So what are your other hobbies/interests?

[spanky]

Yep - so what are some other things you are into?

I'm into powerlifting. I just did a competition a few weeks ago. Hit a 1235 lb total and won my division (I was the only one in it). 440 squat, 295 bench, 500 deadlift.

I've always enjoyed weightlifting for various reasons but I found powerlifting really appealing - the goals are simple and progress is easily measured. "Make number go up." Not too different than a lot of video games to be honest!

I used to also really be into pro wrestling but I lost interest during the pandemic and my interest never came back. Besides, maintaining 2 hobbies with a full time job and a family is tough enough as it is.

[Apollo Chungus]

Congrats on winning your division! That's really awesome!

I enjoy various things, though my two big other interests at the moment are music and animation.

I've been playing music on a basic enough level since 2012, composing and arranging music since 2014, and my last two college courses have been dedicated to getting better at learning music theory, so I make can better tunes. My tastes are super ecletic and all over the shop, so I couldn't tell you who my inspirations are apart from very specific areas (compositionally, Shiro Sagisu; aspirationally, Tomoyuki Asakawa; lyrically, Neil Hannon, Victoria Wood, and Mike Wyzgowski).

I quite like talking about animation with friends online, and I've even written a few articles on specific films or shows on a cartoon blog set up by some of those friends. (The 10 ingredients article is a satirical article, so it's not representative of how I normally write about cartoons.)

I've even done some bits of animation, though I'm not very good by any means. Some friends and I made a cartoon within three days called The Haunted Duck, which I also wrote the dialogue and narrated it for:

And just over a month ago, I made a cartoon entirely on my own within a week, just to prove to myself that I could.

[Deleted]

A bunch really, though some are at least connected to playing video games. I'm also quite into board games, I managed to get my partner into that one so it's something we can enjoy together. I also do a fair bit of hobby game development; I've been working on a gallery shooter (Cabal like) recently. Not games related I do enjoy spending a lot of time in the kitchen - I enjoy cooking but am more so into baking.

There's quite a few lapsed hobbies here also - movies, comic books, also pro wrestling were all hobbies when I was younger, but there isn't time in life to do everything. I find playing video games to be the most time consuming hobby of them all so I guess it limits my ability to explore other interests more, but I find it's an interest that fits into my life more easily than those I've moved on from.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

It's always weird to find out someone doesn't look like the image you've had created in your mind of them solely based on their profile picture. So finding out spanky is a powerlifter is a bit of a shock to say the least.

I wish I had some sort of hobby where I could express myself creatively honestly (is this why I always ramble on too much on here?). I played the piano for 6 years as a kid, but that was before I really developed any musical taste of my own, so it's kind of a miracle I even lasted that long before giving up. If I had been into Hiromi back then it might've actually gone somewhere (or I would've given up even more quickly knowing I would never be that good). One of these days I'm going to try and make a small game and see how that goes (or so I've been saying to myself for the last 5 years, lol).

Anyway, I do have one hobby besides video games, and it's probably not that exciting to other people, but I collect CDs. That might not sound like much of a hobby, but there's a lot that goes into it. I've probably told this story on here before, but I once bought a PAL NES with a couple of games and found out the hard way that PAL games from the 80's and 90's play too slow. Well, something vaguely similar happened with music. Way back when I had even less money to spend than now, I downloaded a lot of music, and once I got into buying CDs here and there just because I like owning physical media, I quickly found out that there can be dramatic differences in the mastering from one issue of an album to the next. I'm sure most people have heard about the loudness wars and dynamic range compression by now, but I found out the hard* way that that was a thing when I bought a 2001 remaster of Judas Priest's Sin after Sin, after apparentely downloading an earlier CD rip from somewhere before 2001. Look at the difference in dynamic range between pre and post 2001 masters of that album. That got me just about as pissed as learning Mega Man 2 ran slow as piss on my NES. And this is no audiophile BS nitpicking either, this can really fuck up an album to the point where it gives me a headache (as a headphone user especially).

But that did make collecting a lot more engaging in a way, as I always have to look into what versions of albums have good sound in addition to if they look nice, have certain bonus tracks, etc. Discogs has a database of usually dozens of different versions of albums, and sellers have to list which specific version they're selling. There's tons and tons of active sellers, so it's super convenient. I get 99% of my CDs there.

I did briefly (as in literally a couple weeks) get into vinyl. This was back when I was stupid enough to believe all the "vinyl has higher fidelity" propaganda, and because vinyl just looks cool. Fact of the matter is, I care mostly about building up a good collection, being able to play them on my laptop and on the go, and having the best sound quality available. And CDs are as good as it gets for human ears (despite what manufacturers of SACDs and HDCDs want you to believe). Nice big sleeves are no worth spending 6x the amount per album. Streaming means you're stuck with whatever remaster the record companies want you to hear, so that's not an option either.

