For me and license plates it’s reading the ~3 letter codes as assembly language opcodes, Unix commands, etc. I can get fairly creative at inventing a plausible derivation of the acronym. But if I get a QQQ or some such I give up. (I wouldn’t be surprised if a ham could make that into something, but I don’t know many of those codes.)
If you ever take it up again, I still have my first computer: an original MacIntosh. Well it was upgraded to a Mac 512 and it also has an external disc drive. And software on floppies that may even be still readable. A carrying case too. I might be willing to sell.
As far as the license plate thing, I used to try to find words that contain the three letters in that order, although not necessrily consecutive. Shorter words are best. I no longer do that, because I stopped looking at plates and instead look at logos.
I’m looking for EVs and mostly just spot a number of Teslas. Other kinds of EVs are more work, because I have to look at more than the logo. I did spot what I’m pretty sure was a Bolt the other day and today I saw only my second Ioniq, but was a hybrid (Ioniq’s come in either hybrid or pure EVs).
Are you familiar with theatre company Dagoll Dagom? I don’t know how many recordings (official or bootleg) are out there, but their work is mainly musicals, both in Catalan and Spanish.
Your hobby rocks! (blush)
My hobby is model railways.
Here’s a video of it at an early stage.
I attempt juggling. I have- sticks, wheel, balls and a fushigi. My dexterity in my right hand is poor and my dexterity in my left hand is worse.
I make balloon animals. I believe I actually have a gift for this. I need live instruction to get past some humps and can’t find an instructor in Philly.
I collect many things- Including but not limited to
Obsolete computers. Commodors 64, Commodore Plus 4, A Zenith laptop that pioneered the ‘clamshell’ design, my dad’s old desktop from the 70’s.
Weird Cookbooks- The Official Spam cookbook, the tiny ketchup cookbook, The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook, The Special Effects cookbook, and To Serve Man (seriously. It was published by Owlswick Press and is signed by the author)
Vacuum Tubes- I forget how many I have. I also have two testers.
Don Quixote- He’s a nut in rusted armor charging windmills. But there is something noble and great about him.
Light Emitting Diodes- I LOVE these.
Bats- The animal not the sports equipment. One wall is hung with plush bats and action figures. A dear friend gave me a bat preserved in formaldehyde years ago. I bought another preserved in urethane at the Ren Faire two years ago. I have bat field guides and a Bat Seeker brand bat detector.
Cthulhu- I have statuettes, books, pins, rings, necklaces etc. I also made a fine felt Cthulhu mask and Cthulhu doom pamphlets.
Canes and walking sticks- I have one that was originally meant as a fluorescent bulb protector. I filled with a string of LEDs. It went on when you stamped the base on the ground.(It’s currently broken) I founda cool black and brass table leg on the sidewalk. I found a cool Bacardi bottle stopper at a flea market. Thanks to a friend who is handy with a drill, I fused the two and now have a black cane, set with brass diamonds and topped with a brass bat.
Writings Of The Mentally Divergent- Hercolubus The Red Planet (about how a giant planet will soon crash into our solar system and kill us), National Sunday Law (The Catholic Church is the beast of the apocalypse and the government will soon pass a law making the sabbath Sunday), Various letters to the editor.
I think that’s enough for now.
I honestly had no idea there were at least two other people in this world who make a practice of breaking down numbers into their prime factors. I mean, it’s not like I bring it up often. If I do, I usually get blank looks. It’s nice to know I’m not alone.
I letterbox. I love geo-location games in general but letterboxing combines hiking, puzzle solving and “art” collecting. One of my favorite parts is the rubber stamp carving. A spin-off activity is exchanging letterbox trading cards.
That’s a thing!? You just moved up to my favorite doper (well, for today anyway).
Photobucket | Make your memories fun! Photobucket | Make your memories fun!
Printed onto one sheet and properly folded, you get a six panel tract. I have ideas for a longer tract truly in Jack Chick’s style, but have no ability as an illustrator.
accidentally posted the same link twice, Photobucket | Make your memories fun!
That oughta do it.
I ‘collect’ alter egos.
