I figure this is a good way to get to know the guys here, so lets talk about our hobbies. Pics are awesome as well.

In my case, some xbox time but mostly photography and firearms related stuff. Thankfully photography and guns can mix.

3277953 Those are some awesome pictures!

Writing is my main hobby. Also drawing.

Examples of my writing are right here on the site.

Here's a couple of my drawings:

And one painting:

Sewing and crafting used to be hobbies, but they kind of turned into my job.

3277953

I write stories. I also read stories.

I'mma boring pony fan.

Oh. I suppose I'm decent enough with Photoshop, too. I try to make all of my own cover art out of captures from the show. I've gotten better over time. An example of one for an upcoming fic:

The gold thing is supposed to be a either a wedding ring or a picture frame. I'm not sure which, or if it might represent both.

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Pretty!

3277991 Thanks! Photoshop is still one skill I totally lack.

3277953 Well other than my writing and reading (yes I'm a bit of egghead) I do pretty good at all kinds of games on my PS3, and I've played D&D off and on for twenty years.

3278274 Hey, you still can't beat DnD these days. Unless it is 4.0. Then there should be much beating of people with cludgels and D20 maces

3278276 Wow you're very blunt aren't you? I prefer swords and longbow myself, but that's just me.

3278289 Sometimes I'm usually pretty laid back, but today is kind of poking at my nerves. Another day with a migraine due to a brain tumor. *shrug*

Like I said though, I am generally pretty well laid back. Don't mind me.

3278293 Hey I had to go to the Grocery store today, so I'm usually a frayed mass of nerves when that happens. Not today though.

3278298 Oh don't remind me. I have to brave walmart for groceries tomorrow. *shudders*

3278302 Oh shit man that's what I did today, worse yet I've got to do my laundry this week too.

3278309 Thankfully the missus covers that and dishes. Apparently I can't do them to her OCD standards

3278310 I have to my own laundry and the dishes. And pay the bills too.

3278315 If I knew how much bills would suck, I would have done my best to stay a teenager. Upside is that if I want to spend the $20 and order pizza I don't have to check with my parents

Eh, mixed bag with the whole getting old bit I guess.

3278316 Indeed right you are Arxsys.

3277953
Woodworking. I have twenty-seven doors before my kitchen cabinets are complete.

3278365 *whistles*

What router/table saw setup are you running with that, wood, etc?

3278367
Bosch table top set up. Not too precise, but good enough. Got a nice copping sled though, simple because I like my fingers. Delta Unisaw is the big boy in the (small) shop.
Cabs are maple with pre-finished maple ply, 3/4 for the box and 1/2 for the door panels. Little bits of cherry trim on the wall cabs, not much. Everything is simple design, nothing fancy at all, since this is my first and probably only cabinet project.

3278384 Either way, it sounds like a fun project. I miss owning a house. The missus and I sold ours last October and (to be honest) learned that apartment living kind of sucks. Cheaper but neighbors suck.

I do miss my rifle range though.

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Every time I have to sign a check for yet another unexpected event, I dream of living in an apartment. Grass is greener syndrome, eh?
Rifle range: über cool. Last time I had a "rifle range" was a twenty footer for a BB rifle when by bro and I were kids. He has one on his farm now with a nice shooting bench and everything.

3278418 Yup, we were looking at bills and told ourselves it would be cheaper to live in an apartment where I could walk to work. On paper, it is but in reality it is more of a "break even" thing in our case. Heating fuel and electric are insane in Alaska. Nearly $5 a gallon for #1 diesel in winter and we'd burn ~500 gallons per winter

Yup, outside of city limits in Alaska you can do damn near whatever. Used a bulldozer to make a berm at the end of our extended driveway to give me a 75 yard range. Just had to take a folding table outside to shoot off if I wanted. Neighbors would come over on occasion to shoot as well. Upside to 98% of the population being gun owners.

I make music when I'm not making music at work. Spending time with my family is also a priority. Writing and drawing are pretty far down the totem pole in what I do, but it's a lot of fun learning a different medium. Added bonus: it's good for you.

3282657 You have some great music there. I especially liked your version of Smile, Smile, Smile. (It's one of my favorite songs to begin with.)