So yeah, CDs. Mostly albums from the 60's, 70's and 80's, and you can probably guess which artist is over-represented a bit based on my username. Interestingly, not all that many game OSTs. I still need to find a cheap-ish Guilty Gear XX OST.

*It was like 5 bucks so it's not as bad as spending money on an NES and 5 games.

[spanky]

Apollo Chungus Cool stuff man. I've always admired people who are creative - as it's something I do not have a hint of myself.

excelsior I hear you on the lapsed hobby thing. I love video games to death but I do wish sometimes I was into something more constructive and "concrete." My brother in law just restored a vintage motorcycle for example and the guy was just beaming. I guess my powerlifting fills that void for me.

🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 lol! Actually when I was young I sort of resembled the kid in my avatar, right down to the bowl cut.

[JDarkside]

Watching bad anime, to the point I made it a podcast I do with my friends. There's no bad quite like a bad anime, and there are some wild finds out there.

Other than that, slowly learning Japanese via trying to translate stuff I find on JP twitter or pixiv, and I really want to get back into video editing if I ever find time again and make more videos on games or whatever interests me.

[lurker]

Dec 10, 2021 17:15:04 GMT -5 JDarkside said:

Watching bad anime, to the point I made it a podcast I do with my friends. There's no bad quite like a bad anime, and there are some wild finds out there.

Other than that, slowly learning Japanese via trying to translate stuff I find on JP twitter or pixiv, and I really want to get back into video editing if I ever find time again and make more videos on games or whatever interests me.

Does the Joseph Lai (Space Thunder Kids) type stuff count?

[JDarkside]

Dec 10, 2021 19:25:38 GMT -5 lurker said:

Dec 10, 2021 17:15:04 GMT -5 JDarkside said:

Watching bad anime, to the point I made it a podcast I do with my friends. There's no bad quite like a bad anime, and there are some wild finds out there.

Other than that, slowly learning Japanese via trying to translate stuff I find on JP twitter or pixiv, and I really want to get back into video editing if I ever find time again and make more videos on games or whatever interests me.

Does the Joseph Lai (Space Thunder Kids) type stuff count?

We've been focusing on recent stuff so far but it's not off the table. The oldest thing we've covered so far is DNA2, an adaptation of a follow up manga from the Video Girl Ai guy. It's very dumb, a major plot point is that a side character girl has uncontrollable nervous farts used as a tool for tension and drama, and the OVA ending completely cuts the manga';s most bonkers and interesting sequence where the main character fights his alter self.

The alter self is, in the series own words (said in english), the "Mega Playboy" who causes a cyberpunk future with overpopulation because he had way too much sex and his offspring are super fertile. He, not affected by a science bullet that rewrites DNA, barfs when horny.

The weirdest thing is that all sounds super gross but it's mostly just really boring except that one time the rich kid got cuckholded and became an SNK final boss.

Now if you want bad, I think the current holders are Magical Warfare, a light novel adaptation that just goes completely bonkers at the halfway point and never lets up (I genuinely recommend it as a so bad it's good watch), and Dies Irae, a VN adaptation kickstarted by the game's writer that was never going to work because it's a bad Fate Stay Night ripoff where super nazis are trying to summon the orchestrator of the Holocaust, who of course is a beautiful blonde bishonen here with a skull fortress, that is equal parts offensive once you realize almost all the nazis are based on REAL NAZIS, and aggressively overwritten into absolute confusion and vapidness.

[lurker]

Dec 10, 2021 19:41:13 GMT -5 JDarkside said:

Dec 10, 2021 19:25:38 GMT -5 lurker said:

Does the Joseph Lai (Space Thunder Kids) type stuff count?

We've been focusing on recent stuff so far but it's not off the table. The oldest thing we've covered so far is DNA2, an adaptation of a follow up manga from the Video Girl Ai guy. It's very dumb, a major plot point is that a side character girl has uncontrollable nervous farts used as a tool for tension and drama, and the OVA ending completely cuts the manga';s most bonkers and interesting sequence where the main character fights his alter self.

The alter self is, in the series own words (said in english), the "Mega Playboy" who causes a cyberpunk future with overpopulation because he had way too much sex and his offspring are super fertile. He, not affected by a science bullet that rewrites DNA, barfs when horny.

The weirdest thing is that all sounds super gross but it's mostly just really boring except that one time the rich kid got cuckholded and became an SNK final boss.

