What hobby was easier to get into than you thought?

Reading
Thanks to e-books and the Libby app you don't even have to physically go anywhere or pay anything to find a good book these days.
- libby is such a game changer. i totally get why a lot of people want to only read physical books but for me, being able to read anywhere at any time instead of having to make a concious decision to find and bring a book with you means i read way way more than i used to
  
  For me it’s that I have to think less about my choices. I don’t have a ton of time anymore so if I pick a book I am not vibing with I can just return it and pick another in a matter of seconds. It’s led me to taking chances on books I normally wouldn’t read.
  
  I'm a mix of both. I generally read a book for the first time on Libby and then end up buying a physical copy for my home library.
  
  I like physical books in a theoretical sense. Some hardcovers are beautiful and it's hard to resist the urge to collect them.
  But I don't really like reading physical books. I really don't like the typesetting of 70-80 characters on a page. That leaves a lot of my books at maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page, and it's really hard to get into a flow that way. On an ereader I can control the layout, the font, and really get into a book.
  (And that's on top of the fact that I can carry thousands of books around with me, borrow from the library, and take notes more effectively for nonfiction.)
- I'm a slow reader and get frustrated with how long books take. My "internal" reading speed is about as fast as reading aloud, so anything longer than a few hundred pages takes forever.
  
  Im the same with reading speed. You could try finding a block of time you would otherwise just be on your phone so it feels less an jnvestment (e.g. before bed, riding the bus, or break at work). I use e-books so i don't have to remember it and opening the book is as easy as social media. Finding something you WANT to read is hard too.
  If you're into fantasy then branron sanderson is great. The Way of Kings grabbed me after getiing past the prologue (bonus points for women written decently). Alternatively Name of The Wind by patrick rothfuss. If only he'd finish the trilogy...
  
  If interested, you might look into "sub-vocalization". I mention it because you state your reading speed is close to your talking speed; possibly you are making miniscule movements with your larynx and surrounding muscles as if you were talking, without actually talking, and that limits your reading speed to talking speed.
  People who get into speed reading often work on sub-vocalization suppression or interference techniques so that it isn't a speed limiter.
  Or you may just process written words at that speed. Everyone's different.
  
  Try audiobooks.
  I listen to them while doing chores like the dishes or folding laundry. If you get distracted, just repeat the last few minutes.
  
  That can happen. My focus is weird, and I strongly zone-in to what I'm doing, so for me reading is a very engaging and fun thing to do.
- Also Anna’s Archive!

Playing older video games via emulation. The barrier to entry gets easier and easier as time marches on. And as long as you have disc space to download the games, you'll likely find a repository somewhere on the Internet.
- Oh yeah some even let you play in browser now. Crazy how it takes seconds, and most peoples phones can even play most everything game cube and earlier.
  
  That is a particularly handy feature for older computer games from DOS and C64.
  
  Some even let you play in your browser now…
  Makes me sad thinking about all the fun Flash based games we had access to maybe a decade ago.
- Chinese handhelds (sbcgamings) are an interesting rabbit hole.
  
  Miyoo Mini Plus!!!!
  
  Modding my Vita blew my mind.
- You can also play at the Internet Arcade or Classic PC Games on archive.org.
- I've been playing tons of GameCube games since Dolphin recently released RetroAchievement support. (Basically community made achievements for retro games, available for tons of games and consoles)
- And if you don’t flash drives/micro SD cards are dirt cheap and stupid fast these days. May as well be external storage in an easy to loose stick or microSD card.
  I’ve never had a problem playing my collection of old games I used to own externally.
- Anbernic handheld consoles are awesome and inexpensive.
  I recommend the RG35XXSP. It's shaped like a Gameboy Advance SP and plays lots of Dreamcast & N64 games plus everything below that.
  $60 + Shipping Directly from Anbernic
  or
  $90 with free 1 or 2 day shipping from Amazon

Doom scrolling
- Has anyone found a way to get out of this hobby? Asking for a friend.
  
  Maybe you'll find an answer if you keep scrolling down...
  
