The weirdest thing about me would be my hobby in electronics, and by hobby I don’t mean like what most would consider to be a hobby, making relatively small projects; e.g. a microcontroller and simple LCD/LED display, but building complete, vast circuits. For example, if I want a display, I make one out of a CRT monitor - with everything designed by myself; switching power supply, deflection circuits, etc (I have even made my own flyback transformers and HV rectifiers). And for control, I use a real CPU, not a microcontroller (except for simpler circuits, or in peripheral functions like controllers or status displays). I have also made my own displays using hundreds of dot-matrix LED displays, which, while relatively simple, are more complex than you think, I use shift register ICs to drive to columns for each row section (a row-section is the number of rows in each individual display, 5, 7, or 8 depending on size and orientation) and multiplexed drivers to drive the rows, then a self-designed memory circuit which writes received data to one memory chip while using the other to refresh the display (reversed with each display update so the one that was written to is now read from), which I call a “matrix generator” (the same circuit is also used for CRT-based displays; no horizontal/vertical sync is needed; the monitor sends out a pulse to enable locking to the vertical refresh rate, data is also sent in a simple continuous stream; a similar circuit but with random write addressing is used as a video generator on the main circuit), plus a power supply and step-down regulators (almost everything I make runs off the AC power line, due to size and power and switching regulators are almost exclusively used).
Not only that, I have tracked the statistics (such as power and number of parts and time spent) for every circuit I have made since around 1995, which is to say, when I was 10 years old (the older circuits are of course much simpler and have none of the above-mentioned stuff); I currently have 72 circuits which have over 100,000 parts in total (yes, the average circuit I make has over 1,000 parts) and consume over 6 KW total (excluding external power used, for example, by a “light bulb saver” circuit I made which slowly ramps up power to a load, in this case the lights over my work area, not that I use it now that I use CFLs; or the AC “short protector” I built).
Also, since I was very young (younger than 10) I have always gone around picking up stuff that people thrown out, and still do today (it also makes good exercise; yes, I walk around the neighborhood, about 4 miles, carrying stuff home unless it is too big/heavy, then I use a trolley to get it home, I have also had people drop off stuff by the front door), which is where I get most of the “interesting” electronics that I use (as opposed to parts I buy, which mainly are things like resistors, transistors, ICs and stuff like that, as opposed to SMPS transformers/inductors, most resistors other than values like 1 k, 10 k, 100 k, etc, capacitors and most power transistors). Also, I don’t make my own PCBs but rather use dirt-cheap perforated boards, due to the size and amount needed and the custom nature of what I design, and that I design them bit by bit (I have used over 20 6x8 inch boards on one project before, even with parts packed densely, the bottom is a solid sheet of wire, the thinner the better (usually from ribbon cable and enameled wire, most scavenged from discarded equipment) held in place with hot-melt glue).
