juggling though
    I love juggling, everyone should learn it! Ironically I started because I won some juggling balls in a drinking competition in a pub, if there's one thing you cant do when drunk its juggle, forget all those walking along the line tests the police do when catch people driving drunk, they should all just carry a ball and test the catching ability of the muppets. England cricket team probably be a lot better in the field if they learnt this beautiful pastime

    The numbers are called "siteswap" notation, they indicated the relative height or speed of the individual throws. For instance 7531 indicates you throw the first ball at the same height you would throw a ball if you were juggling 7 at the same speed. The second ball at the height you throw with 5, ect. 7531 is nicknamed "The Tower" because all the balls hit their peak at the same time. In programming terms you could call it "The Stack", since you catch the balls in the opposite order they were thrown .
    Wow, this might help me, Ive always wished I could understand siteswap, and even better write in it. I still have an old juggling program installed which is just ace, it includes a siteswap notator to create or test your own ideas.

    I the same vein i love origami, and the crease patterns are also very mysterious, I wish I could understand and build a model from them, I see the valley/mountain folds no problem, but creating a finished model just from that one page diagram, how on earth do people interpret it??

    Other main interests: Ive done martial arts most of my life, am presently in awe of thai boxing, always have been, but now with training and researching more of that style it is brought home goodstyle, muay thai, and western boxing, little better in unarmed arts, wing chun for me for any of the chinese styles, and goju ryu for any japanese style, those are the best.

    I have been a musician most of my life, classical / jazz training, main instrument guitar, bachs four luite suites are an endless challenge, but I play flamenco, jazz, rock, metal, whatever as well.
    Last edited by rogster001; 03-14-2015 at 09:13 AM.
    Thought for the day:
    "Are you sure your sanity chip is fully screwed in sir?" (Kryten)
    FLTK: "The most fun you can have with your clothes on."

    Stroustrup:
    "If I had thought of it and had some marketing sense every computer and just about any gadget would have had a little 'C++ Inside' sticker on it'"

  5. #20
    Registered User rogster001's Avatar
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    i should really have said okinawan/japanese for goju ryu
    Thought for the day:
    "Are you sure your sanity chip is fully screwed in sir?" (Kryten)
    FLTK: "The most fun you can have with your clothes on."

    Stroustrup:
    "If I had thought of it and had some marketing sense every computer and just about any gadget would have had a little 'C++ Inside' sticker on it'"

  6. #21
    Registered User rogster001's Avatar
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    rogsters tip of the day - ;->

    Take some bird seed, or barley, fill a good handful of it into a square of clingfilm, parcel it up into a ball - that's your weight.

    Now get a pack of some (if possible large) balloons, trim the neck of the balloon off that you would normally blow into. Wrap whats left of the balloon over your weight, repeat, with different coloured balloons until a sturdy dinosaur-egg style juggling ball is created, they are the best throwing fun ever, I first saw them in spain, juggling is very popular there and some guy i met had come up with the idea and was selling them. Bird seed is best for em
    Last edited by rogster001; 03-14-2015 at 01:16 PM.
    Thought for the day:
    "Are you sure your sanity chip is fully screwed in sir?" (Kryten)
    FLTK: "The most fun you can have with your clothes on."

    Stroustrup:
    "If I had thought of it and had some marketing sense every computer and just about any gadget would have had a little 'C++ Inside' sticker on it'"

  7. #22
    Registered User Alpo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rogster001 View Post
    Wow, this might help me, Ive always wished I could understand siteswap, and even better write in it. I still have an old juggling program installed which is just ace, it includes a siteswap notator to create or test your own ideas.
    I think I have the same (or similar) program, called JugglingLab. It's a great program (wish it didn't require Java installed though, I keep it on an old laptop).

    It's sort of funny how many valid patterns there are for any given amount of balls (I remember seeing a formula that could give you the number, but can't remember where).

    One of the nuttiest ones that I've actually learned is (6x, 4)(4, 2x)*. The parenthesis means it's a synchronous pattern, which defaults to the balls being thrown to the same hand. An x after a number means that that the throw crosses to the other hand. The star symbol means that you do the same pattern, but with different hands directly afterward. So you could read it as (where L is left hand, and R is right):

    1. (L: Crossing throw at 6 ball height, R: Normal 4 ball fountain throw)
    Attachment 13990
    2. (L: Normal 4 ball fountain throw, R: Strait low pass across to left)
    Attachment 13991
    3. You are back to 2 balls in each hand, in a regular synchronous pattern. Swap hands and go to step 1.

    I just had to go have a look for this video, it's one of the best siteswap explanations I've seen. It's a guy with a PHD in math explaining siteswap, while juggling the patterns he is talking about:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38rf9FLhl-8

    rogsters tip of the day - ;->

    Take some bird seed, or barley, fill a good handful of it into a square of clingfilm, parcel it up into a ball - that's your weight.

    Now get a pack of some (if possible large) balloons, trim the neck of the balloon off that you would normally blow into. Wrap whats left of the balloon over your weight, repeat, with different coloured balloons until a sturdy dinosaur-egg style juggling ball is created, they are the best throwing fun ever, I first saw them in spain, juggling is very popular there and some guy i met had come up with the idea and was selling them. Bird seed is best for em
    I like to use salt and playpen balls lol. You need some plastic locking pins to make them though. What you do is cut a small hole in the playpen ball, fill it with salt, then push the locking pin in to stopper it. It's basically a homemade version of Russian balls, they are great IMO (you can still customize the size and weight a lot).
    Last edited by Alpo; 03-14-2015 at 01:42 PM.
    WndProc = (2[b] || !(2[b])) ? SufferNobly : TakeArms;

  8. #23
    Registered User rogster001's Avatar
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    wow, thanks so much, i'll check those links out - here's the juggle program i was talking about, its an old dos thing but should still run ok, this is the best link i could find for it, there are a couple of amazing four ball routines on the basic version...plus try the editor! Juggle Krazy - Strangely the creators of that software live about ten miles from me i note..

