Comments on: Looking for a hobby ...

Question: Looking for a hobby ...

raheel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:30:47 -0800

A physical hobby for a desk-bound man.

I have been thinking about taking up a hobby that complements my sedentary lifestyle working as a software developer. I do exercise but that's more for health. I play some music but that is quite sedentary as well. The hobby should be something that will involve physical skills. Something that comes to mind is carpentry or woodworking but I am afraid it will take up a lot of room.

Any other ideas?

By: julie_of_the_jungle

julie_of_the_jungle — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:42:19 -0800

Off road cycling, tons of fun and great for you!

By: Dr Dracator

Dr Dracator — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:44:49 -0800

How about bowling or pool? You already exercise, so you don't need something strenuous.

By: amyms

amyms — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:45:19 -0800

Building model cars/planes/boats, etc.

Knitting/crocheting. (Yes, men do it too)

Drawing.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:45:42 -0800

Start hanging out at a bar with a dartboard!

By: amyms

amyms — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:46:10 -0800

Oh, I thought you wanted something you could do at your desk. That's what my suggestions above are for. Sorry if that wasn't your intention.

By: hermitosis

hermitosis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:46:48 -0800

Martial arts.

By: box

box — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:54:41 -0800

Homebrewing.

By: Eumachia L F

Eumachia L F — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:59:46 -0800

Vegetable gardening.

By: box

box — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:00:49 -0800

Bicycles in general are a lot of fun, too. You can clean 'em, tune 'em, change the parts around, sign 'em up for bike social-networking sites, all kinds of stuff. Also, you can ride 'em.

By: Precision

Precision — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:01:09 -0800

Seconding bowling or pool. Both have great learning curves, such that you'll never fully master them, but over years you'll become very very very good. My favorite kinds of hobbies.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:22:15 -0800

Lego art.

By: caddis

caddis — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:36:13 -0800

Rock climbing. Now you can even do that indoors.

By: orange swan

orange swan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:46:36 -0800

Weaving, or stained glass.

By: spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints

spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:53:52 -0800

Disc golf. Don't knock it.

By: foooooogasm

foooooogasm — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:02:32 -0800

Or the other homebrewing: bread baking.

By: ook

ook — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:10:35 -0800

Luthiery. Fine peening. Interpretative dance. LARP. Chainsaw sculpture. Prop-based standup comedy. Stonewright. Stop-motion animation.

(Kind of a vague question, isn't it? I'm also a little confused by the idea of arbitrarily selecting a "hobby", rather than just doing something you enjoy doing. That seems backwards to me.)

By: holloway

holloway — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:11:18 -0800

Weight lifting.

By: Simon Barclay

Simon Barclay — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:35:16 -0800

My suggestions:
- In-line skating (rollerblading)
- Martial arts
- Gardening
- Renovate parts of your house (or a friend/relative's house) yourself

By: swrittenb

swrittenb — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:43:11 -0800

Definitely also recommending homebrewing and bread baking. They're not overly physical though, but they make for wonderful and rewarding hobbies that will get you away from the desk for a while.

By: JuiceBoxHero

JuiceBoxHero — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:43:45 -0800

Beer league hockey. Way easier to get into than you'd think. Tons of fun too. Contact your local ice rink.

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:38:21 -0800

Learn to sail? That's what I'm doing. It's reasonably physical, gets you outside, but doesn't feel unpleasantly excercise-y.

By: holdenjordahl

holdenjordahl — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:39:11 -0800

Walking, alone or with a partner.

Unless you're training for some kind of race or event, walking is the way to go to get all the health benefits of working out.

You don't need to fork out a lot of money, you can do it anywhere, you'll get outside, you can be a tourist in your home town, you can listen to music or books on tape, you can engage a different part of your brain and hopefully, if you look both ways before you cross the street, you won't get injured.

By: Alterscape

Alterscape — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:49:33 -0800

I'm a sedentary desk-bound grad student who does lots of programming. My advice to you: Go find the nearest soaring club and ask to take an intro flight with an instructor. Many clubs offer a cheap 3-flight intro package and if you decide you love it, it should cost you less than $4000 to get your private pilot glider rating. Getting a powered rating isn't too much more expensive, but there's something about motorless flight that appeals to the same set of instincts as sailing, but with the added thrill of, well, flying. Additionally, being a member of a club gives you an excuse to chat with an interesting section of the world you might not normally meet in software dev world, and you'll get a lot of exercise in the form of "hey, help me rig/de-rig/move this glider."

By: hortense

hortense — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:33:58 -0800

Facet gemstones, the machine is compact the process is clean.

By: zaxour

zaxour — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:28:47 -0800

Surprisingly, nobody mentioned photography. dSLRs are very cheap nowadays.

By: clorox

clorox — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:20:38 -0800

Seconding disc golf. Discs are cheap, the vast majority of courses are free and open, and at many it's okay to have a beer while playing.

Also: Geocaching. No GPS needed (though it helps). I've been led to more I-never-even-knew-this-existed spots than I can count. Quite a few I-walk-past-this-every-day-and-I-can't-believe-there's-a-cache-here, as well. The final search for the cache itself, once you've gotten to its general location, is pretty fun, too.

By: davejay

davejay — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:24:54 -0800

Roller skating. I'm a coder of sorts, and I took this up on a whim about six months ago -- and it's made a huge difference. In my case there are three rinks in the area, one of which has a weekly adult skate that's worth the effort, and now I'm working on skating backwards, which is bound to impress the kids someday. I haven't found a good upper-body equivalent yet, though.

