What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?
Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.
I'm a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.
Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.
I think it's fun, it's not something I can really chat with others about.
You're amazing and your students are lucky to have you. Thank you for being you!
If someone I knew made entire freaking games and didn't tell me about it I'd be pissed! That's really cool and you should wear it on your sleeve, imo.
How the hell is this not the only thing you talk to others about‽ This is fucking cool!
You are awesome. Thanks for being a good teacher and making math as interesting as it is for your students. And your hobby is fucking cool too.
I am a programmer (as in it's my job) and I can't really program anything in Godot. I've done the dodge the creeps tutorial and did some more tries, but I don't really get game dev. It's definitely a unique skill.
That's amazing! I am really impressed.
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I've just learned that my firearms lock...yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same "internet hacker" stigma so I avoid talking about it.
I miss lockpicking, it's so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
If you're familiar with the Lock Picking Lawyer, he has his own store and has some good kits.
https://covertinstruments.com/collections/lockpicks/products/learn-lockpicking-bundle
I'm not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it's designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
Covert Instruments sells a kit with a pick, rake, turning tool, and a practice lock for about $10
I bought the Covert Instruments FNG (* new guy) set for $10. The Genesis set is $28 and is more full featured.
I've had this small 5 piece set in my backpack since before instructions for anything could be easily found on the internet. It had to have been $10 or less.
Check out toool. It's where I started when I got into the hobby.
I got into it a bit during COVID and practiced a bit on a practice lock that I could repin myself. After being able to regularly open it without too much trouble, I decided to try my front door lock - thinking it would be a much harder challenge since it was a real lock.
Nope. Shit popped open almost instantly. It blew my mind! After watching Lock Picking Lawyer, I figured that a skilled attacker could get into most locks eventually, but I didn't realize that most house locks require virtually no skill to open. And it's literally easier (and significantly less attention grabbing) than breaking a window!
Sorry police officer, but the door was open ajar so hrem I just wanted to check if everything was alright you see?
Had a guy just being mind blown for the whole evening lock picking my way into my apartment, and then open some lock he had on his luggage (all very basic).
Saw him a year later when I had forgot about it and he still was startled about the evening 😁😅
This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
If the Lockpicking Lawyer has taught me anything, is that a number of electronic locks tend to be easy to bypass via hardware rather than software
I love lockpicking! It's got a really nice tactile click when the lock opens. Too bad there's not a lot of locks to practice on (legally, anyways)
And yeah, I agree - locks are really more of a psychological hindrance rather than an actual hindrance. Although, for what it's worth, I don't know of that many people who can lockpick, so in that sense, a lock at least decreases the number of people who can get through
That's forbidden knowledge among the mechanics in my union local, lol. One of the shop mechanics at my training center was teaching some of my peers how to pick locks when we had completed our training and were just killing time helping the shop guys out. Had some downtime and he brought out a couple sets and some locks.
Apparently it's sort of an unspoken tool of the mechanic trade when you work around machinery like that. Never know what you'll have to get access to and you never know if anyone will have the right key. You'd think the ignition key would suffice to open, say, an access panel or storage cabinet, but some of these machines use a different key entirely for such a thing.
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that's it. (poor fish)
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I'm not even sure I owned a horse in the game.
Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don't have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don't even talk!
No idea why I am like this
Model trains. I don't bring it up because it's obscure, but I've definitely found there's a stigma. "Oh he's the guy who plays with trains". Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it's not the first thing I bring up either
Let’s see those train pics, my dude! Let that conductor-freak flag fly here.
Not quite ready unfortunately, still in the "lots of pink fiberboard and paper mache" phase, but oh I will when we're done. We're probably too small for a model trains community, but I'll probably be hanging out in !trains@lemmy.ml
Train gang needs no justification
As a grown man who still likes Pokemon, I understand. I’m sure lots of people assume you’re in a state of arrested development.
Ha, and judging by the avatar you play video games with trains too! I adore Satisfactory
Most hours in a game by far, I think I'm closing in on 2 thousand. I'm slowly trying to kickstart !satisfactorygame@lemmy.ml again, come and join us!
this is a hobby I would absolutely love to get into but do not have the space (and renting a garage would probably not be realistic at this point for me). looks amazing dude I'm jealous of you! awesome hobby
It's definitely a space eater, it's currently taking up half of my bedroom as I build it. I probably should have waited for a bigger more dedicated space but then I'd be waiting another decade.
My dad has been into model trains since before I was born. We built a train layout in the early 2000s when I was in middle school or so. Working on that project helped get me into electronics as we made PCBs for signals and control circuits. Now, 20 some years later, I work in software engineering. My dad wanted to get back into working on the layout and I'm helping him with Arduino programming and Raspberry Pi stuff. He built a stepper motor controller for the turntable and then we built some turnout and light control boards that interface with DCC. We set up JMRI on a Raspberry Pi to drive trains from phones and automate stuff. I also got him into 3D printing and he's printed a ton of new scenery for the layout after buying his own Ender 3 after using mine quite a bit. We've learned various CAD/modeling programs to make 3D prints.
I also finally got to do something I always wanted to do as a kid, which is to drive the trains from a first-person view. We have gone through a bunch of different variations of putting a Raspberry Pi Zero and camera module on an HO scale railcar. We did some different designs. Our latest design uses an SG-90 micro servo to control the camera angle so you can look left and right. I also 3D printed an enclosure for a regulator, battery charger, and battery that takes track power and powers the Pi.
It's pretty fun to be able to sit on the couch with a phone, watching the view on the TV, and drive the train from the other room including operating turnouts. Haven't yet tried to drive the trains over the Internet yet but I want to, since I live a state away from my parents where the layout is.
