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silveradept[O hai. It's December Days time, and this year, I'm taking requests, since it's been a while and I have new people on the list and it's 2020, the year where everyone is both closer to and more distant from their friends and family. So if you have a thought you'd like me to talk about on one of these days, let me know and I'll work it into the schedule. That includes things like further asks about anything in a previous December Days tag, if you have any questions on that regard.]
I have often considered myself kind of boring and without hobbies, honestly. Which isn't true if you say "hobby" means "anything you don't make money from that you do." It just happens to be that a lot of the things I do as hobbies either aren't things that produce tangible things, like playing video games, or don't usually meet the unspoken definition of a hobby as the shirt of thing that you might want or need to collect specialized tools and materials for our spend money upon to improve it, like writing fic. I think there's also a second unspoken criterion for hobbies that they are or can be, to one degree or another, social activities, so if I took up trying to get really good at shooting pool or darts, those would be hobbies. I am an amateur or hobbyist musician, since I play an instrument for a community organization for no pay and just Suu that I keep in some sort of practice, which this pandemic has really put a crimp in that, even as I have been recording parts for that group. Which mostly reconfirms to me that I'm not going to be anything more than an amateur.
I suppose you could call it a hobby of mine to try and make old technology last as long as it can, often through the application of scripts and custom software installations and homebrew applications to those devices after they have fallen out of their manufacturer support periods. It doesn't feel like a hobby because I'm not writing the code that allows for these things to happen, just using my search skills to find what has already been done and following the directions from there (and then using some troubleshooting skills to occasionally try to find a way to fix things if they went wrong or there's a PEBKAC error thrown in the process). I would have said that building my own computers was my favorite hobby in years past, but I didn't build any of them myself, instead letting others do it or purchasing a box already assembled that otherwise just needed a hard drive dropped into it and everything going well from there. Or using single board computers with everything already integrated, so there's nothing to assemble but the case and the optional fan and / or heatsinks.
All the same, I have also done my best to keep those older pieces of technology living and working well past the point where they might have otherwise been put out to pasture or replaced with newer models . Such that, with a decent router, I can stream some amount of games over the local network to an original Raspberry Pi model B. Or stream media over the network, so long as the thing itself isn't trying to cram more bits than the Pi can handle. Or use an old Playstation 3 controller on that Pi to play Atari and Super Nintendo type games. It's not quite retro computing, in the sense of trying to get old systems rebuilt and booting again, on as original of hardware as possible, or the kind of restoration and archival work that places like the Living Computer Museum does, it's not quite being an inner cheapskate, but the idea that a technology should be useful from manufacture to the point where it will no longer physically start up. Planned obsolescence aggravates me greatly, and the way in which device manufacturers build products that will last longer than they plan on supporting them and warranting them, and assume that you'll want to swap your current one out for the next generation when your warranty period is up seems like the sort of thing guaranteed to generate a whole lot of electronics waste and toxic waste or other chemical exposures for the people who work to mine the metals used or to manufacture the finished product.
So, yeah, actually, I think my favorite hobby is trying to prolong the useful life of devices in one way or another. It's net some good results, like media playback on small packages, functional devices with more modern operating systems, and the ability to use multiple tools to multitask with, such that no one tool is trying ti take on too much burden by itself. Frankly, it's pretty cool, especially when it all works out and there's something new to use.
What hobby of yours is your favorite?
I have often considered myself kind of boring and without hobbies, honestly. Which isn't true if you say "hobby" means "anything you don't make money from that you do." It just happens to be that a lot of the things I do as hobbies either aren't things that produce tangible things, like playing video games, or don't usually meet the unspoken definition of a hobby as the shirt of thing that you might want or need to collect specialized tools and materials for our spend money upon to improve it, like writing fic. I think there's also a second unspoken criterion for hobbies that they are or can be, to one degree or another, social activities, so if I took up trying to get really good at shooting pool or darts, those would be hobbies. I am an amateur or hobbyist musician, since I play an instrument for a community organization for no pay and just Suu that I keep in some sort of practice, which this pandemic has really put a crimp in that, even as I have been recording parts for that group. Which mostly reconfirms to me that I'm not going to be anything more than an amateur.
I suppose you could call it a hobby of mine to try and make old technology last as long as it can, often through the application of scripts and custom software installations and homebrew applications to those devices after they have fallen out of their manufacturer support periods. It doesn't feel like a hobby because I'm not writing the code that allows for these things to happen, just using my search skills to find what has already been done and following the directions from there (and then using some troubleshooting skills to occasionally try to find a way to fix things if they went wrong or there's a PEBKAC error thrown in the process). I would have said that building my own computers was my favorite hobby in years past, but I didn't build any of them myself, instead letting others do it or purchasing a box already assembled that otherwise just needed a hard drive dropped into it and everything going well from there. Or using single board computers with everything already integrated, so there's nothing to assemble but the case and the optional fan and / or heatsinks.
All the same, I have also done my best to keep those older pieces of technology living and working well past the point where they might have otherwise been put out to pasture or replaced with newer models . Such that, with a decent router, I can stream some amount of games over the local network to an original Raspberry Pi model B. Or stream media over the network, so long as the thing itself isn't trying to cram more bits than the Pi can handle. Or use an old Playstation 3 controller on that Pi to play Atari and Super Nintendo type games. It's not quite retro computing, in the sense of trying to get old systems rebuilt and booting again, on as original of hardware as possible, or the kind of restoration and archival work that places like the Living Computer Museum does, it's not quite being an inner cheapskate, but the idea that a technology should be useful from manufacture to the point where it will no longer physically start up. Planned obsolescence aggravates me greatly, and the way in which device manufacturers build products that will last longer than they plan on supporting them and warranting them, and assume that you'll want to swap your current one out for the next generation when your warranty period is up seems like the sort of thing guaranteed to generate a whole lot of electronics waste and toxic waste or other chemical exposures for the people who work to mine the metals used or to manufacture the finished product.
So, yeah, actually, I think my favorite hobby is trying to prolong the useful life of devices in one way or another. It's net some good results, like media playback on small packages, functional devices with more modern operating systems, and the ability to use multiple tools to multitask with, such that no one tool is trying ti take on too much burden by itself. Frankly, it's pretty cool, especially when it all works out and there's something new to use.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 05:53 pm (UTC)