3282687
Thanks a bunch. It's also one of my favorite songs. I rarely have time to do those arrangements. Been wanting to do Winter Wrap Up for a while, but haven't yet carved the time to do it. Maybe in the next few weeks. All those arrangements have matching sheet music and tabs, if there are any other guitar players in this group who might be interested. Watch out for that "Becoming Popular." That song's tough.

3277953

Writing and drinking.

Alcohol collecting is probably closer to the truth, but it wasn't as funny...

3282657
Oooh, you were on the Seeds of Kindness albums, I have those
I always had a vague aspiration of learning to play music, but never did anything about it, until I started listening to pony fan music. Seeing all those other fans making awesome music convinced me to finally get started practicing the flute last summer, so I could play pony songs with sheet music from Everypony Sings.

3277953

Videogames.

Part of me feels that it's not appropriate to talk about the fact that I've been a gamer my whole life, not in a forum that's aimed at older users. The thing is, I'm getting to the point where I've realized that all my favorite games are fifteen years old, and I'm consistently frustrated with kids who haven't even heard of games that were big when I was a teenager.

I recently spoke to a forumgoer who talked about Portal the exact same way I would talk about Doom or Wolfenstein 3D. My initial reaction is that the game came out during the seventh console generation, which has just now come to a close. Then I think about it, and realize that the game is seven years old. I was still in my twenties (29 now) when it came out, but the teenager I was talking to would have been younger than ten.

The fact that time seems to be speeding up is evident by how I perceive time between games. Games that came out in the mid and late nineties seem like they're eons apart in my mind, but games that came out a decade ago, feel as if they came out yesterday.

It's still in my blood, but I've come to a point where I only spend time on a few titles per year, due to time and money. All my efforts are poured into writing, these days. My current obsession would be, 'The Last of Us.' Anyone who wants to see an example of what good storytelling in a video-game looks like, should definitely check it out.

Drawing

I've been found of expression my imagination through drawing since I was a little kid. I've always drawn in spurts, I'd get into a kick where I'd draw and try to develop the skill, and then I would stop for a while.

I thought about launching a web-comic for a long time, and practiced a great deal, but I've always had a problem with consistency, and I still haven't gotten past the learning curve of digital art; I would like to eventually learn to clean up and color my drawings in Gimp. While I still plan on writing the story, I've since decided against a web-comic.

I haven't drawn in three years. I've bought a scanner, and I plan on scraping the rust off so that I could do my own covers.

Not being sober.

I drink quite a bit, which isn't the healthiest of 'hobbies.' I might as well admit to toking as well, while I'm at it--at least that doesn't make me feel like I've been run over by a truck the next morning, and I have less to answer to on Facebook.

I'm mostly asocial, but I do like to sit around a bonfire and chat with certain people

There's also just me sitting at home with my brother, watching PMV's and other things.

Writing.

Do I really have to explain this? Aren't most of the people here, writers?

Long story short, I've been writing sporadically since high-school, but I've learned more in the last year and a half, than all of them combined.

Undeserved praise for my crappy self-insert short-stories fueled my delusions of grandeur, making me think that I was capable of writing novels. I gave up for now, but started in with fanfiction at the tail-end of 2012.

3287156 I grew up gaming too. I used to play Pitfall on our Atari when I was like six! Though the first game I really loved was Legend of Zelda, and I didn't start really playing seriously until I discovered Final Fantasy II. I kind of stopped gaming later on though. The Final Fantasy series got pretty stale after IX, and western RPGs frustrate me, I mostly just die and accomplish nothing. *sigh* Though I did REALLY love watching my SO play through Bioshock Infinite recently. That's a heck of a trip.

3287411

In the new Luna-contest thread, you made it sound as if your familiarity with gaming was zero. A Legend of Zelda fic would have had a huge audience, it's probably been done quite a bit, however,

Your a bit older than me, so while you started with an Atari, I started with an NES at about the same age. Damn laughing dog. Stupid mega-hard Ninja Gaiden . . .

