Your Odd Hobbies

[wguy123]

@Slow_Moving_Vehicle

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’ve attempted something similar, but it involves all the county and FS roads in my county (I cross into other counties and states depending on the road - I live on a state border). Bigger difference is I started it on my dual-sport motorcycle (haven’t finished…yet). However, I’ve now switched to attempting the same thing on my mountain bike. Not sure I will ever finish either (probably not), but it is fun and I’ve found some great places to go back to and walk with my wife.

[Pabitel]

@Derleth

Anyway, my odd hobby is reading old newspapers. Not as part of genealogy, just because I like history and I think newspapers help bring it to life better than textbooks or novels. They’re sometimes wrong, they lack perspective, they don’t have the space to go into great depth even on things happening all around them… they’re the thoughts of the people of the time, in the moment, or as close to it as we’re ever going to get. Plus, you get advertisements and comics and random content, like notices.

I used to go in to the library when I was in school and get the microfiche rolls of the earliest editions of various newspapers and just read through them. I remember following some pretty astonishing crimes from detection through prosecution over the course of months of the same paper. Boy, if you think we live in dangerous times go back and look at how your grand or great-grand parents lived.
I loved those things (the papers, not the crimes).

[Spiderman]

@DocCathode

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)

You mean like those annoying little kid’s light up shoes…but only worse because they’re bigger? :eek:

@Slow_Moving_Vehicle

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.

The related thing is to run pictures. It takes some preplanning & running w/ a GPS but you run down (& maybe back) on certain roads to create an Etch-a-Sketch like shape from your run/ride - spell out the town name or create a hand/the bird, etc.
It was more to pass the time/keep me focused/potentially catch a hit-&-run driver but I would try to read/say aloud (in military alphabet - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) every car/truck license plate that passed me when I’d be out on the bike. Pretty much every state has a 3’/4’ rule for passing cyclists & although I have a handlebar cam the cops can’t cite the driver if all they have is video of the car making a dangerous pass.

I also do some niche sports, including one that I’d never heard of before another Doper introduced me to it.

[Knowed_Out]

@RTFirefly

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.

Ah, a new math trick! I already knew that a 3-digit number xyz is divisible by 11 if x + z = y, or if x + z - 11 = 0. 4 digit numbers in the form of xxyy and xyyx are divisible by 11. 3-digit numbers in the form of xxx are divisible by 37. 4-digit numbers in the form of x00x are divisible by 7, 11 and 13.

[VOW]

@Slow_Moving_Vehicle

Trump/Giuliani slash-fic, is my guess.

Your guess made me puke, but I have to give you a modicum of credit.

It’s K/S.

looks around

Did the world come to an end?
~VOW

[VOW]

@wguy123

I’ve attempted something similar, but it involves all the county and FS roads in my county (I cross into other counties and states depending on the road - I live on a state border). Bigger difference is I started it on my dual-sport motorcycle (haven’t finished…yet). However, I’ve now switched to attempting the same thing on my mountain bike. Not sure I will ever finish either (probably not), but it is fun and I’ve found some great places to go back to and walk with my wife.

FS

Full-Service?

Flight Surgeon?

Flank Speed?

I give up…
~VOW

[dtilque]

Forest Service

[Orville_mogul]

@VOW

FS

Full-Service?

Flight Surgeon?

Flank Speed?

I give up…
~VOW

Fozzie / Snuffleupagus ?

[wguy123]

@dtilque

Forest Service

Ding ding ding. Sorry for the acronym with no reference.

[Wargamer]

@RTFirefly

3. Unlike Dinsdale, I don’t add up the digits on license plates. However, here in Maryland, most of the license plates have 5 digits and 2 letters. 5 digits make up a cribbage hand (with 0 = 10), so I score license plate cribbage hands when I’m driving down the road.

I have my own license plate game I like to play. In North Carolina, most tags have three letters followed by three numbers. I take the three letters and try to make a word that has those letters in that same order. Then I score the word, 1 point for a word with the letters, 4 points for a word with two of the three letters adjacent, and 9 points for all three letters appearing consecutively. Then if the word doesn’t start with the first of the three letters, i award myself a bonus point.

So far, my favorite word was for a plate with “CKP” - 10 points for ‘Backpack.’

[Dinsdale]

@Slow_Moving_Vehicle

…
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; …

Not running, but there was a couple of year period that I was regularly walking in downtown Chicago over my lunch hour. Kept a map to make sure I covered every block of every street in the downtown area. Alleys too.

[AHunter3]

I maintain a computer museum in my bedroom. The second computer I ever owned, a 1996-vintage Power Mac 7100/80, proved unusually robust and although the original internal HD croaked eventually, machine itself kept on ticking. The third was my all-time favorite, first laptop, the 1998 “WallStreet”, so at any time that a critical component died, I acquired a replacement from ebay and moved the RAM, accelerator, and hard drive(s) over and kept going. When the fourth and its twin were being retired in 2012, I realized that if I still had my first computer, I’d have all the computers I’d ever owned (orig or replica-replacements) so I went for it, acquired a Mac SE and the accelerator I used to have in it.

The cool thing is that they’re all networked and I can Timbuktu to them all (even the ancient System 6 Mac SE, although it requires daisy-chaining TB2 connections).