Edit: Here's a video of the camera car in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls-Rg1TlDOA
Very cool! Sounds pretty much like what I have started on mine, I went the full DCC++ route, have an arduino and rpi running the whole layout, with a few other boards helping along the way. At some point I'd love to do full automation of the setup but that'll be a while. What camera did you use for the rpi and train? I'm running n scale so I'm assuming yours would be larger
I'm into model live steam engines, I've dreamed about a model live steam setup but never had the room (or funds) for such a build.
I've found the Kato setups to be a bit more friendly on the wallet and have great reliability. I'd recommend that, a small oval with a kato starter set
If you can figure out how to relate model trains to the average person, then it becomes really interesting.
Like if your experiences have showed to you about why a trip cross-country in 1 country is so long compared to another. Maybe city planning, or at-grade issues that need resolution are the culprit, etc.
I think of trains as bullets flying on tracks and wheels of steel.
For me it's coffee. Most people see it as a daily need. When I say my hobby is coffee they always say things like "that's not a hobby".
You're being too broad. Gotta specify what you're doing with coffee at that point, and a slight expansion.
Basically, when bringing it up make it sound more interesting and mysterious, with the potential of a follow-up story.
For instance, people often ask me what brought me to Los Angeles. I tell them, "it's lady Gaga's fault". Hooks 'em every time.
It's absolutely a hobby and a huge money pit.
^Askmehowiknow
I like the secondary aspect of coffee, finding niche roasteries and indie coffee shops, talking to the owners about their passion for coffee and to keep buying the expensive beans from them and then drinking them.
Coffee brings up associations with hot swill at diners. Craft coffee or coffee nerd brings up a barista image, so maybe that's a good start.
Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I'm going to fix it today because something doesn't work the way it should.
Also, I learn Japanese. 日本語が大好き！
Messing around with my server is so much fun! I'm always on the lookout for something new to self-host.
Learning Greek is (very casually) one of my hobbies I wanted to try, because it has a different alphabet.
I am also learning Japanese. I fine it hard to think of the sentence structure as different than English. In my mind I find myself daying the sentences the way Yoda from star wars does and it makes more sense.
Yoda I am-->Yoda desu
Starting and abandoning hobbies.
I've spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain "It's Wikipedia, but a map" or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren't worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested "ah" IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as "watching YT without ads", people often don't care.
Programming... Maybe not the most quirky, but just doesn't make for good conversation
Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They're basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today's android games and there's a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.
I have a hobby that I can't even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.
However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as "Japanese Street Fashion" and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.
They're just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.
I'm not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it's a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don't fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.
I'm currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.
I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.
I've never let it stop me, but:
Very cool, just be careful not to become that "I am very smart" type guy who just wants to impress their friends. It's a fine line to walk, nobody likes that guy, but everyone likes the guy who actually genuinely likes their hobbies
I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it's hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.
Knitting - if you find the right audience, you can chat for hours, but it can also lead to blank looks or lots of assumption.
I'm into macro photography: Just taking pictures of tiny stuff.
Not micro-photography?
Nope, they're called macro.
Where are some fun places to shoot? Do you go out in nature or stage things?
I do that too. But when I show it to other people, I usually get "Eww why would you show me dick pics you disgusting pig I’m calling HR you twisted muppet"
We live in a society, etc.
I find pointless bugs in video games. I can spend hours trying to platform in a single spot the game doesn’t expect, like jumping from a fence to a windowsill to lamp post to a canopy to a roof.
I used to be a speedrunner and still have some of that blood in me, but I refuse to skip content in casual playthroughs. So the crazy part is if I find a way to skip an entire level, cool, time to go back and do it normally.
I kill and butcher animals for myself and sometimes friends together with my boyfriend. Mostly pigs, some sheep and goats, poultry. Sometimes injured animals who are too injured or in too much pain.
The idea is to save the stress of transport to animals who are raised in good conditions as part of diversified restorative small-scale agriculture.
The killing and butchering is just one part of a circle of activities around the farm throughout the year, but probably the most unmentionable in any social setting other than among meat fanatics.
Video games. Even with how popular they are, it's not something easily brought up in a casual conversation. I hardly ever run into people my age who even play games. :/
Retro tech. It's not too obscure, especially nowadays. I could talk long hours about how mind fucking blowing was the Amiga and then still how it went down on the drain... tho I just see on the other people that this isn't really the topic that will kickstart (heheh) the party.
I need to find more friends...
I really enjoy getting the most out of a computer/mobile device that I have. I love trying out different OSes, messing with a video game to squeeze as much as performance possible etc.
Not too quirky or obscure but I really just like to fix shit. Clocks, washing machines, cars, crooked door, hole in a sweater, electronics... Nothing is outside of my interest.
On the more obscure side I like to fiddle with wrist watches by adding aftermarket parts and modifying their overall look.
I genuinely like to engage with video games as an art form and I think some of them are among the actual best works of art there is.
It lands like absolutely nowhere. EIther people see you as a capital G gamer, but even the capital G gamers hate you because they want to enjoy product, not art
What games you like? I do like indie artsy games but my favorites are games with it's medium in mind. Things like Undertale or oneshot, Or games that blend their motif wi incredibly well like the binding of Isaac.Or just extremely good ga like ultrakill and Skullgirls.
It's a sort of you know it when you see it (play it) thing. Something along the lines of becoming more than the sum of their parts and also using the interactivity that the medium provides.
When I played TLOU I enjoyed it but I kept thinking "this might as well be a TV show and lose nothing for it". It's a well made story, presented with technical prowess in an interesting setting, then it's also a sort of well made stealth cover shooter but it just doesn't come together. That's not to denigrate the individual efforts and art made there, I'm not saying it's shit, but there's just so much potential left on the table there. If you can 1:1 translate your game into a TV Show, like TLOU, why was it ever a video game to begin with, if you come at it from an art standpoint.
