2mo ago

What are your unconventional special interests?

There was a nicotine + adhd thread today in c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works and I got to write a few paragraphs about my favorite subject: anything tobacco.
I don't know particularly what is so cool about it, but I just can't get enough information on the subject. Old fashioned snuffboxes, cigarette boxes and holders, pipes... And the rich history and culture of each brand and style and how it evolved in every part of the world is just so interesting to me.
So it made me curious about what are some of the other more unconventional special interests around this community

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I love non-standard computer rendering methods.
Most games use rasterisation which takes a number of triangles (polygons) and calculates where on the screen it should be.
An alternative that's becoming more common is ray tracing which starts with the screen coordinates and and calculates what's in that direction.
Rasterisation is a really clever trick to do more with less powerful computers, and was the only way to do any kind of realtime graphics in the early days of computers.
Ray Tracing takes much more computing power, but allows for interesting things like non-euclidian geometry, 360 degree field of view, and picture-in-picture with no loss of performance (compared to ray tracing without these additions).

Any special interest can be uncoventional if you go down the rabbit hole deep enough!
- That's true! These would be welcome contributions to the thread, too. Like "trains, but especially the seats and the history of train sitting layouts" would be so cool
  
  That would very cool. I wish we had better trains here in the US.

Apparently my wife and I collecting rocks counts as special interest because most of our friends are baffled by our collection, and the fact that we go out of our way to hunt down rocks + fossils.
Apparently out of all my friends I'm the only one who thinks it's fucking awesome to hold a 410 million year old seashell in my hands, or an awesome chunk of mica. The highlight from a few wknds back was when I found a wicked hunk of quartz + feldspar with a bunch of garnets in it. Our excitement is our own, and no one else's
- Rocks are cool, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't appreciate a collection of them.
  My mother is trying to downsize her stuff because her health is going downhill, she gave me the best of her rock collection and it's on the shelf next to me while I type this ... they're really nice rocks.

Road signs. I can recognise most countries by the road signs and their fonts. Comes in handy for geoguessr
- When I was little I memorised the Highway Code book, which is the UK guide to road law and use - it has a really good sign guide. Risk of Falling Rocks was my favourite, while now I live in Spain I'm undecided between the No Motorcycling and Danger of Cattle signs (the Spanish risk of falling rocks sign is lame)
  
  I, too, memorized the Highway Code. Then I went on to other countries. My favorite is the one with the car tumbling off an embankment.

For some reason, knowing about programming languages is one of my niche interests. Knowing about, fuck me if I can make even a hello world in them.
Still, Nim, Crystal, V and LISP just have a weird hold on me
- I've grown attached to Forth programming, and started learning Crystal. Been going with C# and PHP (and other web based ones). I love learning about new languages.

Boiling water.
I am collecting data on various appliances and their water boiling abilities. I measure the temperature before and see when the temperature plateaus due to the state change. I time it. When possible I measure the energy use.
The more time I invest in it the more I think every North American kitchen should have at least one NEMA 6-20R.
- lmao this is my favorite so far. May you elaborate on why you find this so interesting?
  
  As a child one of my tasks (and probably my favourite - it was assigned more out of the fact that I was so eager to do it than anything else) was to make tea for my family. When we moved to the US, after eventually finding an electric kettle (which that was a mission in itself at the time), I noticed how much longer it took to boil the water. My dad started explaining the differences in the electrical systems to me.
  One particular incident I can think of that really sparked my obsession with "how can I boil the most water possible in the least time possible?" occurred at a party. There were probably 30 people over and I was making tea and coffee for everyone. I was already maximising throughput by using a coffee maker on one circuit, a kettle on another circuit, and heating water in a pot on the stove. Yet it still took ages for me to provide everyone with their tea and coffee (longer than it would have taken with just a 2 litre 3 kW kettle without any of the other bits, because much of what I was doing was waiting for more water to boil). It didn't help that the gas stove was seemingly better at heating up the rest of the house than at heating the water.
  So it became one of those things where I apparently decided this was a problem with the world and I'm going to find the One Best Answer™. Right now the thing I think is probably the best available option is still not available in the US. Probably my ideal would be something that can boil a litre of water in under a minute and has at least a 5 litre tank so you can have an initial, near-instant burst of boiling water for your daily usage. Which would essentially be that same Quooker I linked, but with 10 kW of heating power rather than just 2.
  (And before anyone asks... yes, I did once start enough kettles, induction cookers, etc. simultaneously that the lights dimmed and my UPS started beeping. No, there wasn't a purpose to that other than for fun. Can you really blame me though? I had just got an electrician to install a 14-50R, a 6-20R and two new 5-20R circuits in my kitchen and I wanted to check whether I really could draw 25 kW of power in my kitchen!)
- How much faster is it with the 6-20R?
  
  I guess "faster than what?" is what we need to clarify here, so I'll give you a few numbers.
  The fastest I've got a gas stove to boil a litre of water was around 6 minutes using a "Turbo boil" burner. The highest power US spec kettles you typically get are ~1500W, which take around 4m30s to boil the water, pretty similar to what you'll get with a plug-in induction stove.
  With a NEMA 6-20R, you can buy a plug adapter and a cheap British kettle (~3000W), which will boil a litre of water in just over 2 minutes. But those typically have 13 A fuses in the plugs. A NEMA 6-20R would realistically allow a 4500 W kettle which would finish off a litre of water in under 90 seconds.

I like languages, I only speak one fluently though

Hmm ... niche ...
One I got from a friend of a friend is a taste in shitty old cars. Whenever I'm out walking the dogs and happen across an obscure or currently rare, but shit, car I'll take a photo of it.
Everyone loves the "halo" models, the GTIs and Turbos, but I love to see a rusty 1.4 diesel that didn't even come with carpets when new :-)
I've never ever found another woman to nerd out about old cars with, unfortunately, and most guys do the knowledge test thing which is most offputting :-/

My partner got me a custom engraved snuffbox for our anniversary. It's hexagonal, both of our favourite shape :3
Edit: it closed with magnets in a way that you can also rotate the lod endlessly and the magnets snap together when the lid and lower part align. It's a great fidget toy too!
- How? I need this
  
  Idk where you live but they ordered it only from schnupfdoesli.ch which I think is pretty location specific

Right now it's using keyboards that don't have nearly enough keys on them.
- I'm convinced the end keeb for enthusiasts is a single mechanical key and learning binary
  
  I think you just invented the telegraph.

Monkeys, for sure.

I don't know how unconventional my interests are but: TTRPGs, board games, and uhh I guess taking things apart to see how they were made is interesting but only if I can hold the pieces in my hands

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