“1:1 podcast with you as the guest”

Anyone can call me and say hi. We chat about anything you’re passionate about, pair program or… rant.

I’ve met a tonne of fascinating people this way. Another neat side-effect of that was filling my backlog with new project ideas (mostly thanks to rants).

Come and say hi! http://sonnet.io/posts/hi/

I used to collect catalogs when they were still paper based. I’d punch ‘order catalog’ into Google and find all sorts of weird manufacturers and retailers selling specialty crap.

Taxidermy supplies, figurines suppliers (from Hummel to Gundam), not to mention the tomes from electronics and engineering distributors like R.S, which are still available (usually at a fee).

Sure you can do it just browsing an ecommerce website, but it’s not the same.

I think I just liked seeing a snapshot of a specific industry’s craft.

I opportunistically go to random trade fairs when I’m travelling now - there’s always one or two in a given major city. Similar ‘snapshot of an industry’ experience.

Bouldering seems to be really popular amongst Software Engineers I know.

Taps into many things that Software Engineers typically like.

Walls often require problem solving as well as physical ability.

Walls are shorter than rock climbing walls (fast iteration cycles/“dev loop”)

Lots of different difficulties for a clear sense of progression.

Indoors (usually). Can be done solo.

I make math problems for Math Olympiads for kids, and bouldering feels similar. To build an interesting wall it must not be obvious, but it must be solvable. From time to time I fell in the rabbit hole of a YouTube channel that explain unusual solutions "Beta Break!" by Albert Ok: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsfWe31L6Quop7WDY7ky7... (Note: I only climb stair, and only if they are not too stepped :) .)

Every one of my coworkers who boulders gets injured (usually lightly) on a regular basis. After climbing (on a rope) for more than a decade, I've never had an injury.

Due to the fact you have to ramp up the per-move difficulty much faster on a bouldering problem as the grade increases, the chance per injury on any given move is much higher (e.g. if you chopped a bouldering-sized section out of a 5.12a, it wouldn't be that hard of a problem, but having to do 3-4x such problems in a row is much more grueling). The types of injury one gets from such intense exertion will impact one's ability to type too (e.g. finger pulley injuries, elbow injuries either in terms of the rotation of one's wrist or spraining if one does the typical "fall off the wall and put your hands behind you" thing I've seen on the bouldering wall).

> Can be done solo.

I'd argue this is a bug, not a feature. I've made so many great friends at the climbing gym by just asking people on the autobelays if they want to pair up for roped climbing (or joining an odd-numbered group of people to even it out), yet I see so many boulderers just silently do their thing with their airpods in.

For software engineers who don't get a lot of reps in social situations in the nature of our jobs, this is a very easy venue to learn to meet new people in a low-stakes situation.

injuries come from pushing the limits of your skill and physical fitness. an aggressive climber is much more likely to get injured on a bouldering problem, but you can still mess up your hands crimping on a toprope route you haven't trained for appropriately. you get to choose whether you want to be this person. I never "fall" on bouldering problems. I just climb down if I'm not confident I can make a dyno. I'll never tackle a V8 this way, but who cares?

as for the social aspect, I'd say that depends a lot on your local gym. the toprope area tends to be pretty packed where I go. people are either climbing or belaying; it's not a good place to stand around and chat. in the bouldering area, there's almost always an active conversation going about the newest problems. I find people are very open to a quick chat between problems.

Bouldering has to be the nerdiest sport. You spend most of your time sitting and problem-solving with intermittent short bursts of work, you can do it at any level of fitness, and there's no competition. I'm kind of surprised nobody has combined a math game with it yet, where as you climb you uncover numbers that tell you where the next hold is so you can't pre-plan your route.

I remembered coming across an interactive bouldering game a while ago, which used a projector to light up holds to create a custom problem each time. I couldn't find it with a quick search, but I did find this list of bouldering wall games:

http://www.canadarockclimbing.com/games.html

which includes 'Pointer', where a partner uses a broomstick to point out the next hold in the sequence just as the climber has reached the previous hold.

3D printing is a fun hobby that combines engineering skills with actual useful stuff. Just printed a set of tablecloth clamps for camping.

Speaking of, camping! Nice to get some fresh air and away from screens for a bit. And I love cooking over an open fire.

Speaking of, cooking! Once you get a little practice, you can really dazzle yourself and others with some delicious food. Especially when you realize that cooking is not actually as fiddly as it seems. Once you have enough experience under your belt to substitute and improvise and just throw something together the real fun begins. I recommend https://www.youtube.com/c/GlenAndFriendsCooking . Just pick a recipe and go for it, and Glen has very practical advice about exactly how unnecessary the fiddly parts of cooking are.

Other things I do: retro video games and related electronics projects (currently building a supergun to play arcade games at home), learn yo-yo tricks, read books, garden, play music.

Lack of hobbies isn't the problem. If someone would pay me a salary just to do my hobbies I'd be extremely happy.

I’d love to get into 3D printing, but the sheer amount of waste I’d produce is too much for me. I looked into recycling wasted filament into new filament, and all the reviews of different devices made it seem very hit or miss.

Is there a good way to not generate plastic waste and still get into 3D printing?

If you print things that you'd buy anyway the packaging would make up for a good bit of waste plastic.

I got into 3D printing miniatures and statues and stuff during the pandemic. Spent one of the stimulus checks on a good resin printer, was astounded by the quality. Then realized the filament printers were a better idea for some prints and bought 3 of them.

Then I wanted painted stuff, so I bought some cheap store paints, they were okay so I bought some hobby paints which were excellent. It really wows people instead of getting them some cheap present for Christmas printing them a cool statue and painting it up.

Another thing is that 3D printers are still very hacker ish so for me another fun part was analyzing what upgrades were actually functional and helped me print faster/more accurately and only doing those upgrades. This includes software side like compiling your own open source firmware and integrating a general purpose CPU in a Raspberry Pi to do the gcode processing. It’s a good way to do low stakes configuration and compiling of software so it’s something I’m capable of as an SWE and it’s fun to tinker with since the worst that’ll happen is I’ll have to reformat my printer.

I mostly just dabble in a bunch of things. I started by looking at what classes are offered in my city, and started signing up for random ones. So far, I've done some leatherworking, metalsmithing, weaving, archery, bike repair, American sign language, etc. I also cook a decent amount, and am always trying new recipes. Trying to add fermenting and preserving to the list this summer. And I've recently reached out to an instructor for guitar and singing lessons.