Ask HN: Share Your Eccentric Hobby

Astrology. I think there is something to it (and I perfectly well understand if others don't). I've been attempting some "cold" natal readings by having an LLM giving me a person who isn't outrageously famous but has a well known enough life, giving me only their birth parameters and then letting me supply a reading to compare against the details it reveals.

Don't know if it qualifies as a hobby, but I "pursue flavor", not in chef sense but more in ready made products. Every now and then I buy 20-30: cartons of milk, volcanic wines, obviously cheeses, 100% chocolate, specialty coffee beans, niche cigars, chorizos from all over, chili sauces, lambic beers, Chinese high-mountain teas, matcha... but also can go beyond "taste" flavor, e.g. we also do that with arabic ouds (oils, this can get very expensive very fast), indian attars (mitti attar!!!), and so on. We try to sit down and "evaluate" each experience, we used to have a notebook but lately we just wing it.

I hope you are blogging about learning the painting restoration thing; the things beginners learn through practice are every bit as valuable as the things experts know.

My weird hobby as I mentioned is that I am designing cheap "art" lenses for my cameras (basically an equivalent of things like Lensbaby or the Lomography lenses) by adapting surplus optics (basic meniscus lenses and achromatic doublets) or DIY telescope eyepiece lenses, to focussing helicoids using 3D printed barrels; I have then used them for pictorialist-influenced shoots. It has sent me down all sorts of rabbit holes.

I am fitfully working on my own focussing mechanisms; I have had some success with multi-start helicoid threads but they are are a challenge in plastic, so I am currently working on a modestly-precise hybrid plastic and metal mechanism, and daydreaming about CNC-driven solutions in the future when I have the working space.

I am also contemplating a slightly more complex, faster aplanat/rapid rectilinear design but my knowledge of optics is just not good enough to select the right lenses, yet, so it may end up being bodged and only very roughly empirical; a "nice" result rather than an excellent one.

But then any precision of the result is not really the aim; cheap plastic meniscus lenses are as interesting in black and white as anything else.

I play Pro Drums mode on Rock Band 4 on my Roland kit. It's like...85% like real drums, which is close enough to when I just want to play along to something and turn my brain off. I'm probably top 100 or so and have been playing for about a decade now. It's a blast.

I (the OP) restore paintings! I buy oil paintings off FB marketplace being sold for £5-£25 normally or from charity shops, and restore them. AMA

I collect keyboards (computer). I somehow have collected more than 25 so far with all kinds of different configuration with respect to layouts, switches, colors etc. Not sure if its eccentric enough.

I (also the OP) am refitting a small (25ft) yacht I bought for £1. Eccentric enough? What if I told you I had never sailed a yacht and it is about a 4 hour drive to get to it? AMA