Other creative toys/products that come to mind would be, say, Play-Doh as a sort of children’s intro to…Clay, I suppose? But in this vein without being exclusively directed towards children (albeit I imagine many may be).
Always enjoyed a creative kind of toy to mess around with.
I still have my K’NEX
A ton of videogames fall into this category. Minecraft is probably the most well-known, but any game with a base building element is a quick hook for me.
While videogames are great, a hobby that dabbles with real things will stimulate you very differently. Touching stuff with your hands, the gap between what you want and what comes out of your work, the search for materials and techniques and other aspects of working with real stuff and not on predefined paths, will engage with your brain in a very different way.
Videogames and “real” hobbies (as in hobbies that use real stuff) are great together in my opinion, they complement and fuel each other.
If you are a technical person, videogames can give you things a physical object cannot do. Minecraft with BuildCraft was so fun, engaging and stimulating in creating automated factories
I love me some Minecraft, best $10 I ever spent, 11 years of free major updates so far and still going strong.
If you like the sandbox survival games Id recommend Medieval Dynasty, been playing this for the passed year, the survival part of it is pretty tame although you can adjust the setting to make it harder but I really like the village building / settler management aspect while still being a first person style game
I’m currently building a ship in a bottle. Though it’s a kit, not from scratch. But there is some micro-woodworking and painting needed.
I’m working on a wooden puzzle right now that’s a locked safe. The company has a bunch of neat products wood trick
Ah, that reminds me of some similar puzzle/kits made of metal! I’m forgetting the name for the specific one right now, but there appear to be a few different companies behind them from trying to search & find the one I was thinking of.
You mean Metal Earth? Though they are not the only ones who make those kinds of models but they are the ones that got me into it (for a few months)
That was the one showing at the top of my searches, but there was another company I was thinking of that I can’t recall nor find now.
Is it still like a regular puzzle? Like the same skill set?
It’s comparable to building legos.
3D printing and painting resin and game miniatures
Rock!
And!
Stooooone!
In the near future, when my son’s mother and I live in separate places, I will set up a ventilation system and get my Saturn back up. I have 4 years of minis from The Makers Cult to print
I’m happy to hear that you are using ventilation. It’s wild how many resin printer owners don’t.
More like terrifying. Its not a huge concern acutely, but once your immune system decides its a threat, you can’t work with it again.
Not to mention, who knows how much of it has formaldehyde and vinyl-chloride and whatever other VoCs mixed in.
Do you have any information on long term effects from the fumes? I have delved down that hole several times and can’t find anything conclusive. Most I’ve ever done across pertains to direct contact with the resin. Asking in good faith.
The biggest issue is that almost no UV resin comes with an MSDS. This becomes a concern because resins can include formaldehyde and other carcinogens. The respiratory irritation is similar to the skin contact - over time your body can just sta :nope fuck this and leave
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Yep. I’ve been 3D printing for about 5 years exclusively with resin and I’m lucky enough to have never gotten it on my skin directly, but I wear googles, an apron, and elbow length gloves, and I make sure to never work near the printer while it’s running, and I always let my washed prints rest for 24 hours before occupying the same space as them. Shit is nasty.
I like to fabricate things (metal) though I’m an utter novice. It just feels right to make something from scrap.
I never had LEGO, but when I was a little kid, my parents got me several Meccano kits (not these ones tho) and this electronic experimental kit
and, 20 years later I mess with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis.
I like making mini projects with Godot or Unity on the computer, or sometimes actually use my guitars or weird toy/synth instruments. 😁 Shout out to the Korg Monotron for getting me into all this!
I used to love Erector Sets. And blending them with LEGO and junk parts to make shit that did “something.” Now, I just work on diesels, drink whiskey and fish.
I’ve recently gotten into model building, in the sense of buying those sheets of pieces that need cut out and snapped or glued together. like this
The issue I have is that I’m not really into most of the things they make models of. Most model kits in this style tend to be classic cars, military vehicles, or anime/Gundams. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things, they’re just not particularly interesting to me.
But I can spend hours just browsing the model kits on websites like big bad toys
Playdate! It’s a little yellow handheld with a crank, but every unit is also a dev kit. Seeing your project come to life on the screen is a great experience.
I also occasionally write for fun
I do traditional woodworking as part of a medieval reenactment group. I also like games with basebuiling elements. Valheim, Minecraft, Ark, Conan Exiles, etc.
Kapla!
Not my creation, just a random image I found :)It’s mostly meant for my children, but I really enjoy building stuff with it when we’re playing together. It’s basically just wooden planks, but they’re very well proportioned and weighted. My favorite creation was a giant building balancing on only two planks.
Playdough if it’s the kind you can harden.
I’m kind of addicted to building computers. I have two desktops, a mini ITX PC, and I built my wife a PC. It’s a giant waste of money, but it’s so god damn fun.
Too bad nowadays building a computer is so much more simple and integrated.
In a lot of ways, yeah, it is. It’s a lot harder to fuck it up so bad you fry something. I do miss fiddling with little jumpers to get my hard drive and CD drive working on the same ribbon though.
The good ol’ days. I’m not old enough to have dealt with IRQs but it’s definitely a lot easier than it used to be