Coincidently, FFIX, happens to be my favorite game in the series. I also enjoyed FFX, but I digress. I still haven't started on my FFVIII Luna-fic. I've got a lot going on right now, and I'm not sure if I'm as interested in contests as I was, at least at this point.

As for western RPGS, I used to watch my father and stepbrother play through Arena and Daggerfall (early Elder Scrolls) As a kid, I was amazed at how open the worlds were, but everything (NPC's, buildings, places, quests) are randomly generated, as opposed to the hand-crafted locales, characters, and quests of a typical JRPG.

The first western RPG that I truly enjoyed, at least since my days play Daggerfall, was Fallout 3. The scope of the world is technically less than the Britain-sized Daggerfall . . . but nothing is randomly generated! Exploring the ruined DC area is just indescribable. You see a tower or a barn on the horizon, investigate, and find people there.

It's kind of difficult getting started on a game like Skyrim, or Fallout 3. It can get boring fast if you don't wander off somewhere as soon as possible. Games like this are completely backwards in comparison to JRPGs. I would suggest abandoning the short main quest, and going off to find people to give you side-quests; that's where the real meat potatoes is.

Im a fan of Bioshock 1 and 2, but despite waiting for it for year, I have not picked up Infinite yet. I've already been spoiled on the ending, and I'm I not one for endings like that. though, The Last of US had a bitter-sweet ending and It left me absolutely enthralled with it's story.

Sometimes I wonder if entire life is my hobby. I've always had this habit of doing a thing for a while and then moving on to something else. I tinker. I've got a collection of model trains (most of which I took apart just to see how they worked), a pile of electronics, a pile of computer parts that I sometimes rummage in and make things from... there's four or five raspberry pi's that I've turned into various things.

I like projects. Right now my project is a jeep I bought a little while back. It's in pretty good condition, and I aim to fix that.

3287469

In the new Luna-contest thread, you made it sound as if your familiarity with gaming was zero.

My interest in writing about ponies playing games is zero. I also am not a "gamer".

I haven't "gamed" since the 90s. I don't even own a console. The only games installed on my computer are the ones that came with Windows. Gamer Luna isn't part of my headcanon, and I don't generally care for gaming crossovers. I have some vague thoughts about a Zelda crossover I'd like to do someday, but it centers around Twilight. (And has sat in my idea file for over three years now, so it's probably not going anywhere.) So having a contest that's restricted to a category in which I like maybe five things total, across my entire life, with most of those being older than half the people on this site... (I mean yes I guess it's more than five since I played Pitfall and Tetris and so on, but they are not exactly crossover material, not unless you're just doing trollfics/jokefics, which I don't do.) I'd never even heard of the games that people were suggesting as ideas. The whole thing utterly failed to capture my interest in any way.

3288872

Oooh... Twilight Princess is... Twilight Sparkle!

"Hiya!"

"Would you stop doing that?! I may be a pony, but I am not your steed!"

3289047 See, this is why I say I'm not a gamer. I... know that Twilight Princess was a Zelda game? But I never never played it.

I haven't played any Zelda games after Majora's Mask, and I only played that one a tiny little bit, so really I've never played past Ocarina of Time. (Okay, I tried to play Phantom Hourglass once, but got stuck in that stupid time temple pretty early on.)

3288872

I suppose that I was a little to gun-ho about contests at the time. Since no prompt (someone else's idea) would fit into my own plans, I had decided if something even remotely looked like something I could write about it, I would try to find a way to turn the prompt into something that would interest me.

I wasn't really interested in the prompt at first either, but for different reasons. I don't like the idea of that kind of technology being available in Equestria. I'm also not quite as fond of 'goofy' Luna as others seem to be.

Part of me is starting to warm up to the idea of Luna being thrust into the role of a game character by Discord, but another part of me things that I might be better off spending my tim on other things.

3289047

I'm not a huge LOZ fan, but Twilight Princess would be my favorite in the series. I love it's dark art design. After seeing that, I'm not too fond of Skyward Sword.

I haven't actually played it, but my brother has (much bigger Zelda fan, even has a Triforce tattoo.) We were sharing a computer at the time, and I wanted more time to write, so no complaints from me about scarce spending money being spent on a few games.

