Well thank you very much Emerald for the mapping and the great question.
For me, it’s something much more modest:

• Amiga, or retro-computing in general. Not just for gaming. There’s something deeply inspiring about browsing the web or creating spreadsheets with entirely different hardware and software. Hoping to get an Alpha CPU and/ or an Atari soon.
• Dreaming of a better world.

Does raising and training ducks count? I’m really good at it. I have care down to a science and I’ve done quite a bit medically because there aren’t any vets that treat ducks around me. I’ve rehabilitated crazy injuries, performed minor surgery, treated severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.

I have trained all of my birds to listen to basic commands and they know their names and respond to them.

Low level coding and free open source software for me mostly.

I’ve met some people who like to map areas on OpenStreetMap and I’d be interested in trying it myself but like with contributing to anything I’m new to I’m scared of doing something wrong. I understand that with OpenStreetMap there’s a sort of discussion of changes like on Wikipedia?

When you started what resources helped you, did a friend show you? Is there a tutorial you recommend for starting off? (If you explained some of this somewhere else please feel free to link to it or tell me, I haven’t read through all the comments here yet.)

I’m not good at it, but I like geocaching.

How do you map

Is there any liability? NSA, angry exes, employer, anybody finding out that you mapped your own town?

I have a weird obsession with fonts. I love a good, well designed font. How it looks on the screen, how it looks in print. Nothing too gaudy or showy, but a really good League Spartan or Lato Light. (Not a fan of serifs)

Other than that, normal stuff; 3D modelling, writing, etc…

My other interest that might fall “outside the norm” is that in University, if I had continued beyond my bachelors my primary focus would have been studying the Bronze Age Collapse, and that topic still fascinates me to this day.

Edit: Oh…and spreadsheets. There’s no problem in the world that can’t be fixed with a well designed spreadsheet. All problems come down to data sorting.

Metal guitar, comic books, epistemologies. A lot of people write off metal as just distortion and shouting but it’s a huge genre like jazz or classical without as long a history. Comics interest I stopped for awhile but got back into it and helped me learn drawing and story writing to better appreciate the artistry. Epistemologies from an interest in reading philosophy books and that was just the subtopic that always held my interest most.

*nix Servers

I’ve had several multi-year long ones:

• As a child: Stargate SG1
• Adolescent: paraphilias
• Young adult: the care of high violence risk and cluster b psychiatric inpatients
• As I’m entering middle-adulthood: western esoteric spiritual tradition and philosophy

This week? AuDHD doesn’t let me have one for long.

Picking up new hobbies, investing in them far beyond what would be considered a casual interest, then getting bored or disillusioned with the community after 6-24 months.

See

• Foam dart blasters
• yo yos
• magic the gathering (This was like 15 years)
• coin collecting
• juggling
• pocket knives
• archery
• running
• Currently working on 3D printing, though that’s been more of a means to get back into foam blasters because it’s far cheaper to print your own blasters and mod parts.

Fountain pens and inks

Thank you for your contributions!

What are you doing with your time this week then? 😬

We love OSM for finding gravel routes for our bikes. However, since no bike maps ever say the state of the gravel, and mark many as paved, we’ve been pre-driving and contributing. It’s fun!

In any event, my interest is serial hobbying. I’m a maker, so my site is full of random projects. I’m in a techy phase right now, so just released some Steam Deck accessories, the Only Sensor, and am now working on a DIY solder extractor and building a Voron.

Aztec history.