  The answer will surprise you!
  
  Switching my phone screen to black and white actually does help, but the temptation to switch back is powerful.
  
  For an honest answer: someone else on lemmy once said they just scroll down on the homepage and let it free-scroll for a while, then stop and work back up. When they get to the top they leave lemmy and move on with their day.
  
  Quitting Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit (really all social media) really helped. Lemmy is nice because there are not nearly the amount of comments.
  Honestly social media does nothing for us anymore. It’s no longer serving its original purpose and is now a derivative version if MK Ultra level shit to feed us rage and sell us crap.
- Heck, even some clients have auto scroll, really really easy this hobby.

- But you see, I wanna git gud immediately
  
  Print one
  , or something like
  Get a scale/ruler, a pencil and an eraser
  Use the above to draw, first a
  and then a
  Then imagine and draw stuff like
  The last one is not true isometric, but has a perspective. But you can make similar good looking stuff in isometric too.
  To do perspective, you can't use the Printed isometric line/dot paper.
  Instead, it has an additional step of choosing the infinity points and making your own lines for it.
  I tried to find a good instructions page, but unfortunately, search engines just prefer YouTube videos (which I don't like to recommend).
  Either way, this is one method that lets you git gud pretty fast, albeit in a different drawing form.
  Another thing: The last example picture I showed, has circles and semi circles. Avoid those in your drawing at this stage. That requires you to learn an extra method.

This was awhile ago, but playing dungeons and dragons! I showed up one night at the local gaming store, asked the group playing that night if they had space, and bam! I'm playing a terrifying monk in World's Largest Dungeon!
- I try to play D&D but most weeks I play schedule conflict.

Blender. Not great at it, but there's so many fantastic tutorials on YouTube. I can use it good enough to design and 3d print simple things. Of course, there's may aspects / layers to it. It's both broad and deep. So it's good to kind of focus on one thing at the time, and then break that down even further.
- Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn't grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn't "make sense".
  I've found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it's easier for me to grasp "okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc" than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don't offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.
  
  I totally get that. It's like finding a programming language or personal information manager app that you like. Have to try a bunch out to find something that works for you.
  A long time ago I dabbled in script-generated ray tracing. That was fun, but I never got great at it.
  I also learned PostScript for a while, because I wanted to create some very intricate printable forms. Using WYSIWG tools was just not cutting it. I ended up with some large 300dpi forms that I liked, whuch were perfect for the assignment.
  Sometimes a different model or approach can make a huge difference to your work flow.
  
  Blender tends to work better for organic shapes. I know because I suffer a LOT to make more parametric stuff with it. I really should learn how to properly use something like Solidworks, Fusion360 or something along those lines.
- What are your favorite tutorials about Blender specifically for 3D printing? Any channel recommendations?
  
  I do resin printing. All models get sliced into 2d layers by the slicer program. Therefore, the geometry of the mesh isn't nearly as important as it would be for something you wanted to animate or use in a game. (Pro 3d modelers take great pains to keep their meshes very clean and smooth, made up of all triangles, etc. But if you're just going to convert the thing to a bunch of 2d slices, you don't need that level of discipline.)
  You can basically overlap and tweak a bunch of primitive shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, etc) to build a complex shape for the thing you want. Then you can export that as an STL file and load it into your slicer. Once inside the slicer you can add any needed supports and then slice it.
  In order to get to this pretty basic level of competence, I just watched several tutorial videos on the basics. Like how to add shapes, scale them, modify them, mirror them for perfect symmetry, etc. I have watched some videos on texturing, lighting, etc. out of curiosity but you don't need any of that for resin printing.
  And once you export it as an STL it looks like one solid thing, so it's easy to rotate it around and so on in the slicer program.
  "Blender Guru" is a really well done Blender tutorial channel, but he also covers a lot of things I don't really need. Early on, I learned a lot from the "tutor4u" channel.
- I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.
  However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.
  I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.
  
  Not sure exactly what you consider 'expensive', but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.
  Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.