It's kind of neat, using the WII-mote for the sword. It's kind of ironic that they made Link a righty in that game. My brother is a lefty.

If Twilight is Link, then Spike is Midna. Then again, I think the title actually refers to Midna, so it might be reversed.

3287120
Everypony Sings is a great site and the people who run it are wonderful. Glad to hear you've picked up an instrument. Flute is a beautiful instrument. Hope you're having a lot of fun.

3291684
It is great fun I'm also thinking about picking up the violin/fiddle. I love me some fiddle.

3293460
You totally should. Violin is a blast. Be patient with that vibrato, though. It's tricky.

3293465
I have a vague notion that learning the violin is supposed to be fiendishly difficult even by the exacting standards of learning to play any instrument. Maybe that's wrong, for all I know. But that, along with "I have room for a flute in my apartment, anything bigger is less certain" is part of what made me start with the flute: I figured if I could get that to work, I might try other things as well. And while I'm still a beginner, I have in fact gotten the flute to work, to the point where I can play the Failure Song and the This Day Aria, and feel that I've achieved something

3293465
Okay, that took a couple months longer than I had expected, but I just had my first violin lesson ^^ the instructor thought I did very well for the first time, and now I can start practicing at home this is gonna be a blast.
I'm also going to start getting flute lessons again. Suddenly I'm musical.

personally, i collect and play roleplaying games, and i have two full bookcases of RPG books, as well as a lot of dwarven forge stuff (I backed both kickstarters) and a lot of pathfinder battles minis.

i also read a lot of scifi and fantasy novels, play video games, and watch a few specific TV shows (MLP:FiM, Dr Who, Red Dwarf). of these, its MLP that does not have an official RPG yet, although i have seen several fan versions on the web.

now that i think about it, its a pity that there isnt a red dwarf/MLP crossover yet. theres just so many options for that kind of an idea- a theme park world of wax robots? or genetically engineered ponies? or just falling through into another universe where there are ponies? it would be easy to build angel as an evolved rabbit in the rpg rules though, they already know what kind of jerk he is too!

3922085 - there's a Red Dwarf RPG? o.O

yes there is! its published by Deep 7 in 2003, and i got my copy on sale from Pazio.

http://despotmedia.com/deep7/?p=149

characters can be human, holograms, 2 kinds of mechanoids, wax droid, cat, dog, rabbit, rats/mice, iguana, simulant, pleasure gelf, kinitawowi, or make up your own. they even have stats for playing talky toaster.

really, most popular settings get an RPG at some point, the issue is that many of them are very very obscure. Gurps has rules for the most different settings ive seen, everything from star trek and conan to uplift and riverworld. even horseclans and war against the Chtorr got gurps books.

I used to game, but since I only have so many hours in the day, I'd rather write instead. (I still watch game-play videos because guys like Jackcepticeye and Yatzee Croshaw are funny.) (Freeman's Mind is a hoot, too.)
Since my fun-time budget's gotten some hits, I haven't spent my bits on anything more pricey than MP3s, but when things mellow out next year, I'm going back to puttering around with super-sculpy and make figures from my stories. (It's a bit like the neat art that SPark makes for her(?) stories.)
I also plan to go back to collecting MechWarrior figures. I used to have a ton of them before my life-implosion and I've always had a soft spot for silly, gangly, impossible-in-real-life-but-still-fun robots.

3922320 - hmmmm, I never really saw Red Dwarf as any kind of a universe before, for me it was always just a sitcom. I think ponies would have to be genetically engineered horses, possibly originally created as girl's toys but which became too problematic for humanity to handle and too cute to kill, so they'd have been sent away to their own planet (or psymoon) ;)

3923079 I'd read that. (And I need to watch more Red Dwarf, I've only seen a few episodes.)

3925934 - you should. :) But keep in mind that Red Dwarf has a turbulent production history and changed course a LOT from series to series, so if one episode looks absolutely nothing like another one, that's the reason why. :)

3925934

I would also add that the Red Dwarf version of Equestria would be an idyllic paradise, which will be promptly ruined when the Red Dwarf crew arrive, whether they mean to or not. ^^