Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
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.
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
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).
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.
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain “It’s Wikipedia, but a map” or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren’t worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
Cat juggling.
I train in swordfighting. It’s good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.
The funniest part is it’s actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body
I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.
The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.
The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.
Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics… Nothing is outside of my interest.
On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.
Weather watching (not the extreme kind) - I basically note down the current weather and interpret my own forecast then later see if I’m right.
Lockpicking - it’s basically a tiny little puzzle and I can buy different solutions for a few bucks at any store.
Gardening - this is less obscure/quirky and more that I don’t want people to think that I’m bragging about how many tomatoes I have because I will in fact brag about how many tomatoes I have.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.
You’ll be that guy that records old shows on VHS and when he died the only record of old shows was donated to an archive/museum. A priceless contribution to humanity.
Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them
You should just go work there. Make your own.
I intend to start my own company at some point :)
Of dildos? That’s great. Good luck to you! When you do, tell me about it.
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.
I’ve never let it stop me, but:
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ethical philosophy
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social dance, especially contra and square
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chromosomal / genetic inheritance simulations
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Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I’m going to fix it today because something doesn’t work the way it should.
Also, I learn Japanese. 日本語が大好き！
I am also learning Japanese. I fine it hard to think of the sentence structure as different than English. In my mind I find myself daying the sentences the way Yoda from star wars does and it makes more sense.
Yoda I am–>Yoda desu
I’m currently only doing (a lot of) kanji learning, with wanikani
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.
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.
Programming… Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn’t make for good conversation
At the date…
… Funny thing this reminds me of the time I had to refactor my API to accommodate three whole new call types, you should have seen the json generator code before …
Each quirky hobby mentioned here, deserves its own Lemmy community!
