Despite having large amounts of art—which we’re starting to have framed and to put on our walls, now that we have more space and more money—C and I are looking at Emily Willoughby’s paleoart, which is mainly protoavians and related dinosaurs. One of hers might look good next to the shelf of biological and geological specimens.
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I too collect unframed and undisplayed art : /
This thread has caused me to look at fancy decks of playing cards, which tangentially caused me to look at Cribbage boards, and apparently I’m now collecting both of those things.
(I exaggerate slightly; however I will have noticeably more of these items than any normal person strictly requires…)
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Cameras.
Sigh…
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Likewise, but I found my interests were narrow enough that I stopped once I had “enough.”
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Enough?
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All the camera models I was interested in, all the lenses for them that I was interested in using and could find at sane prices.
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But surely that is the same as games?
Or are you a demigod of restraint?
Games rarely cost several hundred quid each, which for me helps aid the restraint considerably.
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I don’t really collect “stuff” anymore (outside of games), so at this point I guess the closest thing I collect are hobbies.
- I cook as much as I have time to do, and always like trying new recipes.
- I’m a weird coffee person and recently started re-mineralizing water to make better-tasting water for my coffee.
- I have a blog about 95% of the way ready to go, and just waiting for me to actually start writing
- I have a small-form-factor computer to turn into a router, some small unmanaged (and one managed) switches and a few wireless access points to completely refresh my home network. And a bunch of cable to make to rewire my living room.
- And just the other week I built a couple lye baths and an electrolosys tank to start restoring cast iron pans
- Oh, and I have a Discord Bot I’ve started writing to help me organize my weekly TTS TI:4 games. Nothing fancy at the moment, just generates a random list of factions based on player count, but I have plans for more.
The biggest issue is my complete lack of time for even one of these let alone all of them. Haha.
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I am also a weird coffee person 
I enjoy watching James Hoffmann on YouTube if you haven’t seen his stuff.
Please don’t remind me about the collection of Raspberry Pis I have strewn about my house 
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Looks around at kickboxing gear, climbing shoes, Arduino kit, recumbent bike, embroidery… 
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…RPGs, computer farm, 3D printer, books, beer, bicycle stuff…
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Do cats count? I’ve eight living with me indoors at the moment and another two wanting to come in!
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That is a lot of cats. Pretty sure you’re obliged to pay the cat tax and post some pictures 
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Already done in the thread here about member’s pets, Felix!
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Just did the tasting last Saturday. I love his videos.
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I hadn’t watched any of his stuff, and I watched three of his videos this morning (“The Perfect Pumpkin Spice Latte”, “$50 Bur Grinders”, and “1 year After, Weima vs Niche”).
They made my partner very, very angry. We’re tangentially coffee people (we French press in the morning, and it took me years to convince her to upgrade from a hand grinder to a Kitchenaid bur grinder), but our tastes are, obviously, nowhere near as refined as his. But what really upset her is the sense of casual entitlement… “Oh, this grinder here costs 500 pounds, which is about 200 pounds more than this other one, but if you’re making espresso every day…”
Dude. Come on. That upgrade in your grinder costs a week of my salary. The grinder itself is almost a month’s pay if I don’t eat, drink, or pay my mortgage. And does it make sense? Sure. I’m positive that if I had a thousand bucks laying around, I could 100% get a great grinder and it would make my life a tiny bit better. But hells alive.
That stated, I was more depressed by his videos than angry (although I understand her anger). I love watching people who are really into a thing. That’s why I like watching SU&SD. That’s why watching people who are passionate about books or biking or running or whatever is amazing… I love when people are really excited about something! Alton Brown and food, or Karl Dockstater and Indigenous Rights, or my English professor and Shakespeare… but the baked in entitlement in this guy’s coffee is… bitter? It’s a bit bitter.
Maybe I watched three videos I shouldn’t have? Anyway. I don’t want to yuck your yum, he seems really cool and if I ever met him I would 100% ask him to play Skull or Galaxy Trucker or something (while offering him our humble French Pressed, locally roasted coffee).
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Every now and again I’ll get really into tech videos/articles. Before long I have to stop looking at it, because it seems like as soon as someone is successful enough as a tech-content creator or site then they lose a sense of the value of the thing. Most people can’t afford to drop £1000 on a new phone/camera/laptop/whatever, but apparently these days a £500 phone fits into the “budget” market?
I think overall Hoffmann is actually not-bad. There are a few videos of his that are pretty out-of-touch but often he’s down to earth about the more reasonable options for coffee-making. He could do with some more videos for budget-friendly options, and while it’s nice to see him enthuse about the expensive options it’s frustrating when his conclusion is “it’s expensive but worth having” rather than “it could be worth having but it’s too expensive”.
My recommendation for person-who-is-actually-understanding-of-budgetary-concerns-even-though-they’re-successful-and-established is The Low Spec Gamer on Youtube, who is great for anyone with a low spec machine that struggles to play AAA modern-ish releases on PC. He seems to have a real enthusiasm for making computers accessible financially, which is cool.
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As I understand it, once one gets a bit of popularity it’s not too hard to get a bit of free stuff. At which point one’s natural reaction is probably “hey, neat thing” rather than “but is this really worth N hours at minimum wage”.
SU&SD and especially No Pun Included have made some very good points about this kind of question, and I think most good boardgame reviewers now actively disclose how they got the thing.
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