I’ve been getting into primitive technology lately. It all started when I looked at my back yard and thought hey, if we call it red clay, then I should be able to make it into pottery. I take dirt from my yard, levigate it, add grog and wedge, hand-build pots, and fire them in my fire pit. Been making sharpening stones from river rocks. Crafting replicas of Roman machines. That sort of thing.
Okay, this sounds cool as hell. Please post photos of this.
That is an epic niche. Primitive skills are awesome. Have you ever read The Toaster Project? It’s a story about the attempt to build a ‘simple’ modern appliance starting with raw materials and only using primitive methods. Very insightful look into how complex our built environment really is.
are there other people doing it?
would be cool to see what you do and the various techniques!
Yessss. There’s somethig incredibly satisfying about understanding the raw materials around us.
I’ve been on a hiatus due to some medical stuff making it hard for me to concentrate, but I’m a lock nerd. I collect cool locks (“cool” being very subjective here 😅) and pick / manipulate them.
edit: here’s a tiny part of my collection. I’d upload more but I’m having a hard time with the mobile site and image uploads
what’s up fellow locksport nerd?! I think people would be shocked how easy rudimentary picking is.
A-ha, I knew there have to be lock nerds on Lemmy.
But yeah the basics are dead simple, you just need to have a light touch and listen to your fingers 😄
And so much of the stuff applies for the majority of lock mechanisms. A lot of it boils down to “apply tension, feel for pins / disks / sliders / wafers / whatever that don’t want to move and then you make them move, while leaving the other pins / etc. alone. Repeat until done”
These look so cool!
Right?!
The coolest one I have is probably this weird prototype lock called the RKS or “RoboKey System”, which is sort of like a cross between a regular door lock (it’s in an Abloy body) and a safe combination lock. The idea behind it was that you’d have a small portable device (only slightly larger than a key fob) that would be used to dial open the lock, and that device would be remotely programmable, meaning access could be granted and revoked remotely (you’re just sending ). The prototype locks are cutaways so you can see what’s going on inside, but the “real” ones would have been completely sealed. Basically they’d have lots of the pros of electronic locks but without having to have powered and/or complicated locks that are sensitive to environmental conditions, so they would have been great in challenging environments where you’d want the upsides of electronic locks but can’t use the current ones (I think marine shipping was one thing they envisioned could benefit from them.) Unfortunately it didn’t take off, so some hundreds of prototypes are all that exist. They still make them on occasion, purely for us lock nerds 😄
This could be niche, but I’m a fountain pen nerd. I love stationary, different types of papers inks and nibs and how they all influence the writing experience.
Fountain pens are also for some people more disability friendly. Handwriting has sucked for me as long as I remember as it causes a lot of pain and cramping. Fountain pens glide easier and I can write longer with one than with any other type of pen.
Handwriting has sucked for me as long as I remember
So fountain pens are not the default tool for getting into handwriting everywhere? What did you use to learn to write with as a child?
In the US most kids learn with pencils. When I was a kid we used wooden pencils until mechanical ones were eventually allowed and ballpoint pen usage typically was discouraged until high school. I settled on smooth flow liquid ink ball point type pens for extensive handwriting nowadays.
I’m Finnish. We also start with wooden pencils and graduate to either ballpoint pens or some kind of fineliner marker. I am the only person I know with a fountain pen who actually uses it for normal writing. Mainly because it hurts so much less.
I’m starting to think fountain pens aren’t all that niche, especially given the lovely community at !fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu
Oh nice, didn’t know that was a community. I’ll head on over.
It’s such a nice community!
i’ll have to check it out — back about five years ago r/fountain pens was a great community!
+1 for fountain pens!
Ooooh I’ve inherited a Pelikan Meisterstück from my father and it is glorious.
I’m totally on board with inks and different paper textures… It is cool to see and experience all the little details.
oh, absolutely!
i spent way too much buying my grail pen a couple years back (pilot namiki falcon with 14k soft flex nib) and it is an absolute dream… though i do still love my pilot metropolitan and cheap jinhaos!
Oh don’t feel bad, my personal favorite and most expensive is my Pilot Custom 823. It holds a ton of ink and the nib is amazing
ooh very nice… i better not look into it or i will be buying more pens… haha.
my biggest issue is finding paper that is not super expensive and can hold the ink well… bristol board is my favorite but loose sheets are annoying. i’ve found platinum’s carbon black to be the absolute best ink, after trying out many goulet and noodler’s blacks…
Ham radio! It’s relaxing. My favorite activity is to take my portable gear to parks and operate Parks on the Air.
