Not sure if this has been asked before, but.... With all the lockdowns and limits on activities, have you gone down any internet rabbit holes or developed new hobbies?

I’ve picked up disc golf.

@Caravanfan Oh, frisbee golf. I think they just built a totally new course in my area for this. A friend of mine came back after trying it for the first time and I asked how it went. ‘The most frustrating walk I’ve ever had.’ Apparently, the terrain lent itself to may of the ‘disks’ being lost down gullies and the like.

@sorry We don’t call it “frisbee golf”. It’s “disc golf”. Actually among disc golfers it’s just “golf” and the other sport is called “ball golf”.

It certainly can be frustrating, fortunately, I am not easily frustrated. I am usually the worst player on the course and I really don’t care. I’m pushing 60 and I’m out there disc golfing with people half my age.

Just been listening to more podcasts. My hobbies haven’t changed all that much, but I’ve been exposing myself to more information and history mainly in the form of podcasts about various contemporary issues. One I discovered recently is “Behind the Bastards”, a podcast that talks about history’s worst figures. It’s a podcast that can definitely send you down rabbit holes (as I tend to start researching the people they’re talking about which leads to researching many related people and topics. I’ll sometimes find that hours have gone by while I’ve been mired in this podcast and related material. One must take a break from time time!)

@Demosthenes Cool. I’ll check that one out.

Yes! I learned to shuffle dance. I consider it a workout. I absolutely do it, even for a few seconds, once or twice a day. .
I don’t look like these people . I’m more like this guy here but I can do it forward and backwards and make turns. And I can last for a whole song.

And I can make sushi now. After well over over 200 rolls I have to say they look pretty darn good.

I’ve been watching Robert Sapolsky’s Lectures on Human Behavioural Biology which I’ve enjoyed despite it being mostly way over my head. I have also watched Mission Across Wales one guy’s attempt to cross Wales in a straight line.

I have started baking bread once in a while. Granted, premixes only, but still.

At the beginning, last spring, someone in my neighborhood posted on a local site that she was giving away free sourdough starter. I took a jar of it and I made several great sourdough loaves. It wasn’t something I really got into, as others did on FB sourdough group pages, where they posted minute details, but I liked what I made.

I got into a YouTube thing from chef Alton Brown, called “Quarantine Quitchen” where he would video a weekly show with his wife, mostly from their Atlanta loft apartment. Very casual, unscripted, they’d cook and make drinks and chat. It was kind of like you’re hanging out with them, kind of fun, kind of quirky, and an insight into the private life of someone famous. It’s still going, and it’s now called “QQ” because we’re not actually quarantining. Sometimes they film from their NYC apartment, which is not as spacious and therefore not as visually appealing, but it’s the same show. They have dogs too which are always fun.

I stopped using a Keurig for my daily coffee and now have a grinder and a regular coffee maker. I’m no connoisseur but I like the freshly ground better than the Keurig, which would get clogged and the coffee wasn’t that hot, temperature-wise, which was my main complaint.

Last summer, with way more free time than any summer previously, we spent more time on the lake that we live on. I expect this summer to be more of the same. Every other summer I’ve been commuting and dealing with picking up my daughter from camp and it was always rush, rush, rush. Last summer, so nice to slow down and enjoy the beautiful area we live in, a rural area about an hour north of NYC. We took day trips with my daughter’s friends and their mom, and we did a lot of exploring around CT and NY.

Learned how to use zoom.

Found some shows on Netflix and Amazon to watch. Previously, I barely bothered with those streaming services.

Otherwise, not too much changed. Mostly, I did what i usually do, I just switched to doing it on zoom and now that I’m vaccinated I detached back.

I wish. I was one of those people who got way more work because of the pandemic, so I had been working five jobs throughout.

Which worked out okay because my wife lost her job because of the pandemic and is still unemployed.

No hobbies here. Just surviving.

I perfected my Crazy Feral Hermit Lady Who Makes A Lot Of Weird Salves And Potions persona.
My dog loves it.

There is a Youtube federation of sites called Virtual Railfan – they have webcams (railcams) – maybe 50 of them – located all over the US.

You can watch trains – almost all freight but also Amtrak—as they pass through the various depots.

Most of them are free, some of them are behind a paywall.

Lots of ways to pass the time.

