Skip Navigation
Chat @beehaw.org
Barry Zuckerkorn @beehaw.org

What's a hobby or interest of yours that you really love explaining to others?

What's something you love, and love describing or explaining to people who are new to that interest, hobby, or activity?

66 comments

  • Programming! It's currently a hobby of mine (and has been for over 10 years) that I hope to make into a career of mine. I do some minor scripting and whatnot at work (and thankfully, I get paid at a much higher rate for the time that I'm doing that), but its not the "main" thing I do.

    I live in a world of many unanswered questions, full of illogical conclusions and actions. But with programming, it is all about logic - the computer does exactly what you tell it to do, and I find a ton of beauty in that logic and how that logic makes sense to me. It doesn't always make sense at the first pass, but at the end of the day, its always something that I (or someone above me) told the computer to do incorrectly. There's always an answer!

    Whereas the rest of my life, I hardly ever have the power to get my own answers, and others surely often don't have an answer for me either.

    • I love to talk about programming! especially about optimizations, and you can come up with so many analogies and stuff.

      glad it's my career, good luck for you!

  • It's honestly less about the particular thing than noticing that they're receptive and actually do want to hear what I have to say. The last thing I want is to just like bore someone with something I find fascinating. I'm sure I end up doing this anyway sometimes, but I try to be aware enough to notice before going full on ramble mode.

    People seem suuuper receptive to like counter-cultural and anti-authoritarian ideas and generally to anything that transcends preconception. They like honesty and realness that can exist comfortably without kissing ass or being a jerk. Just like expressing the idea that art and joy can have premacy over toil and misery seems to be sort of a revelation for some people. That you can just like, breathe, and not focus on making sure every little thing is just so.

    Also like, music. But none of that is really explaining things to people, it's just talking through stuff organically and in the process kind of giving them the freedom to realize what they usually already know. Music is a good example of this because most humans understand music quite intimately, they just don't have the language of music theory to break down what's going on and discuss it. But even with a little bit of that, you can see them light up with what they already know.

    I tend to play information-focused characters on RP servers, and a lot of what I do comes down to spying, questioning, interrogation, and organizing others to collect information. When you ask someone if they saw anything useful, the answer you usually get will be no. If you ask if they can tell you anything about a person, they'll usually say they didn't get a very good look.

    But if you ask if they had a hat on, they'll know. If you ask what color their shirt was or if they were wearing a jacket, they'll know. Same with piercings, tattoos, odd sayings or personal quirks, whether they were smoking, etc. The reality is that people know all kinds of things that they assume aren't relevant. But if you ask the right questions, you can uncover loads of information.

    The same is true of music, of art, of sooo many things. The barrier for entry isn't that people don't have the tools, it's that they don't recognize the tools they have. If I can point to a tool that's already in someone's hand, that feels pretty awesome.

    Okay, so maybe this tangent is illustrative in more ways than one.

  • Basically any interest of mine, doesn't matter what it is, I'll easily end up rambling on and on about it if the conversation goes there. I tend to end up rambling to people I know about geckos a lot, with varying degrees of interest on their part.

  • I can get pretty deep into cannabis and the wide range of herbal vaporizers. I'm also in the long term process of making a board game for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and much of that show is at a forefront of my mind at any given time.

    Otherwise, or rather, overall, I just am pretty decent at giving overviews. Making a PC build easy, some aspect of technology with repeatable steps, picking up on small details that can be utilized in some way (meta gaming etc). I was part of a lot of communities that allowed for an expiation and it was usually met with positive end results, which more than anything is what's important about whatever it is I'm sharing.

    Ironically the only thing of mine that I don't like going into extreme detail on is audio related stuff. I'm a production technician for live events so I can run lighting, audio, video, the works, and I know my way around it well. But talking about signal chains or DMX sets is just kind of sterile. I like more brief tidbits, such as properly wrapping a cable to make your life easier, and things like letting it sit in the sun for 30-60mins before wrapping it.

    Similarly, music production because it's just so far beyond the basic level. Unlike a computer where for some reason a GPU and CPU feel simple to describe (I suppose because they are an object), describing what a Saw Wave or what an LFO does to it is less tangible and tends to be met with a less engaging response. I think in this case it's in part the people it's been with, because I really enjoy learning this sort of thing from YouTube and many of those creators feel like a shoot-the-shit format where you're just hanging out and chatting about this cool noise.

    • Plants, particularly perennial ones
    • Plant propagation
    • Compost
    • Biochar
    • Garden design
    • Dog training

  • dog training, all day every day.

    • I'll take advantage, if you don't mind. I need help specifically with obedience training.

      I adopted my dog from the local rescue last year. She's a two year old mixed breed, I'm thinking a rottweiler/bernese x golden retriever. As far as I can tell she's had no formal training.

      She's an absolute doll and I love her to bits, but she's as stubborn as a mule and when she's committed to disobedience I can't get her to focus on me. Do you have any tips on routines I could try with her, or any resources I could look at?

      • if she's not paying attention to you, she's telling you the distractions, duration, or distance are too much. i would start by using the name game in a quiet setting like your living room or whichever room in your home is most comfortable for her.

        toss a treat on the ground right in front of you, let her eat it, and then say her name. wait until she looks at you, then mark the movement of her turning to look at you (some people use a clicker, some people use a marker-word like "yes!"), drop another treat, say her name, and wait for her to look at you again. the most important thing here is the timing. as soon as her eyes start to move in your direction, that's what you want to mark.

        once she's got that down, you can start adding distractions. start very small. toss the treat a little further away from you at first, then maybe move to the other side of the room. wow! new place! new things to look at! we call this "proofing" the behavior. then you can move to another room. if she's not reliably giving you the behavior you ask for, go back a step. she should be succeeding about 90% of the time before you move on.

        these sessions should be short (5-10 minutes tops) and preferably multiple times a day. i typically train 3-4x a day on various skills, depending on what my goals are for any given dog. if she's not responding to the treats, get better treats. my dogs tend to love string cheese and hotdogs the most, but every dog is going to be different.

        here's some fundamentals on clicker training which are really useful if it's a new concept to you: https://www.clickertraining.com/whatis

      • I'm not a dog trainer, but when I was a kid I was the only one our rottweiler would listen to 100% of the time if I called him.

        When you call her, are you like maybe somewhat anxious or uncertain that she'll listen? I know it sounds like a catch 22, but I feel like when my parents called our dog they had like this anxious expectation that he would just go do what he wanted anyway. When I called him I felt, and he responded, as though he simply would come as I was expressing that he needed to.

        But like, I also didn't really care what he did in terms of dog stuff? Like, I wasn't trying to get him to go a particular place all the time and I didn't ask a hell of a lot, so I don't think there were as many opportunities for waffling and confusion. My commands tended to just be like, come here or go to a specific person (because he'd ignore their calling), or go lay down.

        Again, I'm not a dog trainer and the one here can certainly correct me if I'm way off, but for me it was mostly about confidence and not waffling, I think.

  • This post made me realize my interest in homelab stuff isn't particularly interesting lol. As for niche stuff, I like old Minecraft trivia despite not really being in love with the modern game anymore.

  • D&D and TTRPGs in general.

    Board games toa lesser extent but I'm broadening that knowledge quickly.

66 comments