I am waiting for my exam. After that I will have my own call sign. Ham radio is cool
How do you decide on a call sign?
It is assigned to me I cannot choose call sign unfortunately
My brother used to be really big into his ham radio. It got smashed in his move and he never bought another one =\
What do you think about the baofeng radios with ham? Pretty good to start out with?
They are fine for starting out with, but you’ll probably want to upgrade soon. There are better radios for around $75 if you can afford it.
What would you recommend? Is there a good mega thread here?
Most activity, I’ve seen here: !amateurradio@lemmy.ko4abp.com but there’s a lemmy bug that’s not showing a bunch of posts. That should be resolved soon.
These are good cheaper radios (The price has gone up a bit)
There’s also !amateur_radio@lemmy.radio which is reasonably active.
Ima be honest with ya, I believe those cheaper yaesus are actually practically baofengs component wise. But, they are still a bit better due to some higher quality components and wayyyy better QC. Just wanted to throw this out there.
They’re pretty much baofengs with much better filtering, so you don’t get front end overloading which can be frustrating.
yup
I had no idea about Parks on the Air. Thanks! I’ll be checking out.
Hell yeah, came here to say this. 73 friend.
Just getting into Ham radio and SDR myself as of late, so cool and so fun to tweak around with. Got any recommendations for guides or articles to read and learn from? I’m brand new just got a SDR-RTL dongle 📡
You should check out Ham Radio Crash Cpurse on YouTube. Lots of great info there.
Just getting into this myself! Got any recommendations for guids/videos/articles? I’d be happy to check anything out 👍
Left is a ghost pepper, right is a 7 Pot Congo
Ever try growing Pepper X?
Nah, never seen the seeds for them from a reputable seller sadly! I’ve got reapers and a couple of naga varieties in the garden though
Nice. Do you use grow lamps?
I thought about getting one but opted not to. I’ve got south facing windows so all my plants through spring are able to get all the sun they need!
Do they bear fruit in such small containers?
So the chillies part is obvious enough, but why in beer cans?
Do you have any problems with gnats?
This is awesome and I need to find a way to do it.
I build custom mechanical keyboards. Got into it because of the Pandemic and now I have built 6 of them. /r/mk and /r/emk used to be some of my most visited subs on the other site. I’m now known as the goto for keyboard questions in my circles of friends.
I started getting into fidgeting more lately and took a liking to magnetic sliders and now have a few that I pretty much always have with me.
And that extended into me learning about begleri beads somehow so now I am attempting to learn that. I can do slips and 2 finger wraps and occasiaonal one finger or thumb wraps but not much else yet. I accidentally learned a stall because I messed up. I need to really learn transfers since that is one of the main things you do a lot of.
I think I am also amongst the hyperfixator group in this thread. I was previously into speedsolving Rubik’s cubes and roasting coffee so I feel a lot of these answers lol.
How do you build a custom keyboard? Do they sell every single part in different shapes? (I mean the “chassis”, not the key caps). How custom can they be?
Beware brave traveler, you are asking questions that may result in a journey you did not wish to embark.
This is so true. I spent hundreds on this lol. I am currently typing this on a Ferris Sweep with custom dyed keycaps and I ordered my PCBs special just so I could have them in purple to match my micro-controllers.
lol
I don’t think I have the patience nor the money and time, but it does sound fun.
To add to what @denton@lemm.ee said, you can also buy kits from sites like Keebio and Novelkeys. There is a Etsy store call BeeKeebs I will always suggest because Leo is a really cool dude and offers a lot of kits for stuff that you’d otherwise have to part yourself.
I print my own PCBs and aim for boards that don’t require diodes. I have most of my boards with Choc Sunsets which are aftermarket custom low profile switches form loweprokb.ca. All my boards run on a fork of QMK called Vial and the hobby gets weird from there. If you are on discord there is a meckkeys server that has a ton of info.
For how custom they can be: Look up Ben Vallack’s Piano2. It’s an 18 key board that he uses for everyday use including writing code. QMK and it’s forks are extremely powerful pieces of software that still blows my mind and I’ve been using it for 3 years.
Holy Molly.
That’s a lot of possibilities.
I found some really good looking custom keyboards.
Another sites I forgot to mention since I was half asleep when wrote that was kbfans. I have seen people that get into the hobby to the point of building their own get kits from them or Novelkeys. Both offer hotswap PCBs which means you don’t need to solder the switches and can change them if you want. They offer 60% and TenKeyless which is probably where most people aim for so I think it’s a good place to start.
