What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?
i feel like this is a descent question i guess.
Biking.
Moving under your own power has so many benefits:
- It’s fun
- It’s cheap (or can be, to be fair)
- It’s good for your health
- It’s good for the planet
It’s fun
My knees disagree but each to their own ;)
I cringe watching someone struggling to turn the pedals when they are riding a multi geared bike.
Cycling is good for the knees, if you’re not staining to turn the pedals. That’s why gearing exists.
Use the gears to make the pedaling easier.
Also to add, the seat height should be adjusted such that your leg is just under full extension when on the pedal at its lowest point. Otherwise you are wasting a ton of power with every stroke, and will feel it in your knees much quicker.
Wait a minute internet dude, did you make sure your seat was the right height? Having the seat at the right height I.e. fully extended legs, the down like an inch, really helped me out with the joint pain. I mention it because biking is generally considered a low impact activity. Knee surgery haver here, myself :')
epic!
I started cycling to commute about a year ago and it’s been such a wonderful thing for my mental and physical health, not to mention my bank account. Beware that you may get sucked down the Not Just Bikes rabbit hole if you’re not careful and end up becoming a walkable/bikable cities advocate as I have.
Cooking. So many people don’t even have the bare minimum ability to throw something together from raw ingredients that’s vaguely nutritious, palatable, and won’t give anyone food poisoning, so of course start there - it’s so much cheaper than ready meals and there are plenty of recipes that are fast if time constraints are why you use ready meals. In fact, a trick I’ve always used is to cook something that serves 4-6 people, divide the extra into tubs, and freeze it. That’s a few nights where making dinner is as quick and simple as defrosting something, maybe boiling some rice or pasta to go with. Do this with a half-dozen meals and you can alternate and not have to cook for weeks.
Beyond that though, learning a little more about flavour and technique, how to season a dish like a pro, some more unusual flavour combinations etc. can add real interest to your diet for very little extra effort, time, or cost. A few cheap herbs and spices can cost less than a single portion of what you’re cooking and give you enough to enhance months worth of meals.
Cooking yourself a treat is great therapy. Cooking something a bit fancy for someone makes for a cheap yet heartfelt date night. Cooking a meal your family enjoys is really satisfying. Everyone should learn to cook, just a little.
And if you have plenty of time (relatively speaking), but don’t want to put in a lot of effort?
Get a cheap slow cooker! There are so many amazing recipes that are just “toss five ingredients into a cooker and put on low for 8 hours”.
Absolutely! Another great thing about slow cookers is that they allow for time travel. When you get home from work, you’re tired and can’t be bothered to cook. Slow cookers let you borrow a few minutes of your morning, when you’re awake and fresh, to do your evening cooking! Prepare it in the morning, set it off, and when you get back tired from a long day at work, all you have to do is dish up. Magic.
God yes; I’ve never done that because I’m paranoid about something burning or getting stuck to the bottom of the pot or whatever (and the fact that, before WFH, I would get up with about all of five minutes before I had to leave), but it’s so convenient!
Self-hosting. You learn how to use Linux, security, managing services, and after all that you have your own little ship on the internet. After all that you gain a massive understanding of how the internet and the technology you use daily work and run (to an extent).
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ive been wanting to get into game dev but it seems like alot of work and i suck at everything, also im limted with software and im not even sure what game engine or thing to use, if that makes sense. do you hav eany advice or something you want to share?
I reccomend trying out GB studio. It makes gameboy games and comes as one binary file. Not too crazy to learn. I liked the music player thing.
Python with PyGame can be quite a good start. And if you’re just trying to build something for fun maybe use free assets from the internet.
Taught myself python at 50 years of age. My God, being able to code is like a superpower. I started out doing some things to make my job easier, later developed an interest in web scraping and data analysis, now I am tinkering with machine learning. I regret listening to people who told me that a strong background in math is required for coding.
Thinking of learning sign language…
that would be useful.
I tried sign language on a whim in college and ended up loving it! It’s really unique and fun to use. It ended up being my secondary focus on my degree. Also, Deaf people are always super happy whenever there is someone to speak with, even if you stumble through it they are always patient and try to help
how long did it take you to learn it?
I studied it for about 4 years doing a mix of learning and being a teaching assistant for the intro classes, but realistically I was conversational after 2 classes or about a year.
Some tips if you want to learn. I learned American Sign so your mileage may vary for others:
-Find out what sign language is primarily used in your country ASL (American Sign Language) in the US, BSL (British Sign Language) in England, I think some parts of Canada use FSL (French Sign Language) but I cant remember. Universal Sign exists, but is never used so dont learn that.
-Use your dominant hand for all single handed signs
-Learn the alphabet, there are not signs for every word that exists. Often times words are spelled out (fingerspelled) instead of having signs. So by learning your alphabet you can always default to spelling things out if you dont know the sign.
-Facial expressions are super important. They feel really weird at first and often times are what beginners struggle with the most, but they are used to show tone in the conversation and without them you are missing a large building block of the language.
-I found the best way to practice was to sign to myself instead of talking to myself. It helped me remember the main signs that I would use in conversation and helped me practice my finger spelling.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out. Im still very passionate about the language and culture.
Crochet
Pros
- Documented mental health benefits
- Cheap to start, can learn from online tutorials
- Easier than knitting
- Make cool toys, clothes, home accessories, whatever you want
- Get to smush yarn into your face on a regular basis
Cons
- Fibre crafts gateway drug
I like crochet, even though I’m really bad at it. It’s very peaceful (unless I’m counting stitches, then it’s a constant fight against my ADHD), and I have a bunch of cool scarves now.