Programming.
I first realized that I loved it at the age of 11. It's easy to get into but programming itself can be difficult or easy depending on what you are aiming to do and how. I love it both as a hobby and as a high school subject (hopefully as a job in the next few years as well)
- hopefully as a job in the next few years
  😅😬

Game Mastering for TTRPGs. Set up can take some work, but it's a great creative outlet and, once you find the right group, soooo much fun. I personally started off with Paranoia XP and moved from there to a couple different systems before landing on D&D 5e. There are some great rules-light systems like Kids on Bikes/ Kids on Brooms or Paranoia Perfect Edition if the behemoth of D&D (with its multiple text-book sized rule books) seems daunting.
ETA: there's also entire libraries of advice on GMing out there for assistance if you need it.
- I played D&D for 10 years before I seriously tried DMing. I'm now a year and a half into a 5e game with 4 other players and it's been great. It helped that YouTube kept sending me Matt Colville videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8
  
  Nice! I'm a big fan of Ginny Di, she's got some great tips for DMs and players.

Cooking. A lot of really delicious foods have extremely simple recipes and as an amateur you have time on your side. You don't have to rush anything for most recipes. A lot of times I measure and cut everything before I even turn on the stove and this makes cooking super easy. Sure it takes a while to cook when you are just starting out but you can just go at your own pace. I really feel like anyone can cook almost anything. You don't even need fancy tools. I got started with a $12 wok and a wooden spatula. These days there's a huge amount of resources to teach you how to make just about everything. It's also really rewarding since you get to eat what you make and you get to make things you want to eat. Needless to say it's also a very important skill.
- Cooking is much easier than it looks. Recipes are just suggestions and after looking at enough of them the commonalities to play around with it
  
  Except baking. Unless you exactly know what each ingredient does.
- Gathering, cutting, measuring all the ingredients before cooking is actually a very well regarded French method called mis en place so you're basically already classically trained 😜

making mead:
honey, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock (fancy cork), wait two weeks.
wine making:
juice, sugar, yeast, water, shake the carboy, pop on the airlock, wait two weeks.
- No camden tablets for sterilization?
  
  I've never found them necessary.
  I use a baking soda/water combo to clean out carboys between uses, and ill dip the airlock stopper in boiling water before attaching it, any cloth i use to wipe things down is boiled beforehand.
  as long as everything is clean before the carboy is sealed, you're good.
  I've never lost a batch.
  knock on wood.

Sewing! My girlfriend is into it and had some machines already. It's way easier and more fun than I expected.
- Any resources to pick this up that you can share?
  
  YouTube, and forums for questions. Many popular patterns have videos.
  I think places like apostrophe patterns are good for beginner patterns because they do fully custom patterns based on your measurements.
  For a starter machine, definitely do research, because shitty sewing machines suck to use soooo much and pull any fun out of sewing. People online seem to really like Juki. My girlfriend has a brother, and it definitely feels kinda cheap and has trouble with thick stuff sometimes.
  If you're really into sewing, a serger is totally worth it, A cover stitch is nice to have.

Kayaking was easy. Get one you can afford on FB Marketplace and go. Cheap paddles are just fine to start as are $3 thrift life vests, grab a whistle while you're shopping. Next thing you know, you're scanning Google Maps for water and new adventures.

houseplants and especially ferns: It all started with a gift: a bird's-nest fern and a blue-star fern. i was already into cultivating offshoots, but the bird's-nest fern does not generate those, and the internet said you can not divide a single plant into multiples. but how do they propagate then? the use spores and the internet said it is not easy to get new plants this way, but i gave it a try. and it was not that difficult...
currently i have about 12 nest-ferns of all sizes and fear the winter when i have to bring all plants into the small flat.
funny enough: the blue-star fern is easy to propagate via offshoots, but its even easier with spores: as soon as you have a medium moist pot near such a fern you get fresh ferns for free. they grow quite slow, but still look beautiful.
if your interested and German based, write me a PM and i can send you a letter with some spores to bootstrap your new hobby!