I don't know if you played Gothic or S.T.A.L.K.E.R., those are quite similar in how it's a great setting, well made (well, bar eurojank), the story is serviceable at best and for stalker especially veers off into nonsense at the end but crucially neither games would work as a book, or a film, or a visual novel. You could use the setting, sure, the art design and lore and stuff is solid enough to carry lots of interesting stories and have been used as such but it'd lose such a tremendous amount of what makes it great that it just doesn't work. The first episode of Gothic (TV Show) is a man who walks into a city after pullign some beets and buying his way in. Or possibly sneaking in. Or maybe he murders someone and steals the uniform. Sure, that can be well made, but the point of Gothic is that you have all these options, go nuts. Fuck, transform into a raptor and cause mayhem then revert to human in the confusion, game will let you, but that's the sort of thing that can't be translated to other mediums well.
I'm currently playing through Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, that certainly goes more the indie artsy route, and I love it because again, doesn't work in another medium. What makes it great is that it hits the line between the trash collection being tedious and frustrating, but still engaging enough, that it conveys the feeling the little sanidrone would have through interactivity. It sucks, but it is your only hope. And then the rest of it is also just very well made.
What are some of your favorites?
You know, I went out with a guy recently who was like super into videogames, and we even went to like a barcade for our date. And then he says to me "I don't really like art"
like dude... videogames ARE art. So many artists work on them. My mind was blown that he saw it that way.
I really got into steve1989s mre videos. So I collect vintage military rations.
...1989..."vintage"...[cries in GenX]
Some of the rations he reviews are as old as from during the Civil War. I think 1989 has to do with the channel creator's birth.
That's just his name. He's had super old rations, like from the world wars and even older.
he doesn't eat rations from 1989
That is unique. Why do you find them interesting/ what is you favorite vintage MRE fun fact?
Looking for that "nice hiss"...
Nice!
I install and set up operating systems. It's something I do to my own computer regularly, but I'll cheerfully do for someone else because it's fun.
Linux is my favorite, but I can do Windows, Free/Open/Dragonfly BSD, Haiku, and given time to research others as well. I keep meaning to give NetBSD a shot...
It gives me a focused task with a specific end goal that requires some technical knowledge, but mostly preparation, research, and troubleshooting skills. The activity can sometimes lift me out of a depressive episode for a while.
Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Usually gets an, "oh" and a sideways look
I actually came here to say it USED to be D&D, but now it seems like every time I bring it up it's followed by a full conversation about either them playing as well, them wanting to play, or questions they've always had about the game. It's a stark difference from what it was just 5 or so years ago.
It's also hilarious every now and then you'll get somebody that drank the whole pitcher of 70s anti-D&D koolaide and thinks it's for devil worshiping or some shit like that...while their favorite movies are Lord of the Rings like that isn't the same subject matter through a different medium.
Ugh, jealous. That's only happened twice for me. To be fair, I'm of an age that I started with BECMI, followed by AD&D. Took a break and picked back up for 5e
Maybe it's the age group...
Oh, that's safe. Try being into a more obscure ttrpgs like Mage The Ascension or worse, niche Powered by the Apocalypse games like Legacy.
I can't even talk about them to people already into ttrpgs.
I was learning Gregg Shorthand at some point just for the fun of it and every time I brought it up people had no idea what I was on about.
I still dabble with orthic shorthand - it's kind of like seeing language from a different perspective.
I just looked that up. It does look like some sort of linguistic research.
Is that how Gregg's remember which are steak bakes, and which are chicken bakes?
I only know about it because of my fountain pen hobby; back in the mid 20th C, Esterbrook made fountain pens with replaceable nibs and offered a wide variety including a Gregg shorthand nib. I guess the Gregg shorthand people licensed the name for marketing. It was basically a normal non, but branded.
Hey! Someone left an old Gregg Shorthand textbook (anniversary edition, if I remember it correctly) in our house back when I was a child, and I tried learning it. Still kinda interested in it up until now.
Tried learning it again back during the lockdown days, but it went nowhere unfortunately.
Follow up with a small description, like a sub title. Like...
Gregg Shorthand: A Stenographer's Worst Best friend
Or some nonsense.
That's pretty cool. Basically the same as enciphering something nowadays.
And now that I've discovered it I'm going to add that somewhere in a secret society in my DND adventure
I train in swordfighting. It's good exercise and trains hand eye coordination as well as good balance.
The funniest part is it's actually helped me a lot in my day to day because I know how to move my body
I have a perfectly accurate 1:1 scale lightsaber replica of Luke Skywalker. It turns on, it’s really bright, it reacts accordingly to how I swing it, can deflect blasters and makes tons of cool sounds…
I don’t bring it up in conversation, but when people find out they get really excited (well, boys mostly)
Geocaching used to be really big but now is pretty low key and niche.
A lot of people I talk to have no clue what it is, and the rest know what it is but have some wildly wrong preconceived notions about it. Stuff like "It's only for hikers" (no it isn't) or how the geocaches are only in the woods. I had a friend who literally did not trust me to go geocaching with her because apparently she thought somebody would be waiting at the location of the geocache to murder us. I had to sit her down and show her that a large majority of geocaches are located in bustling cities and on the sides of major roads.
Sucks that a lot of people also just did not understand it. I once told a friend that there's no monetary reward and they looked at me slackjawed. Like yes you just go find things and then when you find it you have the satisfaction of having found it and shared your find with your friends online. You don't make money doing it lol.
I used to make porn gifs.
I make music, but it's not really music anyone would want to put on at a party, so I don't tell anyone about it. There's nothing more awkward than standing there trying to explain to someone that what they're listening to is a chord progression played with each note slightly out of phase such that rather than distinct chord changes, you just get an overall impression of it as time progresses while they screw up their face in confusion and disgust. Not that everything I make is a conceptual experiment, but that's inevitably what someone will put on if they discover my music.
