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What are your non-tech interests/hobbies? 🏝

Gift Egwuenu on June 11, 2019

I've found that as developers/engineers we mostly spend our time working within tech be it a full-time job or side projects. But for optimal work-l...
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Amara Graham

I really like cooking and baking, but the more I think about it the more parallels I see to some of the tech things I do. Just like recipes can be hard to follow or understand, docs can too. If anything I think reading more recipes has improved my communication skills, particularly when my husband is like "wait... what's 'hand mix' or 'fold in'??"

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Gift Egwuenu

I never would have thought of it this way. I also enjoy cooking 😊

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Sarah Dye

I do lots of crafting. I make felt applique kits and cross stitch. I'm trying to learn crochet right now. I'm planning on trying to learn how to knit sometime in the future.

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Angela Whisnant

I teach crochet! Isn't it fun?! What are you working on?

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Sarah Dye

It is fun. Right now I'm focusing on trying to learn the basic stitches. I've only made coasters as well as the world's smallest cozy.

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Angela Whisnant

That’s great though! Keep practicing!

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Sarah Dye

Thanks! Feel free to share any tips or resources with me. Right now I'm using a guide to learn how to crochet and trying to watch YouTube videos. Do you have ideas for beginner crochet projects?

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Angela Whisnant • Edited

Here’s a great beginner project! All you need is some Peaches and Cream cotton yarn. ($1.89) @ Walmart) and a size H and G hooks. Let me know if you have any issues. Mug Rug

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Angela Whisnant

Here are some easy washcloths to try, as well! Have fun!
Dishcloth Pattern

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Angela Whisnant

One More! This is a youtube tutorial...super cute summer shawl! She also shows how to add fringe which should be useful for the mug rug pattern.
French Triangle Shawl

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Sarah Dye

Awesome! Thank you for all the project ideas. I'm going to definitely try these and see how I do. I especially am going to use the tutorial for the fringe on both the shawl and mug rug patterns.

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Yechiel Kalmenson

I'm a huge aviation geek!

I love everything about flying; I even took a few flying lessons but was never able to afford pursuing it all the way to getting my private pilot's license.

I'm hoping that now that my finances are getting in order I'll finally be able to go all the way! 🛩️

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Jonathan Kuhl • Edited

I went to college for flight operations but ran out of money because I couldn't land the stupid things. There was just something about landing I could not get down (pun semi intended?) so I never got to my solo. Moved on to another major after that.

Might try again some day, but it's expensive.

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Gift Egwuenu

Awesome! Yes you should go all the way.

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Dillon Greek

I rebuild cars and do custom work like old school pinstriping. I really want to start doing upholstery.

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Gift Egwuenu

I had to look up pinstriping and upholstery but great job. 💪💪

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Thomas Leathers

Gaming, visual art (varied), music creation, fiction writing, and crafts. definitely one of those creative types, i am.

The best thing about being so varied in the arts, and a gamer, is that i have an advantage in the realm of game development. :)

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Gift Egwuenu

Cool! Have you given that a head start? Game development that is

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Thomas Leathers

well, i do have a few games written in python (using pygame). including a point and click adventure game engine. Much of my games however, im yet to properly finish.

As a side note, i also have written games for SBTCVM, my ternary computer simulator. Writing games in your own programming language, using your own development tools, and your own architecture, is a rather complex endeavor. (SBTCVM, as you might guess, takes a lot of work to develop, hence why my game developing is slightly lacking.)

:)

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jibbi

I'm an avid quilter, i sell handmade dice bags on etsy, and I run!

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Nadine M. Thêry

I used to quilt a lot. I still love it, but it is a solitary hobbie. I have changed for board games now.

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jibbi

I play board games too!! What is your favorite?

I joined a local modern quilt guild and that has taken the solitary part of quilting out :D

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Nadine M. Thêry

So far my favourite is Power Grid, but we have more than 200 boardgames and it keeps changing hehe.

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jibbi

Power Grid is fun!! We have a bunch too. I think my favorites are Sentinels of the Multiverse, Ascension, Betrayal, Mansions of Madness, and Shadespire/Underworlds.

Do you go to GenCon or Essen or the like?

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Nadine M. Thêry

Nah, so far we are attending the Spanish events, only. It's quite expensive going to Essen for us. Maybe one year :)

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Oleksii Holub

I also do photography. I love that it has very little in common with programming. :)

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Gift Egwuenu

Yay Awesome! 😎 I know right it’s entirely different and I love it

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Oleksii Holub

Yep. What kind of photography do you do?

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Gift Egwuenu

Mostly street photography.

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Oleksii Holub

Mine is almost entirely travel photography. Do you post your work on instagram?

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Gift Egwuenu

Yes I do sometimes instagram.com/lauragift_/

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Evan Oman

Mostly out of necessity: parenting, home improvement + maintenance, landscaping, tree planting + removal, with some travel thrown in there.

Clearing unwanted trees has actually been really enjoyable, there is no better indication of a job well done than open space where a tree used to be. Also watching our apple trees grow has been fun.

If only it was just as easy to measure the quality of my professional output...

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Gift Egwuenu

Haha. This sounds cool and I can tell you enjoy it.

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Ben Halpern

Hiking!

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Gift Egwuenu

Pretty Cool 😎

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Alvaro Montoro

Reading and cross-stitching... because there’s nothing more relaxing than stabbing something a million times 😋

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Gift Egwuenu

Haha now that’s a definition of fun. 😋

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Nedy Udombat

Thinking about this made me realise that I really do a lot of things outside of software development, starting from playing soccer, to gaming, telling jokes, reading books(Dan Brown's collections, James Hadley Chase, etc), travelling, binge watching movies, cooking, swimming, listening to music, listening to people etc.