    Ps try the balloons idea - I hear you with the playpen balls, but these things are nice n grippy. Cool idea about the salt, thats a decent weight idea
    Last edited by rogster001; 03-14-2015 at 02:03 PM.
    Thought for the day:
    "Are you sure your sanity chip is fully screwed in sir?" (Kryten)
    FLTK: "The most fun you can have with your clothes on."

    Stroustrup:
    "If I had thought of it and had some marketing sense every computer and just about any gadget would have had a little 'C++ Inside' sticker on it'"

  9. #24
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Cars. Aircraft. Sports.

    All can be a bit pricey at times.

  10. #25

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    I have no hobbies outside of computers. I work and play Team Fortress Classic.
    I'm not immature, I'm refined in the opposite direction.

  11. #26
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    I like to fly, both airplanes and gliders. Licensed in airplanes, not yet licensed in gliders.

    Also love musical theatre, and living in London (20 minutes from West End by tube) means I can actually go watch one every few weeks!

    Another big hobby is building stuff. I love building electronic gadgets. Have been thinking about getting into woodworking for quite a while now, but living in a tiny studio in downtown London makes that not very practical.

    Recently picked up scuba diving and archery - both are incredibly fun!

    Online - I used to spend crazy amount of time on this forum... but it has gotten a little repetitive for me over the years, so now I waste most of my time on Quora instead.
    Last edited by cyberfish; 03-21-2015 at 12:17 PM.

  12. #27
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyberfish View Post
    I waste most of my time on Quora instead.
    Never heard of it before. So I went on and looked it up. And now I know why I never heard of it before. Even to just to access their main page you have to sign in. What on earth is that for? It's a question and answer website, for pet's sake.

    Please don't understand this wrong. I have no idea of the actual content and how good it may be (and will never have now). But here's what I learned instead from Wikipedia:

    >>
    Quora was co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever.

    Well, that explains a whole lot...

    >> "we thought that Q & A is one of those areas on the internet where there are a lot of sites, but no one had come along and built something that was really good yet."

    The perennial we can do better. There's 10 awful Q&A websites. Because 9 people thought they could do better.

    >> In June 2011, Quora redesigned its website, in order to make information discovery and navigation easier.

    To the people inside their walled garden. And absolutely no else.

    >> An article in Business Insider quoted an anonymous Quora answer, claimed to be written by an insider, that stated that Cheever left the company because he wanted to focus on the user experience, whereas D'Angelo wanted to focus on growth, and D'Angelo, by financing the Series B investment mostly from his own money, acquired sufficient control over the company to have things his way.

    And that's how you do it better...

    >>> In 2010, D'Angelo and Cheever were among five named "Smartest Engineer runner-up" in the "smartest people in the tech" article by CNNMoney.[54] They were also both listed in Inc. magazine's "Top 30 Under-30" entrepreneurs list of 2011

    And this is why I never take the internet seriously.
    Last edited by Mario F.; 03-21-2015 at 01:53 PM.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  13. #28
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    Requiring registration is unfortunate, but it's the only big problem I have with the site.

    Their answers are indexed by search engines, and I believe you can read answers without registering if you go in through a search engine. In fact, if you just go in through a search engine, you can use most of the site without signing up. It's only the homepage that requires signing up - not sure what the designer was thinking.

    It's basically Yahoo Answers, but with high quality questions and well thought-out answers. Well, enough of them anyways to justify wasting time skipping over the occasional bad ones.

    World War II - Quora
    (I believe that's accessible without logging in?)

    They DID manage to do better than all other Q&A sites I've seen. Significantly better.

  14. #29
    Registered User MutantJohn's Avatar
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    Idk, having to use a search engine as a workaround sounds pretty awful.

    A site like that has no good reason to force people to sign up just to use their site or at least view their site. I get not being able to post but can't even read? Pfft.

    Oh, I did find this though :

    We require that people join because many of those who join like the service and end up contributing back to Quora, which makes it better for everyone. People spend a ton of time making Quora great by sharing their knowledge on here, so we think it is reasonable to ask that others who want to get to all the free knowledge here take the first very small step toward contributing back which is creating an account. That is the only reason we have the policy: to get more people to join who will share more knowledge and make Quora even better for everyone in the long run.
    This makes me suspicious because making an account does not make you valuable to the content of the site.

    You were right, cyber, you can google around it or just put ?share=1 at the end of URLs which is basically just playing off of a GET exploit.

    Why does Quora make you sign up to read other answers on a question? - Quora

  15. #30
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    Yeah requiring registration is annoying. I think what they meant is more people would end up posting if they had registered already anyways to read answers.

    But other than that, it's a very well run site with a lot of good content, and very good personalization (especially if you don't mind it using your Facebook stuff to figure out what you like - which is optional). I get an email every few days with about 10 highly rated answers (usually that means they are well written and well-thought-out) on topics I care about, and I actually enjoy reading them.

    There are also a lot of very knowledgeable people on there. For example, Jimmy Wales (co-founder of Wikipedia) writes a lot of in-depth answers about Wikipedia, and most of them are really interesting. There are also quite a few computer science professors from well-known universities active on Quora, if you are into computer science. And many doctors and medical researchers answering medical questions.

    Oh, and there are quite a few retired NASA astronauts talking about how things are done on ISS, etc. Astronauts - Quora

    I have wasted my time on thousands on sites, but my time wasted on Quora has been by far the most educational.

    By the way, I don't think the do the 1-answer-only thing anymore do they? It seems like I can view as answers as I want now even when not logged in.

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