I mean like awareness that, just under the surface, there are deep explorations waiting for the right time and place to emerge; things you’ve set aside or placed on the back burner but will tackle eventually/many you already have tackled.
Are you deeply self aware of these interests like some kind of list? If so, are these interests deeply connected in your mind to your past explorations and interests like some kind of road map or branching tree structure of thought?
I mean, probably Linux at some point. I’ve dipped my toes in as a complete novice, but I expect I’ll take the full dive eventually.
Linux has been fun this year! Mint works awesome! I feel so dirty having to log into Windows for work.
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What makes a synthesizer organic?
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Reverse Engineering Software.
It’s been on my bucket lists for ages, but I never found the time. I’ve stuck my thumb into numerous tech pies, but I’ve never finished a crack me. I’ve done binary patching to skip bunches of code to call other code, but that’s not quite the same.
Metal casting.
I have some steel and aluminum cans and a 3-D Printer. I’m good at blender, FreeCAD, and tweaking prints, but I haven’t setup a foundry to make some solid metal parts. Yet. But I’m pretty sure I want to.
Warhammer miniature painting is a hobby I intend to pick up when I retire in 20 years.
cars to paint to engines to electronics hardware programming to cycling to fab/maker junk and other chains of interests
I took a deep dive into cars when I was about to start driving. I wanted something unique. That lead me to car mod culture. Some random magazine article claimed paint was the one thing most hotrodders saw as the impossible dark art in the hobby. So that is the first thing I learned, and owned a body shop… twice as little more than a dumb kid. I got into airbrush, graphics, and prototyping composites with fiberglass over clay too.
Eventually, I worked in machine shops even spending a short while porting heads and intakes for nostalgia dragsters, and built several motors. I knew carburetors really well, but put off learning electronics on a deeper level. When I had the misfortune of breaking my neck on a bicycle ride to work, (because what use is a supercharged motor in a car with a fat guy that can’t modify his own inner engine), I started playing with electronics. I had no idea how complicated that dive would really be.
Since then I have gotten deeper and deeper with Arduino, KiCAD, breadboard computers, Forth, Micropython, and etching PCBs. There are many aspects that I want to expand within these, but there are deep dives that are completely outside but related. Eventually I will dive into radio, and FPGAs.
I have similar chains of interests in cooking, astronomy, CAD design, CFD, self hosting, welding/metalworking/machining, and cycling, although the last one is limited. I know eventually I will dive into metal casting, ceramics, and will likely get a sewing machine and learn that too.
This all feels natural to me in structured thought and interests, and I am only scratching the surface. Looking around at others I grew up with, I thought we were all being a bit cagey or private about our interests for whatever reason, but I am starting to think I assumed wrong, and maybe I’m the odd one here. Not that I’m special or unique, more that I grew up within the social isolation of a conservative religious cult like group where there is no value placed on curiosity. So I lack a frame of reference. So, am I the odd one?
Probably woodworking. I’m pretty sure I’d love it but I live in an apartment in a city centre. So, not very suitable to have such a hobby at the moment.
It’s certainly a challenge, but it is very doable in a small space. If you have a patio or a balcony, you can start by making small things with just hand tools.
Not in any way, no. Our brains can’t predict what we will be interested in or good at.
But we do have predispositions. If you are able to focus intently on things, or are creative, or are more athletic, which are reflected in neuronal connectivity, you might be more interested in more detail-oriented or creative or athletic hobbies.
I think what OP means is, are potential rabbit holes that we have noticed but not explored yet.
Like maybe you’ve baked a sourdough bread once and felt that it could be fun to ‘learn some more’ about that at some time.
More like, I made sourdough and thought I wonder what this looks like under the microscope and how bacteria can be isolated and cultured to make unique flavors in a practical DIY at-home context. Then putting that idea on a mental back burner to find yourself actually pursuing the idea a decade later when you encounter a great deal on a microscope.
Oh yeah. Music is one of em. Never learnt how to read sheets or much of anything about music theory. I mean, I only just learnt how time signatures work. I play the guitar sort of okay, and have a decent ear. But everything I’ve learnt has been by feel, and I really want to properly learn theory. I want to know how the circle of fifths works, how polyrythms work, etc. like, I have a feeling of how they work but I couldn’t really talk about it at length and I’d have a hard time figuring out why a section of a song sounded interesting. I dropped that desire some years ago, but with every new artist I discover I’m trying to break down how the music works in my head and often come up short.
Carpentry is another. Ever since I started playing guitar I wanted to build my own guitar from scratch. Then I took some industrial design classes in college and it cemented my interest in it. During lockdown I bought some tools but got distracted with other fleeting interests. Once I have enough space for a workshop, I’ll get on that.
Lastly, storywriting. Whatever I write, it feels like it’d be at home in a technical manual. Regardless of what language I write in, it feels stilted and sterile. I’ve been working on this one lately though. I’m DM’ing a campaign with a ton of homebrew and wrote and designed a 70 pages long handbook for my players. The ones that took the time to read it really liked the flavour and worldbuilding I did, so, progress.
Edit: forgot one, mead, and spirits in general. Made one batch years ago, with apple juice, cinnamon, and cloves. It was good after about 2 years. I still have a 2L bottle in my closet. At this point I think I should just bin it. For a time a friend and I were talking about making large batches of it and selling it on the DL as party drinks. Pineapple mead, mango mead, etc.
I have a number of interests that I’m not actively, or even lazily, pursuing right now, mostly because I’m already filled up with way too much stuff that I’m into and not really looking into properly.
Many are directly related to programming. x86-64 and RISC-V Assembly, understanding the dark arts of how graphics programming works (this video does an excellent introduction to the kinds of calculations done for 3D scenes), the bare minimum to make USB bootable “operating systems”, properly understanding Justine’s “actually portable executables” and replicating them with a different language like Nim or V (she’s a real programming genius), getting into game and software cracking (all I know is that you need a disassembler first, then most of the work is renaming stuff into human readability and organizing the code)… All of this just related to programming! I know that the 3D stuff is what I think about most often, given my 3D printing shenanigans and fiddling with Blender.
Related to my 3D printing, I keep looking into, then leaving for later, ways to make proper silicone molds, or 3D print reusable molds in order to create large quantities of tiles for square or hex games, plus modular terrain features. Printing them is easy, creating molds not so much. My limited experience with trying to press 3D printed shapes on a dough had less than ideal results, mostly due to the dough sticking to the damn print, even after applying oil and vaseline all over it. Might try applying varnish to the print before applying vaseline and try again sometime in the future.
I also think frequently think about stuff like making bricks out of molten plastic mixed with sand. This thing is easy in theory: no need to separate the many different types of plastic, just shred it all, dump in a big cauldron, heat it up to 200º Celsius, mix in some sand, press the resulting paste into the desired form or mold, wait for it to cool. The problem is that I can’t quite figure a way to make it work without spending 10k USD in heavy equipment. Then I think whether I should directly contact the local recycling center and ask whether they know someone who does these bricks, or if I should start a business with that, the latter option being super risky given my lack of funds for such a venture.
I identify interesting rabbit holes as I go, and I do eventually pursue some of them when the timing is right. It’s not really subconscious though, conscious me is making those decisions.