These things help me stay focused and see the world from a different perspective every single time

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ItsASine (Kayla)

Fountain pens and video games.

Right now, most of my pens are TWSBI 580s for the solid price to performance, but my main pens tend to be gold nibs.

Currently (re)playing Saints Row The Third since it's on Switch, Guild Wars 2 on Mac, and Fallout 76 on Windows.

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David Cantrell • Edited

I watch a lot of rugby (both codes) and cricket. I'm also a cricket umpire. I go to the theatre a lot - coupla times a month on average. I have a regular RPG session and also play Go. Most of my Go is online these days but I still occasionally play in in-person tournaments.

And I love cooking. I've cooked for pay in the past but didn't enjoy it, commercial cooking is engineering, it's all about reliably turning out a consistent product day after day and there's very little space for creativity.

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Jonathan Kuhl

I like to write, the problem is, I'm good at characters, small scenes, and dialogue, but have a hard time with plot. I have multiple ideas floating around and attempt NaNoWriMo each year (haven't won since 2014.)

I also do a lot of world building. I took a lot of inspiration from Tolkien, David Eddings, Robert Jordan for fantasy. And Mass Effect, Destiny, Star Wars, for Sci-fi.

Also like video games. The Mass Effect Trilogy is by far my favorite video game, hands down. I can't think of a single movie, book, game, TV show, etc that has elicited literally all of my emotions as well as the ME trilogy did. I laughed, I got angry, I . . . well . . . there was a lot of dust in my room for some reason at certain times that may or may not have coincidentally been sad or uplifting moments . . .

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Piotr Gaczkowski

Music, books, parkour. I guess that sums it up pretty nice. :)

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Luke Westby

Fighting the climate crisis!

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Jennifer Bradford

I play softball, like kayaking and hiking, surf fishing, reading, listening to music, and playing video games

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Gift Egwuenu

All of these are really cool 😎

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Jennifer Bradford

Thanks! 😊

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Florian Rand

Skateboarding, TV Shows, A simple park walk with a book (Love scifi novels) and gaming, not only computer games also tabletop games and rol.

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Igor Ilic

Anything good to recommend ? :)

I'm currently reading: "The Neanderthal Parallax"

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Florian Rand

I'm now with Willian Gibson novels, reading Bridge trilogy.

I have those in my reading queue, but too many books to read and so little time!

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Nadine M. Thêry • Edited

My boyfriend and I are so into modern boardgames that we even made a Youtube channel in Spanish for our reviews.
That is the way we have to do something together.
I also enjoy reading a lot.

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Gift Egwuenu

That is super cool!

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Leonardo Teteo

My hobby is principally read mangas, I have a big interest for Japanese culture, so this hobby includes learning Japanese!

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Mrwan Ashraf • Edited
  • Learning languages other than my native language ( Arabic ) and English, like Japanese, Finnish & Swedish.

  • Playing Electric guitar.

  • Writing Epic fantasy & sci-fi novels.

  • Digital drawing.

  • Playing basketball.

  • Doing Parkour.

  • Doing Aikido.

  • Watching Japanese/Chinese Anime.

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someDevDude

Paintball, gym and guitar

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Emediong Cosmas

Aside tech, I'm into music. I'm also an audio mixing and mastering engineer currently based in Akwa Ibom State.

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Gift Egwuenu

That is cool!

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Aneeqa Khan

Hi,

I usually do painting and drawing after my office. Other than that I do gaming

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Gift Egwuenu

Sounds great 👍

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Maria Zaitseva

I play keys and I like to sing, too.

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Desi • Edited

Traveling, biking, reading, blogging (not about tech), going to concerts!

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Eric Davidson

Crocheting and designing board games!

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Mirza

Open mics and walk

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Davide de Paolis

slacklining, hiking, bouldering, travelling (and making tons of pictures - and then making highquality photobooks) - of course reading books and listening to music ( mostly black death metal) .

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Fulton Browne

I really enjoy astronomy and reading history books.

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Jenny Le

Hi there!

I also enjoy doing photography. I see that you are into street photography! I've been trying to get into that. What is your setup and what are your favourite lens? :)

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Gift Egwuenu

Cool! I have a canon rebel t6i and I use both my kit lens and the 75-300mm lens for shooting also make use of my iPhone sometimes.

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Lars Klopstra ⚡

Music production! Behind my pc... 😝

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Gift Egwuenu

That is really cool! Drop some links I can check out 🙂

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Gift Egwuenu

That is amazing!! Great work you are doing 🙂

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Max (he/his)

Hello !!

In my case I do like sports, going to the gim, reading non-programming books, going out with friends. And finally, a little about music.

Regards

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Brian Fritz

I paint and ride long distances on my road bike when I'm not coding or sleeping or playing with my cat.

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Victor Mbamara 🇳🇬 • Edited

Music, when i'm not coding i'm playing my acoustic guitar or piano. So my life is basically music and programming. What a combo 😊

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Gift Egwuenu

That is nice 👍

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Dima Udod

Travelling and my hell-dog )

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Biodun Olayanju

My hobby outside tech is Taekwondo/martial arts and chess

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Gift Egwuenu

Nice! Black belt yet?

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Antonio Radovcic

🎸 👨🏻‍🍳 🧗🏽‍♀️

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Quentin Caillaud

Books, music, video games and roller derby !

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David J Eddy

Fox body Mustangs, travelling over seas, HO Scale trains, and strategy / space video games.

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Hunter Drum

Guitars, Marvel, Cars, and Gaming

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Steven Rockarts

Rock climbing, aerial straps, gardening and beekeeping. I'm all over the place!