Weather watching (not the extreme kind) - I basically note down the current weather and interpret my own forecast then later see if I'm right.
Lockpicking - it's basically a tiny little puzzle and I can buy different solutions for a few bucks at any store.
Gardening - this is less obscure/quirky and more that I don't want people to think that I'm bragging about how many tomatoes I have because I will in fact brag about how many tomatoes I have.
I don't have such a strange hobby, more that the subject for that hobby is strange. There's nothing weird about fixing up a 35 year old sports car or truck or something.
But I've been working on what I thought was a well-known model of 4x4, but now that it's running it draws a crowd of onlookers when I take it somewhere, and many people, even adults, don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is and have never seen one before.
I think you have to be part of the greater car community, at least, to know much about one, but probably a smaller niche of people looking for practical vehicles that are fun to know about the samurai.
I love the first gen RX7, and while far more well known (the FD anyhow), than the samurai, there is a LOT of confusion and misinformation out there about my car and the rotary engine in general. I feel your pain.
About 20 years ago I daily drove a 1979 Mazda Rx-7. It was pretty dependable with its carburetor equipped 12A rotary, and it was amazing fun in the corners. And it was such a pure sports car - two seats, four wheels, and an engine. No power steering, no automatic transmission, no traction control or ABS. I remember having to drive it while leaned over toward the passenger side so my head didn't hit the ceiling.
They're fun and pocket sized, almost edc. My neighbour had one and we used to make fun trips with it. Love it
[…] many people, even adults, don't know what a Suzuki Samurai is and have never seen one before.
Where in the world is this!? I find it hard to believe that anyone anywhere, who cares enough about cars to take a look at yours, wouldn't be familiar with such a classic and iconic car.
For what it's worth, the people who see it and don't know what it is have all been born after the mid 1990s.
And I have just about the only one left anymore.
Samurais (AKA Jimnys) are the shit
Suzuki Samurai
If you know, you know.
I'm super envious. I would love to have one of those as my extreme trail rig.
Masturbating to hentai bondage.
I've been playing Second Life for almost half of my life. I used to run a blog about it and often spend a few hours every day online chatting with people. Mentioning that I know anything about it inevitably triggers people to either ask "wait that still exists?" or "isn't that a sex game?"
I read tarot cards and I'm considering doing it professionally so I can rip off the gullible petty bourgeoisie.
Yes, Sarah. All the planets in our solar system has aligned just to give you a promotion. Now give me 20 bucks.
Nude hiking. I mean I wouldn't care if someone I knew saw me, but I wouldn't be talking about it in most conversations.
Fountain pens. Honestly, most people look at me more weirdly when I mention a nib's feedback than when I mention the means of production.
I'm an amateur game developer. It's very, very rare I actually get to meet someone else who's into it. Everyone else is either overly impressed, thinking I'm some genius making COD or GTA in my spare time (I am definitely not), or some combination of thinking I'm lying/complete disinterest. It makes me quite sad to see that programming is still relatively niche.
Dildos, especially Bad Dragons. I genuinely love just collecting them
I love fixing up classic iPods, and as much as I enjoy it, any mention of it comes with "but why?", then the person asking refuses to understand why I still like using iPods even in this time of streaming music.
I hate depending on an Internet connection and listening to ads (even as a paid customer), so local media is the only solution for me. And it's getting so hard to find phones with SD cards that I might have to start carrying around an MP3 player too.
I have a couple iPod classics, one has a dead battery but the other runs just fine. What all are the options for keeping these alive?
The repair depends on the iPod you have, but as long as it’s a Classic then it’s all much the same, and all pretty straightforward once you’ve got your head around it. The Minis are decent candidates for upgrading too, but you have to really careful not to damage the clickwheel cable. I did that on my first Mini, and almost threw it through the wall…
Watch some of the early Dankpods videos to get some idea of what you can do.
My next project is a 7th gen Classic that needs to be flashmodded. I’m planning on putting 512gb in that one.
so local media is the only solution for me
I'd recommend installing a Plex server at home and using it to manage all your music. You can use the Plexamp app (available on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and Linux) to stream music from your server, and the mobile apps have the ability to download playlists for offline listening. The basic features in Plexamp are free.
IMO streaming your own media is the best of both worlds. Plexamp has a bunch of awesome features too.
I keep an old and battered iPod nano (4th gen, I think?) just because I kinda like how I have one device I can use for music and music alone. It's too bad that I don't have the skills and patience to make it decently usable again. It's technically still usable, but it runs out of juice before I can play a couple of songs. I guess the battery's on its way to completely dying, and I would likely have to go through much trouble opening it and finding a replacement battery.
I've never worked on a 4th gen Nano, but am led to believe they're something of an arsehole to take apart, particularly if the battery has swollen. You'll know if it has by a black blob in the middle of the screen. To dismantle them, you have to slide the inner gubbins out of the end, which is basically impossible if the battery is wedging everything tight.
It might be worth picking up a Mini or something. They're fairly easy to refurbish and flashmod. Mine has 128gb currently.
I dabbled in a bit of neography (creating your own writing system) and a hint of conlanging (creating your own language). I think I've managed to create a fairly decent writing system for myself, but the conlang went nowhere fast as I underestimated the effort required to even get started with it. I also attempted making fantasy maps, but it was all in paper and quite a while ago.
That's it, I suppose: neography, conlanging, and fantasy mapping.
I also spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at maps and making virtual road trips via Google street view, but that's way more mainstream.
Stand-up comedy. I love doing it and I'm a HUGE nerd about it.
It's not that I wanna hide myself, I'm just tired of all the "tell me a joke" or "let me tell you a joke" conversation that follows. If you wanna hear my jokes come see me on Friday and I've probably already heard your joke many many times and told 10 times better than you do.
3d printing
In general most people have a total misunderstanding about the whole process and it's boring explaining the basics
Fountain pens! And inks.