The bizarre culture (pun intended) around sourdough is maddening. The obsession over the "ear," bannetons, lames, daily feeding: all bro club bullshit. This is the bread humans have been making for millennia; the only tools you need are one hot rock and one not-hot rock.
- Lul reminds me of the coffee bros. With their 3.4 sec at 666 degrees vs 8.9 sec at 69 degrees pour or whatever they call it.
  
  It's the exact same phenomenon. Surely astroturf bullshit started by whomever is selling the useless tools.
- Do you even sour, bro?
- There are some serious differences between a badly made loaf and a well done one though. You never stop learning. But yeah, it's easy to get something passable.
  
  None of the differences have anything to do with the Bro Method.

Painting miniatures. Anyone can do it and make their board games look way nicer.
- All you have to do is avoid paying New-In-Box GW prices, and avoid/minimize GW paints and the cost of the hobby drops through the floor.
  Tons of skirmish games in all settings are around, many of them with free rules. Battletech is cheap because it basically needs skirmish game amounts of minis. Even playing 40k is cheap(er) embracing third party and scratchbuilding.
  
  Can you recommend good paints to get? I'm interested in getting into model making but all the options are kind of overwhelming and reviews are all over the place.
  
  I managed to sidestep Games Workshop pretty neatly. I'm huge on Battletech and pretty much exclusively use Army Painter paints. I also have a lot of board games like Scythe or Betrayal that have plain gray minis that I'm working on.

Sword fighting. I joined an armored combat gym and just went consistently. They provide the equipment, at least til you get to the point you want your own armor and weapon. Good fun, good exercise.
- What kind of sword fighting?
  
  Dicks
  
  Armored MMA! Cage fights in authentic armor, with historically accurate weapons. I've yet to get in armor, just soft kit sparring and pell work with the real weapons.

Fly fishing
Got yelled at as a kid for playing with your pole too much? Then it’s the hobby for you. Can practice in your backyard and it’s fun just to whip shit around
- The cost barrier of entry is decently high though. Fly fishing is a huge rabbit hole for sure. I’ve never been but one of my coworkers goes almost weekly.
  
  You can buy like $50 kits or go on Craigslist and look for someone selling their impulse bought gear.
  Add in a license fee and even then it’s not too bad for time killing hobby.
  I think when I first got into it I was put off thinking I’d need like the finest $3k in orvis gear and I’d need to buy $10 flies at my local shops.
  Like there’s a weird bougie-classist feeling I think a lot of people have which turns them off of trying to get into the sport.

Cycling
I started biking to work after we moved closer and next thing I know I'm into mountain biking and have built 2 bikes

Whittling
Just buy a knife kit and some wood blanks, surprisingly affordable.
- And, it only takes a few trips to the ER to find out how shite you are at it! Win! Time for another hobby that requires only a few fingers! 🤩🤌🏽
  
  Yeah I should have added the cut proof gloves and thumb protectors

Tying fishing flies
Looks really hard. Not terribly hard to make some respectable flies with a little bit of instruction.

Helping cartograph the world

Photography. Cost of a used high quality DSLR + batteries + storage cards + cheap tripod = $500-ish. Lessons = free thanks to piracy and YouTube.
- Then in a few years you'll be gassing for those 3k lenses a 5k camera and a carbon fibre tripod, a few flashguns etc.
  
  Sigma has this beauty for only 26 grand.
  You can definitely spend money on the stuff that's for actual professionals who need every shot to count, but you can get really good stuff that just misses more shots or has some more quirks at much more reasonable prices, especially used. I've still spent probably a little over a grand on the stuff I use regularly (unless you count $400 more on a DJI Action 4 to play with throwing in water), but I also have some lenses that I got for free (they were throw-ins on someone else's goodwill order that they didn't have a use for) that really aren't bad.
  
  I've been in it for 10 years now and I largely use the same gear. My camera is 16 years old and my lens is about 12 years old. I use a Neewer tripod and sometimes swap lenses with someone I know who has a nice 70-200 mm.
- Its so much fun! I buy used SLR cameras and equipment from estate sales on the cheap (always below $30) and develop my film at home instead of paying $10 a roll to have it processed in a lab (chemicals cost $24 for 24 rolls of developing ) about to start bulk rolling my film for the cost of $6 a roll as opposed to spending $10-$16 per roll from the photography shop near me. Brining the cost down to shoot and develop the film from $26 per roll to $7 per roll.