Also if you want keycaps, Amazon, Ali and Banggood sell knockoff copycaps(lol) of a lot of designs for a lot cheaper. Look for “double shot” or “dye-subbed”. Those are gonna last and you won’t get fading legends like on cheap boards.
And don’t get too overwhelmed with switch choice paralysis. If you break it down to linear, tactile, and clicky for feel and then light, medium, and heavy spring weight, it gets a bit easier to navigate to what you might want. Tactile will have a light bump or a heavy bump(popular in the last few years) but other than that, they offer testers and samples.
They can be as custom as you want! I’ve made a few by coming up with a layout I want, making the 3D model for the case, 3D printing it out and handwiring it up myself, then doing the firmware for it.
You can make something that once only existed in your head into something you use every single day!
Oh, right! I forgot about 3D printing.
Sorry if I sound stupid but still, what about the actual board (pcb?)? I mean, yeah, I guess you can get them in custom shapes as well, but sounds too advanced.
Another thing I’m failing to understand the possibilities of is about the firmware. What can different?
You can either design your own PCB or handwire. I handwire because it’s cheaper, and I don’t have to order min 5 pieces and have extra lying around after.
Look up QMK, you can do a million different things with the firmware.
Ok, I just watched a video of Ben Vellack’s Piano that @roux recommended. Damn!
Found any good lemmy communities similar to the old /r’s? Used to love g what people came up with, especially with the trackball integrations and all that jazz
Obosob is one of the main mods from the ergo mech sub and they are running https://lemmy.ml/c/ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world. (I don’t know crosslike communities on here yet) but that sub is picking up. There is also https://lemmy.ml/c/mechanicalkeyboards. Both are gonna be slower than what reddit was like of course but I kind of like that. I haven’t seen much trackball stuff yet but right now there is a Fingerpunch board on the first page with one. I saw a Cirque build the other day too. and a hand full of sub-40% boards including one of mine!
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.ml, !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml
Good bot!
This is amazing
Does anyone else always have the links from this bot as broken? Like there’s an extra carriage return after the ! or something
lol I love it!
Always though begleri beads looked fun but I never picked them up because I didn’t think I’d be able to do it at my desk. It’d look to much like I wasn’t working.
I have the luxury of working from home so fidgeting isn’t an issue. I tend to not play with them when working as much since I end up spending most of my time picking them up off the floor. Also when you are on a phone call and hit your knuckles and blurt out an “ouch” it makes it a bit awkward lol.
stealth camping. basically camping where your not supposed to / normally wouldn’t want to, and have your presence remain unknown. it’s great fun and breathed new life into “the outdoors” for me
Steve, is that you?
certainly inspired me :)
Always wanted to try this but I’ve got all my gear themed orange and green. I would stick out like a sore thumb. Also I’m in northern Ontario so It would be silly
it can still be done but you might need some camo or something. highly recommend it!
I ended up putting blaze orange cord on everything so I wouldn’t leave anything behind when I packed up camp. But my tarp is forest green so maybe I can do this…
i believe in you! a lot of my gear isnt ‘stealthy’ either, part of the fun is making it work and good site selection
Like in a van or do you mean camping out in cities or something?
either or! I don’t do vehicle stealths myself but it’s an equally acceptable part of the hobby. I personally like to camp under bridges, on abandoned structures and in the bushes on motorway interchanges. good fun
I’m pretty into conlanging, which is basically making up languages. There are tons of different approaches and ways people can go about it, but like probably most (or at least a plurality of) other conlangers, I generally go for something as naturalistic as possible. I’m also into linguistics so it serves as kind of an interesting way to explore different features and grasp them better, as well as just an excuse to do more research to find out more about something.
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It’s shocking how easy it is. I’ve gotten in the habit of stripping out the caps from old electronics before I recycle them. Makes repairs a lot easier when you’ve got spare parts.
I’ve always wanted to do this mut know nothing about electriconis. Do you have any good resources to get into it?
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Roasting and brewing the best coffee I possibly can.
Installing open source operating systems or firmware on every device I can.
What’s your coffee setup(s) like? Pour over, espresso, drip?
Gene Cafe roaster, Hario hand grinder and brewer. I usually do pour over, I do own a French press. If I want espresso, I’ll go out for it.
I’m pretty sure you’re a long lost mutal friend, haha. A lot of my friends like this sort of thing too :)
Ask one what’s their favorite flashed device…
I’ll have to!