And quality paper.
playing in a symphonic orchestra. sure, it sounds cool, but most people don't know much about the topic and feel intimidated by it, so the conversation is just me attempting to convince them that it's not just for rich nerds and you can be casual about classical music.
Model Railroading. I went several decades without a layout. Then for whatever reason, I just recently started building an N scale railroad. I'm having fun remembering oops skills and learning new techniques.
I like collecting old 2000s handhelds. PDAs and the likes! Even daily driving a real beauty, a Sony Clié PEG-UX50 (catchy name as always, Sony!)
I absolutely love working on photocopiers, even though it's my job.
My friends say I'm a hoot in the discord!
This is totally fascinating reading all the replies.
I love making bleeps and bloops using VCV rack and Mirack on iOS. The flexibility of modular synths in the digital realm is so much fun! And no one can do 5 minutes of conversation about it. Admittedly it’s pretty dense.
I play Mahjong. If I try talking to most Americans about it, they'll think I'm talking about Shanghai, or Mahjong Solitaire.
I actually play 3 forms of it:
Riichi: Standard Japanese rules. This is what you typically see in anime and mahjong games from Japan.
CSM: Competition rules for Chinese Mahjong. This what you'll typically see played in tournaments outside of Japan
American Mah-jongg: A ruleset with a lot of unique features. An AMJ set contains jokers that can act as any tile in the set. The game is played without being able to call "chow"(taking a sequence of 3 pieces), You "Charleston" for the pieces you need before the round begins (pass pieces to the right, left, and across from you), and the standard hands you can make change on a yearly basis. This is the version you often see played by the American Jewish community.
I love playing all three, but it's hard to play them in person, because you need to find at least 4 people who can play by the same rule set.
Riichi is easy enough in Japan, but it's seen as kinda a sketchy game here, and most places you can play it are at expensive and seedy mahjong parlors. Luckily there are a flood of video games based around it that make it more accessible.
Chinese Mahjong is very regional, and each area can have its own variation on the rules, scoring, accepted hands etc. When playing with Chinese friends, I just kinda roll with whatever variation they're playing.
For American Mah-jongg, because the standard hands change year to year, you have to buy a new card from the National Mah Jongg League yearly in order to keep up with it, so it's the only mahjong game with a subscription cost built in. Also as mentioned, the game is very community specific, but also the majority of players are often senior aged women, usually making me the youngest at the table by far.
I love playing all three, but it's hard enough finding someone else who also likes Mahjong, let alone find someone who doesn't confuse it for the solitaire game. I'm not saying Mahjong solitaire ruined my life, but if I could Thanos snap a game out of existence...
Technology, open source software, operating systems, retro technology, furries
Could have just said you were a furry :P
I don't usually mention embedded programming, electronics, vintage stereo hi-fi, home automation, and fountain pens, among a few others. Of course finding someone who is into any of that could lead to some fun conversation.
Pretty much all of them at this point, I'm in the construction industry. Video games, reading, computer repair, anime, dungeons and dragons, miniature painting, watch making, chess... There are a few brave exceptions, but most people give me that glazed over look when I bring it up.
I just posted a similar response but I think the issue, at least for me, is how deep into the weeds I get with each subject. Anyone can be into coffee for example, but it's the ones who do the research and watch the videos about the subject in their free time, that make a simple thing such as coffee become more of an obscure thing. 🤷♂️
Hey E4!
Chess is such a great game, it has it all. History, drama, things to learn, things to figure out, attacks! and defences, in an everlasting suite of games...
It's free online at lichess.org too!
Fun fact ; when you exit the opening sequence (3-4 moves for beginners, 20+ for grandmasters) the game quickly becomes a game never ever played in the entire history.
New challenge every time!
Are you a bot? Because you sound like a bot.
I need to find an offline hobby, something that doesn't involve a screen
I've got a shit ton of hobbies thanks to my ADHD, but I think my most obscure one is Reef-keeping. Also the most expensive.......
I play bagpipes semi-professionally. The overwhelming majority of people do not like bagpipe music, and even if they do, they don't want to hear much about my bagpiping antics. One good thing is that I will never struggle to answer the dreaded "what's one interesting fact about yourself" icebreaker.
Bagpipes are sweet and I could listen to some bagpipe antics for sure. What's the best one you would share if you could find someone to care about it?
Also, does semi pro mean you play for money? Last year I learned from a former co-worker that you can actually play marching band instruments for money. I thought the only musician folks making $ were in a band doing gigs, or in an orchestra style gig.
Jacking off. I'm really good at it and have a lot to share, but every time I've tried the police get called.
Making gaming terrain out of household junk. Hey, wanna hear about the combat tiles I'm making out of cardboard and hot glue? No? No, I completely understand...
Open-source virtual reality, usually just any VR works too lmao but especially FOSS VR
I collect lewd anime figures. They sadly have tonspend their existense in a closet.
i used to be really really into fingerboarding / fingerskating. made my own wooden decks and stuff
I like making things. I'm mainly into making costume props and decorations. Basically I'm into making interesting things exactly once, learning a bunch of lessons on what to not do, but never do it again. I'm not a skilled wood worker or metal worker. But! I bound a book myself, coffee stained it, and made the cover out of sewn together leather scraps. It's a Necronomicon. I made a lightsaber almost entirely out of junk from ReStore (mostly plumbing parts). I made an EL wire tree with a dried tree branch about 6ft tall, a spool of decent gauge metal wire, and 50 10ft EL strands. Sanded and painted toy guns. Made a James Webb looking wall decoration out of black foam board, gold hexagons, and an NFC tag. Semi related, I modified an IKEA table to be a vaulted board game table where the tops mount on the wall via French cleat and it has cup holders to keep drinks out and away from spilling on the inside of the table. I have 3D printed some minor costume bits. Made a bunch of wizards wands out of paint, hot glue, and chopsticks. Made a float lamp (tie a bunch of annoying knots around a sphere). Currently trying to modify toy Poke Balls to have a functioning LED button but I really hate soldering.