Making chainmail. All you need are a decent pair of flat pliers and some rings. A basic 4 in 1 weave is super easy to learn. There's more complex stuff of course, but starting out is ridiculously simple. I made a dice bag with probably a dollar or two worth of galvanized steel rings, leather string, and a plastic drawstring clasp.
- This would never have crossed my mind as a thing to do. What else does a person make besides a shirt / armor?
  Beanies? Cast iron pan scrubbers? Novelty blankets?
  
  Haha, personally I've made dice bags and nifty bracelets. Chainmail bikinis are also a thing that's more popular than you'd think.
  
  Novelty blankets?
  I've heard of people who made chainmail blankets not as a novelty but as essentially a weighted blanket for when it's warm. I don't know how well it would work in practice because I'd imagine it'd pinch hairs all over you body pretty often but it still seemed like a pretty neat idea.
- The chainmail creators for tge Lord of the Rings movies made so much chainmail that they were their fingerprints completely off.

Woodworking! Yes, you can obviously spend lots of money on equipment, but you'd be surprised by how nice furniture you can build with just a track saw and a trim router.
- Only thing that sucks about woodworking is unless you have a house of your own, it's very difficult because of how much dust and noise is produced. Woodworking in an apartment is very frustrating.
  
  Also even if you have the tools lumber is not cheap.
  
  I get that. In my city there are at least 2 makerspaces and 1 communal workshop where you can use all their tools at any time, for a monthly membership fee. I would totally use that option if I didn't have my own house. Not sure how common that is around the world though.

Drumming! Buy an electronic kit, have tons of fun playing Rock Band, watch videos for technique, download a few practice books. You can at least play along with easy songs and it makes you feel badass! :D
- Clone Hero is great for E-drumming (have to set it to Pro Drums because regular Drums works with old Rock Band and GH kits). I also paid for a year of Melodics and learned a lot from it.
  
  Yeah I've heard about Clone Hero! Just kind of holding off for now because it's supposed to be better than Rock Band, so I already know it's going to be this whole "thing" for me once I get into it (trying to juggle a bunch of hobbies, as is my tendency lol).

Foraging. Don't eat random shit from the wild without IDing it (intelligently, not just with AI apps), but also don't listen to the scary stories and harsh warnings. Dying by plant (or mushroom) poisoning is very rare, most bad eats will give you the trots and you'll be fine a day later. It's easy to find good foods without stress, and while a professional guide can help, there are SO many books that have virtually the same info. Start with local, easy foods like leafy greens, nibble small amounts and wait 24 hours, and you'll start seeing how simple and attainable forging is.

Making desert coffee at home. I got a French press because i drink one cup of coffee a day at most and I wanted make sweeter more rich coffee.
I now can use all cream line milk or oat milk, soak my fresh ground beans (and chickary root sometimes), add sweeteners to taste.
Blame better coffee than most coffee shops (for me). No 1000 dollar machine
- I got tired of paying $20 for affogato out, so i bought a moca pot for like $20 online and some preground espresso. Now I can make it whenever i want and it tastes basically the same. Fully automatic espresso machines are overrated.
  
  Sorry, I'm european.
  Do you mean the little conical pot with the long handle you use to make mokka?
  Or an italian bialetti ?
  Because mokka and espresso are quite different.
  If you mean a bialetti, I absolutely agree and I recommend to buy an original 'bialetti' brand, because they will last you several lifetimes. It's worth it. I'd find it a bit weird that you call it moca pot, when it makes espresso.
  Turkish or Greek mokka is also awesome, but you need to know how to poor the coffee so you don't have your mouth full of coffee grounds. I never mastered this.
  I'd find it a bit weird that you use mokka to make affogato, but that might be a question of taste...
- What's your recipe, ratios and wait times. I use a press to do cold brew. Every time I try it for a hot cup it tastes a bit "dirty" or earthy to me, plus by the time it steeps its not as hot as I'd like.
  