Have you ever gotten GNU/Hurd running on hardware?
Only on a VM. Like a lot of less common OSs, drivers are a problem.
I’m really into electronics and plants. Together. I grew up on a farm with greenhouses so my interest in control systems, electricity and plants developed all together. I’ve built growth chambers, plant lights, automated waterers and yet none of that was for weed.
If I ever settle down, I want to set up a backyard greenhouse w/ aquaponics. Using arduino to automate everything is the dream.
Two things:
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Never settle!
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I’ve found the Wemos D1 mini to be a better tool for automating larger numbers of things. They operate on similar principles but are actually internet capable, so they can have a simple web interface and keep accurate time. Software like Tasmota makes all that pretty easy. They can use a communication protocol MQTT to speak to each other and create really complex scenarios.
For instance, say your porch light is connected to one. You can have it announce to the network that the porch light just came on and have the other exterior lights listen for that announcement and then change their behavior accordingly.
It’s a lovely and attainable dream! I’m stuck in an urban apartment right now but I’ve automated my balcony garden to keep the plants healthy and watered even when I have to leave town.
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I love mapping on openstreetmap.org
Seems interesting, what do you do exactly?
I add shops, restaurants and other places of interest around my hometown.
Same. There’s at least two of us!!!
Really like most of the hobbies from comments, you guys are interesting!
Mine are (I’m not sure if they are niche but):
Fountain pens. Writing with them feels very nice and smooth and it’s a little piece of “retro” even though I don’t have time for any other kind of “retro”
Lucid dreaming. It’s an exercise of control over your dreams and a chance of doing something you like when you sleep. Or experience something new. There are forums with quests like “go to an art gallery in a dream and explore what your brain can give you as a painting” or “build yourself a dream homebase with all your favorite pieces of dreams from childhood” or “jump into a chalk painting and describe your experience”
As someone who writes left handed, I’ve always been envious of calligraphers and fountain pen enjoyers
I’m a leftie too, also as I understand my grip is wrong, I’m a sidewriter. Writing with a fountain pen is still easier for me, you just have to use smaller nibs to avoid smudging. But yeah, calligraphy and pretty handwriting is not my strongest suite. You don’t have to write nice though to use FPs. Just write :3
I practiced lucid dreaming a long time ago, I still have my old dream diary somewhere. But that thing was why I quit. To get better you need to write everything down after waking up. And with better rememberence you also know more details and at some point Inwas sitting 20-30 minutes in my bed writing, and that’s not my favorite thing to do after waking up Ingottansay haha. How’d you motivate me to start with it again? Do you mind sharing you favorite forum on that topic?
Yeah writing down my dreams is hard for me too especially when you just woke up in the middle of the night. But i found that it helps if you don’t write it down in every last detail. I only jot down a few keywords when I wake up and that usually works, then I can flesh it out it later in the same day when I have time. Takes less effort. If you don’t remember - guess, that’s a good exercise too! Don’t do it tomorrow though, never works :'D Also it can help if you’re forced out of the bed somehow for a couple of mins (drank too much water and have to go to the bathroom, for example), then just take your journal/phone with you. It also helps with WBTB (wake back to bed) by the way.
I don’t know is links are allowed but here’s the forum with fun dream tasks I mentioned: https://www.dreamviews.com/tasks-month-year/
I don’t read a lot of forums but this one motivates me because users create this witty unexpected tasks I could never think of myself. And you get to feel accomplished when you finish them XD
thanks alot, seems like it’s time to dust of my dream diary then
Glad it helped <3
Looking for and archiving recordings of old and modern announcements in commercial and industrial settings. Like mind the gap on trains or there has been a broadcast tower failure in your area or Pan Am boarding call welcome and instructions. these can be on reel to reel or 8 track tape.
Do you just record them with a mic, or do you track down the actual audio files/records/tapes/etc?
both
Sounds like a great resource for game devs.
Some more niche than others but basically…making stuff. Cross stitch, yarn crafts, sewing, needle felting, dicemaking, 3d printing, very occasional cosplay, I’m about to try my first macrame kit and a friend is planning for us to learn punch needle together.
There’s something just so satisfying about making real stuff you can use, or wear, or wash yourself with or whatever (I also briefly got into soapmaking).
If you want to chat about basically any craft (or just lurk and look at pretty projects, that’s ok too), I’ve been keeping a megalist of relevant communities and magazines here https://lemm.ee/post/224890. And if anyone reading this runs a related one that should be on the list please DM me to be added!