I'm a programmer by trade so I also tinker with Home Assistant far too much. I have a jellyfish lamp with an RGB bulb that tells me the weather when I wake up. Just made an LCARS (Star Trek UI) dashboard for decoration.
I have quite a few obscure hobbies due to ADHD...
I'm super into collecting vintage analog music equipment. Old analog synthesizers and reel-to-reel tape machines to be exact. I also make music on them, but to be honest that's kind of a secondary thing haha.
I play a little bit of everything. Drums, guitar, keyboard, bass, etc. I'm probably best at drums though and have been playing for the better part of 25 years. Currently in a punk band and a desert rock band.
I'm into programming (web dev is my career) and embedded systems. I make a ton of various things with arduinos/raspberry pis. Often I'll try to combine the two and make midi/cv controllers for my synths.
I got into 3d printing a couple years back and have since been going down the rabbit hole of CAD with fusion 360/blender/etc.
I also got really into making video games for a bit in Unity. Started work on a VR game and have been meaning to get back to it.
Speaking of VR, I'm not a huge gamer but definitely love playing Beat Saber and Pistol Whip (both VR). I'm in the top 1000 or so in beat saber, but I was #1 globally in pistol whip for quite a while. I imagine I'm probably still top 10 at least.
And probably my most obscure hobby: Poi
Most people have no idea what it even is, and once they find out, just assume I'm a rave kiddie. I mean, I kind of am, but I legit love the art of poi.
Knot Tying. Sure, there's an International Guild of Knot Tyers, but it's a rather small group.
Be vewwy vewwy quiet. We're hunting cell towers.
"You know Pokémon Go? It's like that."
Buying keyboards... I just had a moment where I made an impulse decision where I spent 200$ usd on one. It's my 7th keyboard and I know it's not gonna be the last. I'm not even a touch typer... Something weird is going on
Seems like every hobby is too obscure for most to care at the level I do. Sim racing, rtlsdr, self hosting, ANY kind of motorsports, home automation, blogging, DND, video games... At the surface these are not too obscure but I find very few people in my day to day life that care about them in detailed way
Damn we could talk for hours. So hard to find people into cool shit in real life.
I get the idea and finding the right audience in real life can be tough, but I am, like many others I'm sure, just curious and like learning new things. Hearing someone talk with passion about something they are interested in can be engaging, and you get to learn a lot.
Fixing small things. My friends or family need something fixed that doesn't require a professional. I like figuring out how to fix things or at least providing a temporary solution. I do it because I'm helping someone, also I'm building my skill set. A basic search of answers and videos teaching me how to do it properly most times is easy to find. If not I find a way to create a safe temporary solution until they can have one come in. Very fulfilling, especially if you like a challenge.
Sim racing isn't necessarily too quirky or obscure but I do it to maintain some sort of maybe possibly ADHD. Doing laps around a track really helps with getting myself used to focusing.
It's especially helpful because each lap around a race track tends to be only 1 - 2 minutes, which is a relatively easy amount of time to keep focus at any one point in time, but keeping it up for consecutive laps and remaining consistent as time builds up in small increments is a different kind of joy to me.
Marxism
I collect wrist watches and intend on learning watch repair soon ish
In addition to general learning which might be my favourite, I have multiple.
Maybe the most niche is a historical reenactment and historical costuming. Latter usually based on extant garments or garment finds. I try to get as close to the original in techniques, tools and materials using the best evidence I can find.
I also plan things that will never happen. I decorate houses and apartments on paper. I make extensive plans for travel that I can never afford unless I win in Lottory. Which I even never play.
I spend absolutely too much time playing with spreadsheets.
Sim racing.
It’s difficult to talk about it without people dismissing it as just a video game with a steering wheel.
I am something of a skills collector: Bicycles (roadie/former amateur racer), cars (mods/engines/paint), composite prototyping, metal machining, home foundry metal casting, embedded programming, analog and digital electronics design, reverse engineering, KiCAD, PCB etching, motor controls, python, CPP, Forth, woodworking, Linux desktop, Linux kernel deep dives, computing hardware, open source software, Dune, Asimov, SciFi, astronomy, telescopes, designing and building optics, 3D printing, CAD design, FreeCAD, Blender, cooking better than the best restaurant foods, Asian cuisine, psychology
I am a generalist, but a swiss army knife, I know about and do a lot, but I am like the worst scissors you've ever attempted to carry and use. I can get the job done, but am well aware I am not a master of any of these.
Handspinning. I do a lot of fiber crafts.
Hah, I like your hobby actually.
I've actually managed to upgrade Cistercian Numerals from decimal to hexadecimal, while still being backwards compatible.
I've heard of Cistercian numerals, but I think I'm going to need some sort of example to grasp that better
Notes, as promised...
For real, don't let me forget! I'll gladly post my handwritten notes later, I just don't know what community is best to post them on...
I'm on a different device right now, don't have the photo handy at the moment. But later I'll be glad to post my notes for ya!
Is there a particular community you'd recommend to post it under?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/9p55Qgt7Ciw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Yeah yeah, my bad.
Good bot.
I build and optimize molecules using computational chemistry software for fun.
Similar to another reply about shorthand, I practice with my own steno-typing keyboard I 3D printed as a hobby. I'm steno-typing this very message! (Very slowly)
Lockpicking tends to be my most misunderstood hobby/interest.