  I take my coffee cup fill it full of whole milk, microwave at 60% power for ~3 min. Fill the bottom of my press with a layer of course ground bean, sprinkle in the chickory (maybe a whole layer), another layer of bean, power the hot milk in, wait 5-10 min, press and pour.
  If I'm making some for guests I just add their cups of milk as well and a little thicker layers.
  Oddly cold brew has that dirty flavor to me, so I never, despite wanting to, got into it.
- Soak grounds in milk? Then just press the milk with no water or anything? Never heard of doing this.
  
  Yeah! I started it because I partner wanted a more latte like drink, and I like a very creamy coffee.
  I will say contrary to what I expected, I had to lower my soak time because it gets bitter faster, but I still prefer it.

Photography. Always stayed away because people told me it would be expensive (it definitely can be) but you can have a ton of fun with a 20-year-old camera off eBay and lenses from garage sales.

My first thought was sourdough too, and making fermented foods in general. I wanted to get into making my own sourdough bread for a while, but every time I started researching I just gave up. A lot of recipes out there make it look so intimidating and honestly, most of the steps are just not necessary for a basic loaf. Been making simple bread in loaf pans for months now and loving it.
- Same! Some of the recipes make it sound like you need 6 special tools and a climate controlled area. Freaking internet blogs trying to justify their existence by over complicating things.

Wine. Not making it, but just enjoying it. Trips to wineries, wine clubs, tasting rooms. All it requires is money.
I don’t even like red wine, but the hobby aspect of it all is very simple.
- I too like drinking.

3d printing and even designing my own basic parts/items. Seems daunting as all hell to get right but honestly it wasn't that bad to figure out. Fusion360 was a dream to learn. I've been trying to make the switch to freecad and struggling though. :(
- Some things in fusion are just so much easier than in anything else I've tried.
  I've spent 15 minutes in freecad trying to make a simple chamfer on a 90dg corner to overhang so that the model wouldn't nees supports, and it just would. Not. Work. The same took 4 clicks in fusion.
  I like FOS, but I'm not a masochist.
  
  Same. Parts designed in freecad take me about 10 times longer and have about 1/4 of the "polish" and nice finishing touches compared to the ones I've done in fusion.

Speedcubing. There are good cubes for < $10 now and beginner’s method is easy to learn. There are many resources online and can be learned within minutes. Then you start improving and getting faster quickly.
In my case I then went to a local competition and just amazed at how quick and how young these kids are.
- When I got my first Rubik's cube, I never thought I'd ever be able to solve it in under a minute. I still can't, because it turns like garbage, but I got a 30 second solve on my MoYu cube recently.
  
  I think the tricky part about getting people into speedcubing is them realizing that they shouldn’t buy Rubik’s cubes. I got one and just left it sitting for years because of how bad it is to turn. It wasn’t until I watched random YouTube videos before I realized I could enjoy it if I got a different puzzle

I agree with sourdough, I didn't even buy a starter just made one from unbleached white flour and water, it been going strong or more than 15 years now. Other home fermentation projects too, many don't really involve any special equipment. But the secret people don't realize about sourdough is its EASIER to work with, than commercial yeast. Less fussy, less sticky, more robust, just slower. And slower is easier.
Gardening there was some cost involved for me but I have been consistently shocked because I used to kill plants but the food garden is doing great. Not idyllic, sometimes bugs eat all of something, or birds do, or this year my dogs are the late season watermelon (bitches!) but in general it doesn't take a lot of knowledge, I look for sturdy heat tolerant hybrids or plants native to hot wet places, and have gotten fennel, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, okra, collard greens, mustard greens, jalapenos, different lettuces, a few other veggies and the watermelon all this food for not much cost beyond what we are already paying to have a house with a backyard.
- Yeah I tried making a sour dough starter twice from scratch and it didn't have any oomph to it.
  So I just bought one and suddenly boom, perfect XD