@LuckyGuy That shuffle dancing looks like too much fun. I see a few dance steps I can identify.
@flutherother Yes, learning some new stuff to keep the brain exercised is good. I have a pretty standard podcast list I try to listen to each week. I think that guy or another guy, perhaps, does that ‘crossing a country’ in a straight line thing in other places. I’ve heard of it.
@ragingloli @jca2 More time to cook sounded like a good idea for us, but I’ve ended up putting weight on. Perhaps I should try that shuffle dancing.
@cookieman It’s not been easy for so many people. I just thank my stars I can work a great deal from home.
@canidmajor Ah, yes, the witches kitchen. I love some kitchen benchtop chemistry.
@elbanditoroso That’s some 21st century trainspotting! I used to live near an airport flypath and watching the planes come and go, especially at night, was actually pretty.

Besides all the eating, I’ve discovered YouTube channels of people who go mudlarking. (It’s basically looking for old things in certain places, like beside the Thames, or in old tips that have been left to go back to nature.) It’s quite relaxing to watch and I’m learning some very random things about history.

Other than spending too many hours watching adorable animal videos, I’m still learning new beading stitches. Have made a few 3D stars and some boxes with lids.

But I know what you’ve been doing @sorry, you’ve been fluthering! I have to commend you on having been here not even 3 weeks and racking up 1883 lurves! >8^)

I’ve discovered a couple YouTube channels that I like to occasionally watch. One is a voice coach. I’ve also streamed a few Netflix movies which is something I had not done before the pandemic. I’ve tried my hand at a little gardening even though I don’t have a green thumb.

Indeed, I play “let’s laugh at the folks wearing a nappy on their face”

*coughs violently in @ucancallme_Al direction (sockpuppets are allowed here as well?)

Spray that again…

Youtube how to videos particularly:

“How to watercolor”.

How to make a pop up book ”

( I hope to make one depicting family history using copies of old pictures of my family.

Check out cheaper courses on variety of subjects ( creative or otherwise) on Domestika.org

I only paid $20 CDN to take a video offered course and can go back to it at anytime since its permanently on my computer.

@Inspired_2write that’s very cool. I took some illustration classes in my earlier days, mostly to emulate my heroes who brought the natural world to life for the world to see before photography was common place. My abilities didn’t match my ambitions, I’m afraid, and I became disheartened. I have seen ‘junk journaling’ by students and young friends and it seems a misnomer. They look to be wonderful expressions of creativity and wonderful ways to remember an event. We are so spoiled now by the materials we have at hand. Creativity seems to rely on what it can artificially limits itself to in order to test itself, rather than how it might be ruined by the use of too many of the resources it has access to.

@sorry
I was surprised to view how a watercolor painter did her work.
She ‘traced” a picture online or sometimes her own photographs onto watercolor paper then painted it.
Somehow I think that is cheating, as in the far past pioneer painters didn’t trace anything but sketched, painted and so on free hand.

I always thought that painters, artists did it free hand, but was mistaken when I saw that this is not so in the present.

Even one course offered on Domestika by a well known artist shows her “tracing” birds by printing online images of the subjects that she chose.

Then cut out each image then traced it onto her watercolor paper !
She sells her works on Amazon for over $100 Canadian .

It seems not right somehow and not original as I assumed.

@Inspired_2write Well, I guess that’s one sort of technique. When I was doing water colour, we didn’t have the internet. I’m not sure I understand how much her stuff isn’t original or if it was just the silhouette was traced. If you don’t like that, don’t do it. Original expression is always more fulfilling. We used the technique of creating a grid so we got the proportions correct.

@sorry
I think that she copied the outlines. Then water colored it in.

I never had training on art techniques but did sketches myself of my surrounding in a notebook by hand ” not tracing anything”.

I always thought that was how everyone else did it?

Artists were born to draw, sketch, without training since it wasn’t available for all.

I suppose its called freehand?

I like that freehand style its a personal style created,

@Inspired_2write You can rely on originality. You’ll know that what ever you create, has never been created before and is therefore, your own and original. There has to be satisfaction is creating something that never existed before. That seems the more worthy aim.

@sorry

You hit the nail on the head exactly.
Its creating something original by ones own hand.
I think society is used to internet precision and that includes art work.

I have started to get how to books and lots of technicality involved
that I find it takes away from the original creativity?

Perspective drawing gets too mechanical and mathematical for me. ( angles, divide the page into threes)…all too regimented.

But its necessary I assume?
I think that the world will get all the same kind of art that way, creativity has been stifled

@Inspired_2write Perhaps I am used to old world art and all the ‘new’ ways and am spoiled by the museums here in Europe. It’s not about realism. Realism is fine, but it’s not the only thing. I admire anyone who can take paints or what ever, and put them in an order that means something. Art invokes a feeling. Art makes me say, Wow, how did they do that!. Art makes me say, ‘they did that so precisely, and simply, it makes something difficult look easy.’