Now if you want bad, I think the current holders are Magical Warfare, a light novel adaptation that just goes completely bonkers at the halfway point and never lets up (I genuinely recommend it as a so bad it's good watch), and Dies Irae, a VN adaptation kickstarted by the game's writer that was never going to work because it's a bad Fate Stay Night ripoff where super nazis are trying to summon the orchestrator of the Holocaust, who of course is a beautiful blonde bishonen here with a skull fortress, that is equal parts offensive once you realize almost all the nazis are based on REAL NAZIS, and aggressively overwritten into absolute confusion and vapidness.

There's one that's basically an anime ripoff of Tron, called Savior of the Earth.

[Rash]

I lurk here.

[Deleted]

Jan 23, 2022 1:40:39 GMT -5 Rash said:

I lurk here.

Lurking is a great way to enjoy a forum at times and certainly an option I've chosen myself over the years, but I hope that you don't feel you prefer to do that due to feeling your own posts here wouldn't add value to the discussions because I'm sure they'd be quite welcome. 

[Snake]

Wow, we got some super talented folks lurking around! Okay, maybe not lurking since you guys post regularly.  I need to be more disciplined like you, spanky.  While I'm not overweight by any means, I do need to get back into regular training.  I used to be very involved in martial arts and qi gong, but I fell out of regular practice some years ago.

As hobbies go, besides wushu (my school was called Tian Shan Pai/Heaven Mountain School), I've been trying to make a regular habit of getting back into photography and videography.  I have a reasonable camera, with a Carl-Zeiss lens, but I haven't been as inspired to find subjects to photograph, and so forth.  I've been practicing shooting 4K videos on the weekends, and hope to post something at least once per month.

I also enjoy eating.  Finding different dishes and new places to eat, sometimes at the advice of blogs or personalities such as Anthony Bourdain, David Chang, youtuber Mark Wein, etc.  I'll eat anything from hole-in-the-wall strip mall joints, to celebrity chef fare.  Things aren't always as miraculously delicious as it is made out to be on TV, but it's still fun to experience and try out.  And some food is just so profound.  I don't like thinking of myself as a "foodie" or "snob,"  but there are some things I do get weary about spending money on, depending on the preparation style.

Cars are another hobby, which I currently just do no have the funds for yet.  I currently have a 1985 Toyota Corolla, AE86 chassis, that I've had since 2004. It could use a lot of fresh parts, engine, etc.  At some point, I'd like to get an NSX too.  But I enjoy tinkering with cars, tuning them up, driving them, etc.  Luckily, there are a lot of fun roads to drive on in my area. 

I'm a bit of a manga addict too.  I usually anticipate a few series each week/month to read.  DNA2 is definitely absurd as concepts go.  But I do enjoy the artist, Katsura Masakazu other works.  He's been around forever, as a contemporary on 1980's 1990's Shonen Jump, alongside Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball, City Hunter, Yu Yu Hakusho, Fist of the North Star, etc.  His style has really evolved from the simplicity of his earlier works, like Wing Man.  Wing Man was pretty interesting for introducing the concept of the "Dream Note."  A notebook from another dimension that will create whatever you write/draw into it -- a 1980's contrast from the 2000's Deathnote.  He did a lot of rom coms - Video Girl Ai, DNA2, and I's.  Then he did a more seinen style work called Zet Man, that's much more dark, graphic, and gritty. 

[ommadawnyawn2]

Music is a big part of my life, both listening and making though I really should play and make more (my most recent project is helping out with a demake of Symphony of the Night for the MD). I own two bass guitars and an acoustic one and I'm self taught besides picking some stuff up online and from people I've played with. I don't collect albums however, it's all digital. 

I used to draw a bunch when a lot younger and wanted to get into making game graphics in my 20s but left that path due to various IRL issues, now I just draw a little at times with my nephew.

I also spend too much time on youtube and on podcasts. Mostly game and music related but I tend to also enjoy documentaries and debates including political ones, though I go through periods where I don't consume anything of the latter at all as they simply get boring and frustrating from people sticking so much to their echo chambers. I'm sometimes considering locking myself out of social media completely to get more shit done tbh; at least I don't watch TV nor use twitter or facebook (instead I use reddit, lol).

Out of necessity I started walking daily and running weekly about 3 years ago, to counter GERD and hyper salivation (I also get acid reflux at night). So I guess you could say that's a hobby. I also had to make some severe diet changes so I know more about food now but I can't say I've ever cared much about food and still don't, like sleep I just want to get it over with efficiently, and I kinda started hating most food since a lot of it makes the reflux worse.
Lately I haven't done much of either thanks to shitty weather (my running shoes have zero grip) and being stressed from work, just the 15-20 mins cardio a day that I'm sticking with to not get fat again.