By: kjs4

kjs4 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:29:54 -0800

Dancing. Pick something you like the music of.

By: sully75

sully75 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:52:36 -0800

2nding luthiery. Guitars or violin making. The highest level of woodworking and you don't need much space at all...there's a whole tradition of spanish guitarmaking based on very simple tools.

You can start with a kit acoustic guitar and go from there.

If you can't play your creations, I will!

By: molecicco

molecicco — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:13:45 -0800

you play music - do you play drums? drumming will make you break a sweat, because you are using your entire body. and if you already play music it's pretty accessible. plus, drumming is awesome fun.

i also second bicycles. i'm a desk-bound engineer, and have started biking 40min to work and get enormous satisfication from repairing and maintaining my embarassingly shitty bike (which on the plus side, needs a lot of work). replacing spokes, patching tires, straightening weels, tuning the derailer and brakes for better operation. that sort of thing. also, bike riding is a great as a group activity or a solo adventure.

By: mearls

mearls — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:17:59 -0800

Try using a lathe. It's one piece of woodworking equipment that can turn a chunk of wood into a finished product and doesn't take up that much room though it does create a good amount of shavings. Use green wood, it is far more pleasurable to turn.

Another option might be using a scroll saw. you can do puzzles or intarsia...the more common name for this escapes me at the moment - mosaics doesn't really cover it.

Or band saw boxes.

Or, just go with hand tools. A box of good hand tools can produce everything a full shop can and it is very pleasant to work wood without the noise.

By: 14580

14580 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:58:03 -0800

How about metalworking? Lots of small hobbyist machines are now on the market and you can put together a nice home machine shop in a 10x10-foot space (or smaller). The initial cost to get started with a mini-lathe will be about $600 if you shop carefully and a nicely equipped home machine shop with a mini-mill will be about $2000. Don't worry about learning metalworking because there is a wonderful online community that will help you learn.

Davegoodfellow.com - makes small steam/air-powered engines in his apartment
Mini-lathe.com - this site got me hooked on the hobby
Machinistblog.com - some useful links, videos and other resources
Micro-Machine.shop - another good site with lots of pictures

There's nothing wrong with woodworking, but you may quickly get the point where you everything you would like to build is big and requires a lot of space and a lot of expensive wood (and a lot of sanding and finishing work). Working in metal is often a lot less expensive and metalworking skills can be used in conjunction with many other hobbies.

By: Alterscape

Alterscape — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:13:03 -0800

I'll second metalworking. Through the university I'm attending, I have access to a mini-lathe and mini-mill (plus a TIG welder and a bunch of other fun tools). I don't often have call to use them, but they're fun. Do plan on making a bit of a mess, though. The workbench for the lathe and mill is about 8'x3', and throws chips over an area at least twice that size. We have a cement floor and a shopvac; not sure how to best make that work in smaller living conditions, but I'm sure the guys in the aforementioned links have some suggestions.

By: jgirl

jgirl — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:40:37 -0800

Blacksmithing.

A small dairy goat herd, if you can swing it, will be very physical, provide a product, and the goats are great companions. Really. They are. Sheep might be good; they don't have to be milked, but they're not as fun overall.

Square dancing or other folk dancing.

By: hapticactionnetwork

hapticactionnetwork — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:53:59 -0800

What happens when you combine beer and competitive skeeball? Brewskee-Ball. Also, I don't think you have to drink beer to make competitive skeeball your new hobby.

By: GilloD

GilloD — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:43:21 -0800

What about Arduino? It's part coding, part electrical wiring, part creativity. It seems like it would build on your existing skillset while allowing you to take part in some building/making of stuff.

By: brianogilvie

brianogilvie — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:19:00 -0800

Thirding bicycle maintenance. I've whiled away a number of fun hours learning how to maintain my bikes, fitting stainless steel fenders and semi-custom racks, taking trips to the bike shop or hardware store for parts and tools, etc. If there's nothing to do with your bike, you can also start picking up discarded/garage sale/thrift store bikes and fixing them up. You don't need much space to store a workstand and a good set of tools.

My brother-in-law, who is also a software developer, makes messenger bags and randonneur bags in his spare time.

By: Climber

Climber — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:13:04 -0800

Seconding Rock climbing. I am stuck at a desk for most of the day too. I got addicted when my neighbor invited me out one night. It can be as easy or as hard as you want.
I would add kayaking too. A little more work involved getting ready and finding water. It's still a good way to spend an afternoon.

By: canoehead

canoehead — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:20:14 -0800

Fishing

By: neuron

neuron — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:41:24 -0800

Rocketry: 1 2 3

By: sully75

sully75 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:42:24 -0800

I'm going to self-second my luthiery suggestion from above. The cool thing about guitar making, is that you, as an amateur, can build a guitar that's very close to as good as the very best maker. I mean...after a lot of practice, reading and research. You can make a masterwork that someone may love for a lifetime. It's got a heaviness about it that's hard to beat.

Violin making is harder, and less individual, but also a great hobby. There's more and more info about how Stradavari and his buddies did what they did available, which is making it a great time to be an amateur violin maker. People are sharing information for the first time in history...it used to be very secretive. Seriously, it would be cool. Way hard and challenging but cool.