Mine is mapping. I am a big OpenStreetMap contributor and I have mapped many towns near me that were previously completely unmapped.
3d design & printing, electronics, cooking, in-person RPGs, woodworking, old time radio, sci fi, bookbinding, comedy… I got a million of 'em.
I am a spring of knowledge about all of the domestic Real Housewives franchises (though I did just pick up Dubai recently).
I know all the lore behind all their relationships/alliances/enemies and off season shenanigans.
Its legitimately stupid how much I can talk about rich women who flaunt their wealth and then do trashy shit like throw wine in one another’s faces or flip tables (or scam the elderly out of their retirement funds to fund their own lifestyle).
Does raising and training ducks count? I’m really good at it. I have care down to a science and I’ve done quite a bit medically because there aren’t any vets that treat ducks around me. I’ve rehabilitated crazy injuries, performed minor surgery, treated severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
I have trained all of my birds to listen to basic commands and they know their names and respond to them.
I would name a mallard “M’Lord” just to mess with it.
What got you into that? How long have you been doing it? What kind of ducks?
Well thank you very much Emerald for the mapping and the great question.
For me, it’s something much more modest:- Amiga, or retro-computing in general. Not just for gaming. There’s something deeply inspiring about browsing the web or creating spreadsheets with entirely different hardware and software. Hoping to get an Alpha CPU and/ or an Atari soon.
- Dreaming of a better world.
Low level coding and free open source software for me mostly.
I’ve met some people who like to map areas on OpenStreetMap and I’d be interested in trying it myself but like with contributing to anything I’m new to I’m scared of doing something wrong. I understand that with OpenStreetMap there’s a sort of discussion of changes like on Wikipedia?
When you started what resources helped you, did a friend show you? Is there a tutorial you recommend for starting off? (If you explained some of this somewhere else please feel free to link to it or tell me, I haven’t read through all the comments here yet.)
Not OP but…
The wiki is a vast resource on every little detail that’s being mapped. I find it a bit difficult to browse sometimes, easier to get to some pages via DDG, but this may just be me. The Beginner’s guide page I imagine might be a decent starting point.
Though I can’t say I myself started there… IMO the easiest way is to just get StreetComplete from F-Droid (or Google Play…), and wing it. That app is extremely user friendly, and literally just asks you a simple question about something in front of you, and as such allows you to fill in or verify some of the details on the map. It’s capable of a lot, but not quite everything, such as adding in new “ways” (roads, structures, anything not a single node).
When you’re not sure about something it’s asking, that’s when “winging it” should be replaced by “wikiing it”. Or looking it up any other way, since there are now decades of confused people asking questions online for your benefit!
Vespucci is the mobile app people tend to use for heavy duty editing, or just to do the stuff SC can’t. This one has a much scarier UI. It takes some getting used to and figuring out, but really isn’t so bad once you know how the app and OSM itself works. You can download it early on, but maybe just to appreciate how easy SC is, at first!
To answer your question about discussions: each “changeset” (SC manages these for you automatically, groups similar quests into the same changeset) can be commented on by any user if they noticed some issue in your edits, or want to ask for clarification. You can go to openstreetmap.org and click “History” up top to see recent changesets that affected the area within your screen. You’ll see that most won’t have a single comment, but if you’re logged in, you can see the option to start a discussion on any of them.
I’m so shit at low level programming. Don’t understand a lick of it
I’m not good at it, but I like geocaching.
I just liked the trading of items.
I have a weird obsession with fonts. I love a good, well designed font. How it looks on the screen, how it looks in print. Nothing too gaudy or showy, but a really good League Spartan or Lato Light. (Not a fan of serifs)
Other than that, normal stuff; 3D modelling, writing, etc…
My other interest that might fall “outside the norm” is that in University, if I had continued beyond my bachelors my primary focus would have been studying the Bronze Age Collapse, and that topic still fascinates me to this day.
Edit: Oh…and spreadsheets. There’s no problem in the world that can’t be fixed with a well designed spreadsheet. All problems come down to data sorting.