[Woody Alien 2]

Since, to quote Homer Simpson, I'm a big four-eyed lame-o, there's not much interesting stuff that I do. I used to do nordic walking/hiking for a while but I lost interest for a number of reasons, I used to read a lot of books and comics but now I spend too much time reading sites, forums and reddit threads, I should go back reading more paper books. I used to watch a lot of movies, cartoons and anime but now I mostly watch movies every now and then both at home and in the theater, though with Netflix and the like I have found several interesting animated stuff. I also enjoy doing crosswords and other similar puzzles, and playing online Scrabble (Italian only) at least until a while ago. I'm kind of an incostant person.
I suppose the only original thing I can claim to do was to follow my strange passion for sampling in music, I used to compile entries as a subscriber on a site (here: www.whosampled.com/user/WoodyAlien/) but even if I'd like to contribute more I lost my credentials so I no longer updated the account. I also used to write for a blog/webzine about comedic and non-mainstream/underground music, despite not knowing much about music at all, just because I loved reading it and the webmaster enjoyed my pieces, so for a while I had fun writing about a lot of stupid shit. Now I stopped collaborating with them too because it has become another generic site thanks to the "enshittification" of the internet.
I also did a bit of amateur theatre for a while and restarted just last year. I like it but it didn't make me get out of my shell as much as I wanted to...

[personman]

Oh hey, more threads I can over share in lol.

Nothing crazy here for myself. Always been a super casual creator doing light hearted dabbling in drawing and writing. Like so many people I have like 3 unfinished sci-fi novels I've had rotting in old notepad files I've long given up on lol. Actually went to college to get into media design with hopes of getting to be a 3d asset designer for games, movies, commercials or whatever. Unsurprisingly though the college's job placement program was just a dude lazily browsing craig lists and I had no networking at all so I got a bachelors in art I have never used or will for that matter lol. Lesson learned. Since then I just didn't quite have the patience to stick with making 3d stuff so I've pretty much lost my meager ability I had in 3DS Max and just kept anything creative as a hobby because really I'm a selfish jerk that only wants to make what I want to and wouldn't make it as a professional artist and by now I'm content with that.

These days I just sketch stuff on my ipad for my friends and whatever just catches my fancy in the moment. Have a yearly tradition of drawing Magic The Gathering characters for one, another has an avatar for her twitch streams I draw for her birthday, another never gets tired of the dragon things I sketch for her birthdays (shes like a horse girl but with dragons lol). When I'm not doing that my usual subjects tend to be fighter craft both historic and fictional and animals both real and fictional. I used to keep up a Deviant art gallery but I've long since given up on that since I could never get critiques on anything and really without the anxiety of trying to earn an audience I'm much happier. My scribbles are nothing to see and I'm glad lol.

Writing was another one I was big into and still am I suppose hence why I'm still keeping up on doing my rambles in the game finish thread. I used to write a review column for a long gone Nintendo fansite called Nintelligent as well, really I can't believe they ever let me post anything lol. Like I said I had a couple stories I long brain stormed but only got like either half or a third out of my head and into a text file, most of them I'm just not confident enough in the idea or just hit a brick wall with them.

The main one was a Science fantasy deal where efforts to terraform one of Saturns moons instead wound up with the colonies trapped in some weird pocket dimension where things make no sense (a techno wizard did it) but a civilization develops and new species of human thrive inside it over the eons. It would follow a protagonist wanting to try and get back to our dimension come hell or high water even if it was believed by this point that where humanity originally came from is a fairy tale and it's always been this way. Everyone thinks he's insane but as we know he's right. Though hes also insane.

The other was a more grounded idea of someone who had to run with gangs in early adult hood, was betrayed, and then sold in trafficking rings to someone he eventually earns the respect of and is given his freedom. Sets out on his own just trying to find purpose and come to terms with what he went through and move on, becomes a roadie for a touring band and befriends the lead vocalist, find out she has a shady past too and both kinda help each other heal and move on, probably start a relationship and all that. You know, cheesy shit.

Needless to say I'd never make it as a novelist lol. But hey whatever, I delve into it when I want to for myself and it makes me happy so that's all that matters.

Otherwise I dabble a tiny bit in photography. Have an old Nikon I take with me on hikes and just try and snap things that stand out for me. Also love visiting the zoo and trying to get good shots of the critters. Again nothing really great just things for my own amusement. I was building a habit of going out to nearby state parks and hiking the trails bringing along the camera but of course its been a real cold winter in the mid west this year so haven't done that lately. Soon as it warms up though I'm going to get back out there.