Ham radio. The license is now just a multiple choice quiz--no morse code needed. There are apps that go through the questions in a flashcard style, and if you go through that for 30 minutes a day for a month, you'll pass no problem.
Entry level radios have gotten cheap, too. $25 Bafangs are the butt of jokes around ham radio, and yet everyone seems to have at least one. The older models had harmonic transmission issues that violated FCC requirements, but there's newer ones that clean it up and cost about the same.
- no Morse code
  Found the American, even before you mentioned the FCC. I've been wondering how much of an effect the different amateur radio licensing requirements have had on the airwaves. For myself, the main thing holding me back is my lack of confidence in passing the analogue electronics portion of the exam.

Any specific drawing advice? I've always wanted to draw and to paint and have had such difficulty getting off the ground
- I mean I'm not great in any way, but the way I did that I found very satisfying was find a tutorial where the end product is something you like and will take under an hour, or heck 10 minutes, idc.
  Then follow it. The first time it'll probably come out garbage. That's okay! Think about which parts you did wrong.
  Then the next day, follow the tutorial again. Then the next day, again. Each day try things differently to get closer to what the tutorial wants you to do.
  After about a month I was super happy with what I drew and realized that if you just draw, you'll get better.
  
  This is great advice btw. I know amateurs and pros who swear by the "paint/draw one small piece every day" approach.
  
  I love this advice. I found someone on YouTube and poorly copied them on a MTG card (just altering it). It was fantastic, and I really am looking forward to the next one already
- The most important part is starting. The second is not quitting at the first failure.
  Consistency is the most important aspect for learning to draw (and any other skill, really)
  Don't bother with spending lots of money early on. Buy some printer paper (cheap&plentiful), pencils, eraser and cheap hydrographic fineliner pens.
  Draw something you want, something you'd like to do, then train a bit, or vice-versa. When starting, use references. Most kids start by drawing characters from shows they enjoy, you can do that, too. Have a reference close by so you're constantly eyeing it and put it to paper.
  Draw for fun first. If you still have some energy afterwards, do some exercises to better your line consistency, straight lines, perspective, etc. It's important to have drawing as an activity that makes you feel good first before you start "taking it seriously", training before doing the fun part.
  
  I just wanna say that your comment (and the few others here) got me to whip out my mini paints for the first time in a while and paint a MTG card. I'm stoked with how it came out, even though it's not "good" and I think I might invest in a few colors/a pallet (using cardboard now)
- Just do it every day, and i a couple of months you'll get an itch if you are not doing it :-)
  Great for listening in on boring meetings too if you have to.
  
  I appreciate it! I actually painted a little today, while I probably should've been working. It was delightful
- If you're wanting to take on a larger course and you're interested in drawing realistic human figure then i suggest Riven Pheonix's Invention of Man.
  Each video is 15-25min. I do 1-2 daily. I watch animes for motivation.
  It uses formulas for drawing the body(in too much detail) and slowly moves away from them. Probably overkill for anime figures or whatever but proportion and consistency are what i struggle with so a structured highly detail oriented cours is what works for me.
  It's hyper-detailed(many will say too detailed) but also i would otherwise know where to put things like the rib cage, shoulder blades or pelvis bones, random muscles in a dynamic pose. This are the little details that i see in shows that motivate me.
  It costs $45 but the first several are on yt.

Magic The Gathering. At first I liked the Artworks and then I liked the Game. Expsensive tho.
- I dunno man, used to be pretty good back in the early days.
  I tried to get back into it now, and it's a HELL of a lot more complicated wit commanders and about 20 new card attributes with terrible descriptors.
  Old magic was simple, anyone could pick it up in 20 mins. Modern magic is the product of decades of powercreep and Hasbro's greed.
  