Writing fanfiction
I'll say me writting my homebrew DnD world. It goes in pair with me using ObsidianMD, I love the tool i'm using and i'm having fun specifically in the making of polical cities more than in the making of combat senarios. My mom knows about it and sometimes asks, Dad finds it stupid, and I don't talk about it with anyone I used to atlk about what I write to two friends, but they are coming to my session in september so now I have no one esle to bring it up
listening to number stations
Running. Ok, I know it's not obscure, however, if you say you're a runner, or that it's a hobby, you're frequently met with hostility, or people trying to talk you out of it. The amount of times people have said "running is bad for you, you need to stop" is insane.
I love plushies. I have an ever growing collection and love just browsing plushies of all sorts when I'm online. I just really like cute things. But as a 28 year old man with a beard, it's safe to say I'm not exactly the spiting image of a plushie collector, and most people are definitely not interested in talking at length about it with me.
I like to play with dos. Every once in a while I start looking for games and programs trying to recreate the computer my parents used to have. I've also gotten into randomizers recently. Currently in the middle of a 3-person multiworld playthrough of Stardew Valley.
Video Games... And i mean all of it. If you try to talk with me about videogames in a casual way, I need to do my best to not hit you with a history lesson. Did you know that Miyamoto used to Smoke in the Star Fox office and startet talking about trees? Well now you know...
!micromobility@lemmy.world is my latest obsession: Friends, family, and colleagues are tired of hearing me talk about ebikes.
I race RC cars.
Seems simple enough but there’s always follow up questions that inevitably take the conversation from interesting to ‘in the weeds’.
I repair and upgrade classic video game consoles. RGB modding NES, Adding HDMI output to a PS1 etc. Sometimes in the case of some NEC consoles like the Turbo Duo R, I'll buy ones that are totally hopeless (capacitors in these thing leak like crazy) and pick away at it for months, I've had some janky looking consoles but I've brought them back from the dead. Always satisfying when then work again.
I genuinely love brass band. It is a not terribly known form in pop culture (even among "classically" trained musicians) but that shit is awesome.
I don't think it's super obscure, but I home brew beer and it's a hobby where you can really go deep into the technicalities of tweaking recipes, building equipment, and just the overall process in a way that would probably bore the average non-brewer to death.
Not me, but my wife. She collects kpop cards. Apparently the bands have a random card of one of the members in the albums. Theres a whole trading and selling market for them.
I’ve recently returned to wanting to get into guitar amplifier repair and design.
I have a pair of amps that i want to diagnose some particular problems and perhaps design a new pcb for or build out whole new ones
For me, probably insects. I've been fascinated by insects when I was little, and honestly I feel like I've been getting back into it recently. I started keeping a mealworm colony recently so that I wouldn't need to buy mealworms for my frog (it was really more of a practical decision than an interest in having a colony, but mealworms are pretty cool nonetheless)
I've been considering getting a mantis and/or some rhinoceros beetles, but I'm not really sure where I would be able to get the materials required to set up terrarium for them
I like to wonder around the forest singing.
That and rock climbing but like traditional and aid climbing in the alpine. Most people lose interest when I start talking about various knots and their attributes in different situations.
I make stuff in video games
Software-Defined Radio. Pretty cheap entry and fun to screw with. I recently moved to the sticks and now there is nothing to find, sadly.
Recently started writing niche essays on video games but haven't had the best time coming up with more ideas and have 0 ability to advertise my own work.
I also have this weird thing wear I take pictures of the cats on cat-product packaging because I'm afraid they'll be forgotten.
I love troubleshooting, even though I complain a lot about it, I still do it.
That doesn't mean that I use systems that require high maintenance like Arch Linux, but openSUSE doesn't have the same support as other known Linux distributions, so I sometimes have to adapt to the options I have, like using containers or compiling for my system.
I also like to provide support for people and help family/friends with whatever they need, tech-related or not.
It may sound silly, but a lot of family (whom I try to avoid) always tell me to charge for the things I do, but I like to help and even donate a lot of things when I can. I also have been trying to give back to the FOSS community. To me it's like a hobby, and money isn't everything.
I'm a UX designer so I completely get the troubleshooting, I just have the urge to improve things. I'm not a coder though so most of the linux tinkering is beyond me, besides searching for someone else who knows how to do it. I'm mostly more on the visual side.
I like fleshlights. I have quite a collection of them.
Playing terminal.
I collect and know a lot about weed vaporizers. Weed is still not legal where I live and other users, who even also use vaporizers, are happy with their device and don't wanna know about the benefits of my other dozens
I always thought "high altitude ballooning" would be a cool ass hobby.. but living in PA.. would make it difficult to track down payloads once back to earth 😀
Yeah I'm going to need to know more about your hobby.
I've done research on ciphers and cryptography a little bit, so based on my understanding I made up some operations you can do on paper (not needing a computer) to transform text into something seemingly random, but also it has to be reversible with a key. I try to make it so that it doesn't fall into the common traps that some older ciphers fell into like double letters are the same like with simple substitution ciphers. Also I wanted it to be reusable unlike with a one-time pad, in my case I like when the key is hidden in the encrypted message.
I haven't found anyone to test out any ciphers yet, but I also haven't looked too hard. I'm sure some people enjoy deciphering for fun (I don't have the smarts or at least the time for that).
Diecast collecting and diecast photography. That and building excel sheet forms to auto-math things I need for infrequent tasks.
Each quirky hobby mentioned here, deserves its own Lemmy community!
I like cars, but specifically boring old cars. Supercars don't do anything for me, I think normal "enthusiast" cars are pretty boring, and the communities around them can kinda suck. But I will totally nerd out about your grandma's bingo-mobile she bought new in the 80s.
Designing public transit maps in far too much detail
Home brewing beer and making fishing lures. Not many people I know in my daily life enjoy beer or fishing. It feels pompousy to just bring up in casual conversation unless someone talks about how expensive a keg of Texa$ from Turing Point Brewing is or a swimbait they seen at thier local taxidermy shop was selling for $200+ and looked ultra realistic.
