I’ve been stuck in the work, recharge, repeat cycle for about a decade now. I’m looking to get back into hobbies and activities to enjoy my free time and possibly meet other folks.
I’ve heard you should have 3 types of hobbies: something to keep you fit, something to keep you creative, and something that can make some money. I’ve considered gym/triathlon (fitness) and woodworking (creative/income).
What are your hobbies? Anything you recommend I try out?
I’ve been making mechanical keyboards “from scratch” for the last year or so. I leverage a lot of pre-built parts and existing tools of course, but I tweak the standard layouts to fit what I want to do, fabricate the plates and cases with my laser engraver and 3D printer, assemble everything, wire them up to the switches and the microcontroller (usually “dead bug” hand-wiring, but I have done a very basic PCB in KiCAD as well), and configure the firmware. It leverages a lot of my other interests, provides an opportunity to improve incrementally between projects, and results in a product that is legitimately pleasant to use.
Little bastards are piling up, though.
I’m currently in the process of building my first mechanical keyboard. I have a Lily58 mostly assembled, in the troubleshooting steps now. It’s been a fun project so far.
I’d like to do a proper split as a project, but I don’t properly touch-type, so there’s a pretty large learning curve that I’m not particularly interested in overcoming. Before I accepted my truth, my second handwire was a permanent split that just bundled the matrix wires into a ratchet-ass cable. It works fine, but I just never used it, even enough to want to do a refined version.