What are you into apart from games?

Not Games
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What other hobbies/ interests/ passions do you have apart from gaming?

Off the top of my head mine are…
Cricket
I used to love all sport, but Lance Armstrong ruined my ability to appreciate performance as being ‘true’. Football was huge for me, but there is so much nonsense now. Rugby brings out a weird nationalism in me that I really don’t like so I’ve had to stop watching it.

Food
In particular smoked food and my quest to make the perfect burger.

Non alcoholic beer
Asahi is my current tipple of choice, especially with spicy food

Folk music
I like a lot of different music, but if I had to pick one it would always be folk.

Politics
Less so these days because it’s very hard to be polite about it in the UK at the moment, but I do love a bit of political nerdery (although it’s much easier in an echo chamber)

Stand Up Comedy
Reignited due to our youngest being 14 and now able to come to quite a lot of shows. Fortunately they didn’t come with us on Sunday when we saw Jayde Adams and Morgan Rees who were very, very filthy.

There are probably loads of other things I could disappear down a rabbit hole, but I don’t have time!

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Fun topic!

Music
Listening in general, but also playing (piano, flute, accordion) and some writing (piano) as well - just finished a suite of four piano pieces inspired by the ages in the original Myst.

Badminton
Favorite sport, would play it every day if I could. Just never get tired of it (mentally; physically is another story).

Rolfball
A very “American gym class” type sport. It’s played on a tennis court with a kickball, and it’s basically like volleyball except the ball has to bounce exactly once between each hit. A friend introduced me to it in Madison, and when me and my wife moved to Boston we brought it with us.

Dragon boat
A paddling activity I joined on Meetup because I was looking for something active to do and thought it sounded cool. I’m less into it than badminton or rolfball because it’s just not as fun, but it is a good workout and very nice to be out on the water in the summer.

Cocktails
My wife got me the Savoy cocktail book - there are some really good ones in there. Best two-ingredient cocktail I’ve found is the Quelle Vie cocktail: 2 oz brandy, 1 oz kümmel.

Reading
Will get a stack of books from the library and read through them. Different genres, usually always fiction but with occasional nonfiction stuff.

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Buying games?

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Reading - mainly modern pulpy sci-fi. I’ve tried reading some older classics and found it hard going

TV - Catching up on the older Star Trek currently

Nintendo Switch - I’m not into anything but Nintendo games and indie stuff on the switch

Beer - currently expanding my tastes

Being a person of faith, church and looking after the PA at church takes up a non-zero amount of time

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I’ve never had much of a taste for spirits, but stopping drinking has meant that I’m never going to get into cocktails (I do like a mocktail though).

I play badminton each week. I don’t really enjoy but its what my friends play. I grew up playing tennis and wasn’t bad until I got the yips. I always try to hit topspin, which doesn’t work with a shuttlecock.

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Has pickleball made it over to the UK yet? I feel like that’s something a former tennis player could really get into.

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I am noticing a disturbing trend with my hobbies. Several of my interests have been disrupted lately … some since the pandemic began and this disruption seems to have been extended by the amount of stress/work we have with the renovations. Also games have taken away time from other hobbies lately. I tend to focus on one thing to the almost exclusion of others…

  • Other games. Mostly computer.

  • Writing. Not currently very active in that regard, I am pouring that energy into my lengthy reports on new games. I feel some urgency to get back to the more creative side of it and that has not been there for a while, so that’s good.

    • No writing without reading. I am mostly interested in SFF these days and the SF part more than the F but this has been severely reduced in the past few years for reasons that are not quite clear to me (having glasses now may play a role, my eyes tire more quickly)

  • Writing code + some IT stuff. I am hosting my own server for my webpage/mailserver and various tools. This is a hobby that is very job adjacent but definitely also quite far away from my day-2-day–the overlap is less than one would assume. I also like to use my webpages for my other interests. Definitely a hobby though, nobody really NEEDS to have their own mailserver.

  • Food + Drink.