I think that’s part of why I suggested it over knitting, you can do the complex projects with the counting and the actual effort OR you can just mindlessly crochet a long scarf or a bunch of cotton washclothes and end up with something practical.
Knitting is a lot slower and also less suitable for some of those small projects like washcloths so unless it’s basic garter stitch you pretty much know you’re gonna have to concentrate at least a little bit.
My girlfriend does both, and it’s definitely amazing how much faster crochet is! Like, “oh, here’s a giant amigurumi dragon I whipped up in a week,” or “here’s a poncho made over the weekend for our vacation,” with crochet, versus “I have to frog 4 weeks of work because I slipped a stitch and didn’t notice.” Granted, she’s much better at crochet (by her admission), but knitting seems tough. Love the stuff you can make with it though.
Haha, yep that sounds about right! I do love being able to do both, some things you can do with knitting you just can’t do in crochet especially if you need to create a nice drapey fabric. Being bistitchual is the best of both worlds!
Any online tutorial that could help me get started you recommend?
Well, I don’t want to be That Person but technically I made a (long) video for total crochet beginners that I know quite a few people have used to great success. It’s frontloaded with theory though and more for people like me who learn by understanding the “why” of what they’re doing.
If you prefer to do it in shorter chunks or without all the tedious theory, which let’s face it most people do, I’ve heard really good things about this Bella Coco series which has, um, slightly more views than mine 😅
There’s a fairly new (aren’t they all) crochet community over at !crochet@lemmy.ca (direct link) that seems very nice so far, I’m sure they’d love to help with your first attempts too!
3D printing. Suddenly you are able to fix small plastic shit in your house which would otherwise mean throwing out the whole goddamn thing. Best feeling ever to repair and save stuff.
i wish i could 3d print board games and such but printers are so pricey.
You might want to check out laser cutting. Same prize range and so much faster for board games. (basically works like a 2D lasercutter, most commonly used with wood or plexi glass).
I’ve heard good things about Ender 3 printers and their clones if you’re willing to tinker. AFAIK, the experience right out of the box isn’t great, but they can be modded and upgraded over time and can be fairly capable.
That being said, those might still be too expensive depending on your geo. I seem to recall reading about reprap projects designed to be built as cheaply as possible using harvested components from things like old scanners and shit.
Learning a new language. You learn a bit about how languages work, understand other cultures a bit better, usually learn new vocabulary for your native language, understand the relationship between different languages, learn the roots of loan words and generally helps your brain stay healthy, even by only studying the basics.
what lauguage would you recommend for people who only know english?
Not OP, but I’ve asked myself this as well. I think it depends on where you live and what you want out of your language learning experience. If your goal is to learn something more useful in everyday life and you live in the southern US, Spanish is a great option. If you’re from Canada, French is probably the most useful. German and Mandarin are useful in the business world, but the latter is significantly harder to learn. If you’re not worried about maximizing the utility of what you learn, Norwegian is considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and let’s be real, Norway is awesome.
It’s more important that you stick with whatever you choose though. That’s the part I’ve struggled with.
To be honest I’m not a native English speaker so your advice is probably more useful anyway. My husband is British and has studied plenty of languages, finding Swedish and Norwegian definitely the easiest to pick up. Romance languages have more complicated grammar but you’ll find a lot more TV and movies to watch to casually pick up a bit more of the language, which I find useful because I only speak English as well as I do from watching a lot of TV (first with subs) when I was younger.
do you have any swedish tv shows or movies you could recommend? the more the merrier please, or any resources for it at all?
Sewing is useful and satisfying. I’d like to say it’s also easy but I have never figured it out myself (which doesn’t say much, anything that involves using my hands is… questionable)
Running. Fairly cheap. Can set your own schedule. Improves physical and mental health, increases self confidence, can help with sleep and weight loss.
Some form of metal working, and specifically machining. I really enjoy machining, and I’ve been able to make some genuinely useful things. The tools are actually really quiet and stateful, unlike woodworking power tools which SCREAM at you like horrible demons. Seeing people look at their first top, or pen, or miniature cannon is great. Plus, things made in metal are at least slightly shiny.
For example, you could make dumbbell handles and plates like this: a photo of dumbbell handles and weight plates
Or a metal yarn winder like this: a photo of an all-metal yarn winder
The major downside is that it’s not cheap (not as expensive as boats, possibly more expensive than photography), and it requires at least a bit of space that you wouldn’t mind getting dirty. Luckily, I feel like makerspaces are starting to have more and more metalworking equipment.
you make some really good points!
An instrument. It’s soul food and extremely therapeutic. Even if you suck, just learn to let it go. I find it’s really good for my mental health. I dunno, it’s music ya know? Lol
I’m really grateful my parents pushed me to start playing the violin at 5, because it massively enriched my life. Even when I was bullied, abused, and miserable, playing my violin would help pick me up just a bit.
Playing an instrument. The challenge of playing successfully a melody will give you more reward than listening to a good one.
Public Speaking
You never know when you’ll have to say something in front of a crowd.
I’m so sorry, but I have to reply to this, I misread this as public spanking, and have been giggling to myself for about 15 minutes.
Apologies.
How dare you, you dirty dirty child. You have a dirty, filthy mind. You should be…
Wait, what were we talking about?
At work, I have a reputation for being the guy who never shuts up about trying to get new people into scuba diving. If there are 2 or more divers at the lunch table I honestly feel a little bad for everybody else. The cost of getting trained and renting or buying all your gear can scare people away, but I would at least strongly recommend that anybody on an island vacation or cruise at least try a “discover Scuba” class. You’ll learn everything you need to know to not die by watching a quick video, and working in a pool, then you get to go have an amazing dive in the ocean with an instructor.