Lapidary art
Studying open source cloud infrastructure solutions and open source services. Not for work, just a hobby.
i collect dice. i really enjoy finding unusual dice via kickstarter. im always on the look out for something that hasnt been done before or unusual shapes. when a new type, i.e. liquid core, comes out i usually wait a month or so to see what the market does. if everyone starts making them then i dont usually add them to my collection. i am also trying to collect all the chessex gemini series dice
Building old computers.
If you know me long enough, I'll reveal my long-standing project of building a hurdy-gurdy
Physical media collecting. Particularly if i have a functioning player for it. If i don't then the interest goes down the drain. That's why there's a huge focus on books with me. Pulps. That's why I've got my eyes on a copy Swords And Deviltry as we speak.
Electronics. Its not hard to understand if you get into it, but there is no discussing it without someone already being in to it.
playing physical / video games by myself and like playing pretend sometimes with mock items
For me it's being a witch and all witchcraft related things.
I’m a contortionist.
i collect post apocalyptic books, espicially zombie related books. most are the audio version, my wife swears she will divorce me if i buy any more books, lol
Sea shanties 😅
My last girlfriend, I waited until she got herself good and stoned to bust out the playlist
I collect photos of sidewalk stamps and try to find as many years (and weird, different, unique stamps) that I can.
http://photos.rasterweb.net/index.php?/category/30
Contributing to localization in my language. (I use Localizor or weblate) I've helped translation for the Godot Engine and many released games. It's a free hobby granted you have a PC and some knowledge. I've always liked translating stuff for those who can't speak English. And it keeps my language skills sharp in both.
It's new for me, but making youtube videos.
I use a free version of Davinci resolve and it's difficult to find out all the tricks to make a video, but I hope one day I can accrue a small following.
Destroying westoids in threads about SMO.
Being part of the "Drachengame"
Cat juggling.
Posting
I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn't look like random static) by running pictures I've taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to "trick" the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn't get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.
On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people's eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture
Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can
Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn't look too bad
This one looks amazing
This belongs on the better call Saul intro
Ok now that's really cool
I do a lot of photography and I've been trying to find something that I could do with some of my more experimental shots that makes them more... more‡. If that makes sense?
You wouldn't happen to have more details on how to do it would you?
Edit: ‡ My more experimental shots are more done as like experimenting with how a shot is taken for like evoking a specific feeling or doing something strange in camera or really any number of reasons. Hell some of my experimental shots were accidentally taken pictures that are disorienting or confusing. I don't share them often, because IDK it just seems like really personal sometimes. Those experimental shots feel less like photography and more like painting with photos.
Absolutely!
I have a bookmark saved on my computer at home to an old forum with the instructions I followed when I started doing this, and I can send that link later.
There are two programs that I use, and both are free.
GIMP - image editing software
Audacity - audio editing software
Here is the basic process from that bookmarked forum post that I can remember off the top of my head. If something is wrong (especially the Audacity import settings, since I don't ever change them), I will fix it later.
I believe the blue parking garage image uses reverb, or maybe a phasor... possible both to get that effect? But there are a lot of setting to mess with for each audio effect that can dramatically change the outcome. The trees picture was made by putting the original picture in the left audio channel, and putting a horizontally flipped copy of the image in the right audio channel. Delete the header from the flipped copy, and exporting the data smashes them together in this really strange mirror effect. Afterward, I would use GIMP for any color correcting, changing saturation/hue, simple stuff
Edit: spelling and formatting
I just wanna know how people even came up with data moshing. It blows my mind that there's a thought process that incorporates these steps, and ends with awesome (sometimes) results!
That's pretty cool and definitely falls under the category of a hobby that you do because you can, although I'm sure there are people in the world who would pay for art like that (not suggesting that you do).
I have had the thought about trying to make money off of this, and some friends have joked that I should be making album art or something like that.
However, I don't want to feel like I have to meet a deadline or feel the pressure of making something that someone else wants/likes. I just want to make something I like
Very unpleasant, basically just high pitched static. 1/10 wouldn't recommend
Autechre
Looks pretty good, like some Rorschach test. War sit a picture of trees?
It was! Taken during the winter so there were no leaves, and at night too
How much tinkering do they require to make the final product look like you want?
Most of the time I don't have a plan of what I want out of something. Sometimes I can get something that looks interesting or cool right away, other times I have hundreds of files trashed over a couple of days and there's not a single one that I personally liked
Is there a way to convert an audio file to an image? Might be interesting for album covers.
That should be possible. Haven't tried that yet, but now I think I might
Yes it is, but don't expect too much.
I did try turning a song into an image last night, and it looked like TV static. Kinda disappointing, but I'll try some other songs and see if I can mess with some settings
This is so fucking cool. Where can I learn more about this??
edit, I see your other post explaining!
The search term to start you with is Glitch Art :)
<3
This is so cool
Considering it's audio-software, I guess the changes are related to frequency changes. You should look up Fourier transform (the function that allows to see the sound frequencies of music, for example) applied to images and play with it. If you are not afraid to do a little bit of Python coding, you should be able to have much more control on the parameters responsible for the visual effects you're looking for.
The image equivalent of bass frequencies (long wavelength) are big details (ex: the trees) and high frequencies (short wavelength) are small details (ex: the leaves).
I haven't had to think about Fouier since college, so thanks for bringing up that trauma lmao. I do realize that there are ways to reliably get certain effects or even learn how to do this in Photoshop or GIMP, but I like the shotgunning, spray-and-pray of not knowing what the outcome will look like
I guess I find the process of going back to make small changes to the settings and then seeing how that affects the image more satisfying. Getting something that looks good is just a bonus
I used to do a similar thing where I saved photos as .txt files, but they were an awful lot glitchier, and usually split the RGB channels to look as if you had three eyes and were crossing them.