    • I bake. Both bread and not-bread fascinate me–if I didn’t also have to eat it all I would bake even more
    • Both my partner and I like to cook
      • My partner is the one with the smoker and anything to do with meat
      • I am more the vegetarian cook these days, sure the occasional bacon creeps into some dishes but for the most part I prefer cooking without meat and from various cuisines. My favorites are Italian, Thai, Indian and some modernized German dishes. edit: and I really like spicy food. very spicy.
    • As for the drinky things we enjoy those include beer, wine, whisky and espresso. For me none of these qualifies as a hobby. For my partner… more so. So I am hobby-adjacent. Life is too short for bad beer/wine/whisky/espresso.
    • We don’t eat out a lot but when we do we tend to go either pub or fine dining. We have 2 “regular” places one pub and one restaurant and mostly ignore everything else unless friends ask us to come along somewhere.

  • Traveling. This includes various of my other interests usually

    • Photography: I used to do more photography outside of traveling but lately I have really only taken out my camera for 2 purposes: while traveling and to chronicle all the social stuff with our friends (I seem to be the unofficial chronicler)
    • Food: we try to eat as much interesting local food as we can while traveling. We’ve had some fancy international dinners over the years and food is a big driver behind where we want to go.
    • I am not much of a hiking/nature person at home, but while traveling we quite enjoy that.
    • Planned trips this year: probably our long-postponed trip to the Piemont region in northern Italy during hazelnut/truffle season.

  • Music: we like to go to (metal) festivals, we normally do this once a year plus the occasional concert. This has been disrupted as well by the pandemic and the renovations. Last year we got to go, this year we will probably miss out on it.

  • Biking: not as a sport. For me the bike is a thing to get from A to B. I am putting this here because I really try to “live” that and use the car as little as possible when I need to go places “locally”.

  • edit: forgot to mention that I do Yoga… except this year I have really lapsed for reasons and I desperately need to find the energy to get back to it as I can feel the lack of it all over.

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Hear hear! I recently got a bike, and the cities around here are slowly improving their biking infrastructure (an uphill battle in this country) so I’m hoping to get some major use out of it.

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I didn’t know they had a non alcoholic variant. but maybe not here. I looove spicy food. What’s your favorite spicy dish?

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Generally curry, but salt and pepper chilli squid is my absolute favourite.

The Asahi non alcoholic is great, I find the standard too dry, but 0% beer is sweeter, so the Asahi tastes like a ‘normal’ lager

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I’m kind of rediscovering things now that I have actual time to be a human post-grad school. It’s interesting to see what things have changed or integrated into things.

I really love Premier League football. I was a Man City fan back when we were “typical city,” and I kind of struggle with the influx of money and success. The hope kills you, and now that I don’t have to hope so much because we can buy whoever we want, I kind of miss the disappointment and heartbreak.

I love to cook and bake. As far as cooking goes, I really enjoy trying new cuisines and developing intuitive skills to whip stuff up quickly on busy weeknights. Lately I’ve been trying to learn some Lebanese dishes from a close friend as well as some Korean staples so I don’t have to get take out for things. Indian is also something I’ve been practicing for a bit. I love to bake cheesecakes and pies, and I take pride in knowing that I can make an incredible cheesecake after so many years of practice. It used to be a stress reliever for me, but now it’s much more intentional. I’m working on making quality southern biscuits, which are eluding me even though I’ve lived in the south for most of my life.

I used to draw very regularly, mostly portraits with abstract framing and some mixed media stuff. Recently that artistic bent has moved over to mini painting. I get the same kind of enjoyment and relaxation from working on those techniques and I’m looking forward to applying some of that to actual painting ideas I’ve had for years. I’ll get back to some portrait stuff in time, but minis are giving me so much joy right now.

I’ve gotten back into reading for pleasure (woo!). It’s been pulpy sci-fi stuff (Dan Abnett 40k stuff), fantasy like the Stormlight archive (struggling to stay invested in the third book), finishing up the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, recently loved the Wormwood trilogy by Tade Thompson and read whatever he writes, and am trying to find some new fantasy (Wheel of Time is my favorite series, but I totally acknowledge some of the problems with it).