  I just learned it in like a Week. It's still fun and there are many people to play with :P
  
  Reading the card explains the card

Hypnosis. Pretty much 100% of what the average person thinks about how hypnosis works is wrong: there's no mysticism, no magnetism, no magic, no Freud, no "clash of willpower", no "permanent side effects", no "mind control", no risk of "never coming back".
You simply have to put a convincing act that you, the hypnotist, have "the power", and nearly everything you say will work. You play with people's expectations. There's no "recipe" for a surefire way to hypnotize someone, because it doesn't "work" with everyone and even on the people it works, it's not the same experience.
Ironically, I have difficulty being hypnotized myself, which sucks. Or maybe I have too high expectations of how I should feel while being hypnotized.
- Fantastic trick for getting young kids to sleep - at least, until they get freaked out that someone has the power to induce sleep and fight the technique. Which, in hindsight, fair I guess.
  Tried passing on the trick from a self-hypnosis perspective after that point but it just didn't take. Interesting stuff though - makes me wonder if I should look into hypnosis from a hobbyist perspective again.
  Edit: Of course, there was also the time I did it with my then girlfriend to induce an a super vivid but otherwise undefined imaginary scene, and butted right against some repressed trauma I was not equipped to handle, aside from lots of hugs and "You're ok"s. Soooo... this is what I get for hypnotizing people armed only with the experience of being hypnotized once, a self-hypnosis book I played around with as a teen, and a pretty detailed scene from an underground fiction novel, I suppose.
- To get good at being hypnotized practice guided meditation. It’s the same thing, but guided meditation is often easier as it tends to exclusively be aiming at getting you into trance and taking you out.
  
  Gonna look into that. Got any recommendations?

Weaving. I though I'd have to get a huge-ass loom and all that, until I found a guide for making a small cardboard thingy with notches for the warp threads to get started, and later got one of those small kids' looms.

Combat Sports.
I got bored of the gym, so I decided to take BJJ. Grappling is really fucking hard, as in you have no clue what you're doing, and no idea how to stop someone from fucking you up on the ground. It's one of those sports that you can spend six months doing and barely get a feel of wtf is going on.
Two years later, I was somewhat capable, and got my blue belt. I then noticed that I was actually pretty good compared to the white belts. Things started to make sense, and while I got absolutely fucked up by everyone else, the positions made sense. I'm now a purple belt, and the other day I did an iminari roll and a rolling guillotine on a white belt during a spar, just because I could.
In the middle of this, I started doing MMA. Striking is also hard, especially when you mix with wrestling/grappling. I came in as the guy that was fucking useless with striking, but when we took 45 mins to do some grappling the coach was wondering why the new thirty-something idiot was tapping everyone. Eventually we found my level, and he gave me some solid pointers on how to work on my striking to bring it up to level with my grappling.
All in all, combat sports seem pretty scary, but getting into it is just a matter of turning up and giving it a try. You'll feel like a useless idiot for months, but before you know it people will be asking you wtf you just did to them...right after you had had the same conversation with the person that's better than you.
- I posted here about getting into armored MMA. I can echo this sentiment. Feeling yourself getting better, and flooring the complete newbies from time to time is a wonderful experience. Or getting one good, clean takedown on your instructor, even if it was mostly a fluke. Having a good instructor makes all the difference, too. Someone that can explain the how, and the why.
  It really does sound scary, and yeah - people get hurt. But that's not the goal of the sport, at least not like, seriously. People look out, and at least in my sport, the first few classes were all how to be safe.
  It also surprised me just now hard even striking can be, like you said. It sounds super easy, just got em with the sword. Or your hand. But there's so much to just throwing a good hit, let alone while someone else is trying the same thing.
  So yeah, 10/10, if anyone's at all interested in a combat sport, take the dive.

“Easy” being relative… 3d printing. Especially with modern printers. Leather working is easier than i thought although i won’t say I’m awesome at it. Probably the easiest thing i’ve learned is homebrewing. 90% is cleaning. Outside of that if you can boil water you can brew. Extract kits make it super easy. From there you can go all grain or stick ti extracts. Or if you want super easy, go mead. Honey, water, yeast. That’s it.
- Yeah, homebrew from extract is pretty simple. I compare it to making a big pot of tea. I haven't graduated to full grain, lack the space and time, but there are plenty of styles you can do with extract without much issue.

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