I have almost no opinions on specific fonts. Except… I absolutely despise the $ and ¢ symbols in Apple’s San Francisco font. Since it’s the default font I have to look at it a lot.
Are the vertical lines angled? Or is that just an optical illusion?
they are
Oh my God I LOVE FONTS
Spartan is a bit wide for me (see that w?) but Lato with a good colorscheme is always sexy
Another thing: if you’re familiar with fonts you can have a weird pseudo-Sherlock funtime guessing how something was made.
points This book is using Georgia instead of Times New Roman. See how the 9 is low? But the page numbers are Times New Roman because the 9 isn’t low. Was paging in the author’s control?
and
font with the light blue shading thing. This club recruitment poster was made in Microsoft Word.About serif disdain… what about LaTeX’s serif? :}
Brick?
Anyway, maybe you have some insight - any idea why so many web designers prefer Light or Hairline now? Or at any rate the thinnest possible fonts? Did someone with credibility announce that thin fonts are actually easier to read, or is it just a style trend?
If you hate someone, teach them to spot bad keming.
Gawd, bad Keming is the worst!!!
I knew a guy who got kerned once. Know what happened to him? He’s dead!
A terrible way to die. My grandpa saw a lot of kerning in 'nam. Was never the same after.
Ayy fellow font enjoyer! I have like 50 GB of fonts, I’m a bit crazy. Honestly, Noto Sans is the greatest font out there. Looks good everywhere
I like Noto Sans. But as a Linux user it often irks me too, since every…single…language…is included in most distributions; so half of my time finding a nice font that I just installed consists of scrolling past a bajillion Noto variants.
Haha, yep. You can uninstall the other languages if you want though.
I know, I’m just really lazy!
How do you map
Is there any liability? NSA, angry exes, employer, anybody finding out that you mapped your own town?
Why would someone be mad you mapped a town?
The reason I asked is because I don’t know what it entails. If it’s just installing an app and driving around, there’s probably low risk. But if it requires taking pictures of people houses or driving to private properties or parking for more than a few minutes in front of buildings, surely you can see the liability? I’m sorry I had to explain this, honestly. It feels like common sense.
Overblown/unfounded privacy concerns, perhaps?
Metal guitar, comic books, epistemologies. A lot of people write off metal as just distortion and shouting but it’s a huge genre like jazz or classical without as long a history. Comics interest I stopped for awhile but got back into it and helped me learn drawing and story writing to better appreciate the artistry. Epistemologies from an interest in reading philosophy books and that was just the subtopic that always held my interest most.
And not to hang up on superficial stereotypes but metal is sophisticated too – a lot of the voicing/structure/styling is so classical-and-jazz that, with instrument switches, it can be indistinguishable. Don’t get me started on trying to claw my way through metal time signatures
Case in point: Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet 8 (guitar version)
*nix Servers
I’ve had several multi-year long ones:
- As a child: Stargate SG1
- Adolescent: paraphilias
- Young adult: the care of high violence risk and cluster b psychiatric inpatients
- As I’m entering middle-adulthood: western esoteric spiritual tradition and philosophy
You might appreciate this story from my bro-in-law who is a former psych-tech. There was one really wily guy in his institution who liked to go where he wasn’t supposed to be. One time he slipped through a door that was left unattended for a few seconds, and led the techs on a merry chase through the building, finally ending up in his room, where he gleefully jumped on his bed, turned around with a big grin and shouted, “SAFETY ZONE!!!”
Picking up new hobbies, investing in them far beyond what would be considered a casual interest, then getting bored or disillusioned with the community after 6-24 months.
See
- Foam dart blasters
- yo yos
- magic the gathering (This was like 15 years)
- coin collecting
- juggling
- pocket knives
- archery
- running
- Currently working on 3D printing, though that’s been more of a means to get back into foam blasters because it’s far cheaper to print your own blasters and mod parts.
And so, the circle of life is complete.
This week? AuDHD doesn’t let me have one for long.
A Gold in Deficit?? Well done!
Okay, what were your last ten hyperfixations? (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧
Fountain pens and inks
Thank you for your contributions!