Craft beer. Big fan of lagers, stouts, porters, and Belgian style ales. I’m very over and was never quite into IPAs. I’m tired of hearing about them and have been for years. Other styles exist! Love trying new stuff and getting pretentious about things like mouthfeel, finish, etc. Barrel-aged stuff is a big joy.

Other than that, I love going on a good bike ride or walk, just mainly being outside when it’s nice and being active with the dogs or doing some gardening (mainly potted until we can do something about this clay that makes up our yard). Used to play some video games regularly (Destiny fan - Warlocks for life!), but I’ve struggled to enjoy video games the past several months. I’d say that some general nerd stuff here and there also takes up a little bit of space.

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Lego

Puzzles

Disney pin collecting/trading

Sci-fi/fantasy comics, novels, tv, etc. Used to do light cosplay and conventions but not much lately

Other reading

D&D and other RPG actual play shows

Panel comedy shows

Hiking

Travel when money and time allow

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It’s been a while since I read fantasy but The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu was really good, and my wife swears by The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. And for a little more literary fantasy there’s Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

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I will definitely give those a look. I initially took to Stormlight archive, but by book 3 it starts to feel like Sanderson really needs an editor to reel him back in. you know he loves his characters, but it can really feel like he enjoys spending time in their perspective more than telling the story. I had completely forgotten about Piranesi. I love Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

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Too many things, probably.

Programming and sysadminning. I enjoy this for its own sake as well as for the things I can do with it.

3d modelling and printing.

Utility cycling.

Lots of reading.

Unreasonably wide musical taste.

Film criticism.

Sound recording and production, very much at an amateur level but it leads to listenable podcasts.

Real ale and some allied trades (my favourite beer is Rochefort 6).

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Any of you fellow beer drinkers on Untappd? It’s my one indulgence for logging things - I believe I’ve logged every beer I’ve drunk since around 2015.

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Personally, like logging plays, I don’t see the point.

I perhaps should.join

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There mostly isn’t a point, although I have saved myself once or twice from drinking a beer I didn’t remember but had logged previously as very low.

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Sadly, I feel like most of my hobbies have fallen by the wayside as I’ve gotten older and as our kids have required more care.

Reading - used to constantly be reading a book, but now that has mostly been relegated to something to do during my lunch breaks at work. The occasional book will engross me enough that I read it in my sparse free time, most recently Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies, and we’ll see if his The Republic of Thieves can do the same.

Painting - miniature painting. This has always been something I’d do sporadically, but just sitting to even work a little bit on a figure is such an investment of time that I feel like I don’t have anymore. I don’t have a dedicated work space, so there’d always be time needed for setup and then clean up when I’m done, so everything can be stashed away so the kids don’t get into it. I’ve got a ton of unpainted and half-painted minis for Imperial Assault, or even my copy of Fury of Dracula. At this point I’m not sure they’ll ever get finished.

Anime - for a time, my wife and I were great fans of anime and were up to date with most of the popular stuff. Those days are long gone. It’s been nice watching a few shows here and there lately, though. Again, we don’t really have the time to spend watching a lot of stuff, so at best we’d likely catch an episode or two of something a day during dinner or after the kids go to bed.

Video games - as with everything else on this list, there’s just not a lot of time available for me to play games. In the past few years, I’ve probably only finished maybe three games in a year? With some faffing about with a couple other games at most. This year might be a bit better, as I got through Gotham Knights, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and The Last of Us Part I already, with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor coming out on Friday, but still don’t expect a ton of video game play throughout the year.

Drawing - always been a sporadic hobby, with periods of feeling artsy where I’d draw a bunch, then it’d just stop and eventually cycle around. It’s been a while since I felt like drawing.

I guess that’s it? Way back when I practiced Kendo and Iaido, but stopped when my knees started bothering me, and I don’t see having the time to practice it regularly again any time soon anyway.

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Untappd has saved me from making the same mistake so many times. I also try so many different things since we have some great selections and breweries here in Georgia that it’s a good tool to go through my ratings and remember something I might be in the mood for.

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