What I mean by this is: I have your typical [first initial][last name]@gmail.com email address. And despite having a very uncommon last name, I have gotten emails for over three dozen people who have inadvertently given out my email as their own. Most of them (not all, but most) have the same last name and first initial as I do.
They’re all over the U.S. and a good chunk of the world, from Hawaii to the Baltics to South Africa. I’m getting a lot of traffic for one guy who just had his 50th HS reunion at a Long Island high school, the Hawaii alter ego must have a kid who attends a YMCA day camp, I just got a department-store bill for a woman in the Ivory Coast (a first-timer), etc. I’ve gotten apartment leases, itineraries for full-day interviews, conference info (one was a regular attendee at an annual fire-prevention conference), all sorts of stuff. I’ve gotten contact information for a number of them - street addresses and phone numbers (generally in confirmations for pizza orders and the like); I almost never get their emails, because my email address is the address the sender thinks belongs to them.
Wow, if there was anywhere to find other people who break down license plate numbers into primes, it’s the Dope! Now I feel like part of an exclusive club. 
Not all that exclusive; I do that too. But only when I’m really bored.
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I like to sew and embroider, but my neck won’t cooperate at this time. Damn!
I picked up a silly, stupid hobby to occupy myself while I’m waiting for my pain pill to kick in. I found a coloring app! So silly, so juvenile. Sometimes I even share the pictures with family and friends. For instance, my sister-in-law likes owls, so I select owls to color, then send her the picture.
The app was screwing up on sharing, so now I just attach the picture which is conveniently stored on my tablet. I made the terrible mistake of putting an actual filename on one picture, so that means I have to put filenames on all of them. All 1700 of them…
One of my most satisfying hobbies is writing. No, I’m not published yet. But I am good. Damned good. I’m also a very decent editor. I have just started blogging again after a long hiatus.
And then there’s stuff I write that I can’t tell you about…
~VOW
[quote=“Knowed_Out, post:37, topic:840638”]
[li]Is it divisible by 11? Add 77, divide by 100, 37 equals no.[/li][/QUOTE]
Take (sum of the odd digits) - (sum of the even digits) or vice versa. The original number is a multiple of 11 if that difference is.
Using 3623, (3+2) - (6+3) = -4 which isn’t evenly divisible by 11.
Why does it work? Let’s take a 3-digit number abc and multiply by 11. Get abc + abc0 = a[a+b][b+c]c as the digits if no carrying. [That’s not a product: each bracket contains one digit of a 4-digit number.] Get (a+b+c) - (a+b+c) = 0 which is divisible by 11.
Now if there’s carrying, you might get abc + abc0 = a[a+b+1][b+c-10]c = (a+b+c-10) - (a+b+c+1) = -11 which is divisible by 11. Etc. Any carrying will add or subtract 11 to/from your eventual sum.
If you write erotica, you could certainly tell us about that, so that can’t be it.
Revolutionary tracts advocating the overthrow of the government, followed by show trials and life imprisonment for everyone over a GS-12? Nah, doesn’t seem like your sort of thing, but who knows what lurks beneath the surface?
If it was in the “if I told you, I’d have to kill you” zone, it wouldn’t be a hobby, so that’s out.
Nah, no idea. 
I could tell the Dopers, but I haven’t told my family.
~VOW
. . . . . . . anybody else occasionally look at a sentence or a phrase, or a group of numbers and check whether the number of characters can be divided up into groups of seven? . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . ok Ill go away quietly now . . . . . . .
I don’t know if this can be considered a hobby, but a few months ago, I set myself the task of running all the streets in my city; I had heard about Rickey Gates, an ultrarunner who did that in San Francisco in 2018, to really learn his hometown. I live in a little 30,000 pop. town of about 4 square miles, so it’s not a hugely daunting task. I’m roughly halfway through.
I had thought that it was a pretty original idea, albeit one I had stolen from Gates, but no, there are runners all over the world knocking off every street in their towns; Strava even has a blog for people attempting the feat, and there’s, natch, an Instagram hashtag. Still, it’s gotten me to parts of my little town that I’ve never seen before, and it’s got me logging a lot of good miles, so I’m enjoying it.
I’m going with erotica, then. 
Trump/Giuliani slash-fic, is my guess.