Discovering a hobby: Space painting

Here is another hobby that is both pretty cool, and very easy to learn: Space/Speed painting.

Maybe you've already seen some street artists perform that?
They would grab a blank canvas, start spraying paint over it, throw various hardware on top,rub it with paper, spray it some more, and in less than 3minutes, bam! Revealing a wonderful modern looking painting of a space scene out of a seemingly black piece.

The images are pretty cool by themselves, and the ability to make them so quickly also looks great.
Guess what? This is actually pretty easy, with no prior art experience, and even if you never managed to draw anything before, like I do.
By learning and throwing together a small set of specific yet simple techniques, you can make endless variations of stunning scenes.

All you'll have to do to get into it the hobby will be to grab a reasonable set of spray paint cans and random hardware.
Interested ? let's go!

Cool gadgets you never heard about: alcohol blowtorches.

The goal of the blog is to show you new stuff you might have never seen before.
Apart from hobbies and projects, I will also sprinkle articles about low profile cool devices or technologies here and there.

My pick of the day is alcohol blowtorches. They date from somewhere between the time when the ominous flea market petrol blowtorches were a thing, and before everybody got cheap and easily accessible compressed propane.

Precise hot flame, no moving parts, from a fuel you can make at home even after the zombie apocalypse.

They're very elegant in construction and simplicity, and produce a nice roaring pressurized hot flame, using only alcohol as a fuel source.
They're suitable for a variety of jobs, including soldering, or scavenging electronics parts.

Quick cool projects: Matchhead rockets

This post will be about a very quick and easy "project" you can use as a past time: making matchead rockets.

It takes only minutes and basic household items you already have to get started, and you can spend as much time as you wish perfecting the process or actually firing said rockets.
It's also a lot of fun, lighting them, watching them take off, and chasing and putting out the various fires they will start when landing everywhere (just kidding, but be careful though, the risk is real).

Those tiny projectiles are made of full matches, or just match heads, rolled in aluminium foil, and fired from a thin wire base, by applying heat with a lighter.
Once you get good at making them, or find your own secret recipe, you can shoot those pretty far !

Perfect for rainy slow days, or to compete against your friends.

A quick pen and paper game: vector racing.

The following is a simple pen and paper game, that I spent countless hours playing at school.
It only requires a couple colored pens (but even a single one would do) and small grid paper.
I mostly played it 1 vs 1, but there is no theoretical limit to the number of players that can join the fun.

The whole game is about racing your way around a drawn track, that can be as simple or complicated as you wish. The game is based on a simple and elegant movement system that simulates acceleration and inertia, and will force you to find the right balance between going fast and still being able to take sharp turns.

It's low supplies count make it a perfect game to waste time at school, or play during boring moments when travelling.

Discovering a hobby: Furoshiki

Let's take a break from flashy or dangerous past times for this post, and focus on something more zen: the art of furoshiki.

Furoshiki is the Japanese art of wrapping things in simple squares of cloth, be it for transport, protection, decoration or as a gift.

Like many things Japanese, this is both very simple in essence,yet precise and nice to the eye. There are countless techniques to wrap differently sized or shaped object in the most aesthetically pleasant and practical way, while only using standard squares of decorative cloth.

You can use those techniques in your everyday life, to make bags, carry things, pack you lunch, or use this decorative wrapping form as a gift wrap.

It can also be useful if you're into camping, backpacking or survival, as it provides a nice way to store, carry or segregate items, without needing you to pack additional containers. The cloth itself you'll probably already have with you, and it will serve many other purposes while not in it's packaging form.

Discovering a hobby: Juggling begleri beads

Sooo. You liked the previous article about butterfly knife tricks. You got bit by the tricking bug (and maybe even by the knife itself). You now feel empty when there's nothing in your hands to play with along the day.

Unfortunately, flipping knives around is not really the most socially acceptable activity in most of places. It might not even be legal in many of them.

Worry no more (pun intended). There is a safe, discreet and accessible way to get similar sensations, that you can make right now and carry with you anywhere : Begleri beads.

02/11/2016 Update:
If you're not convinced, watch this cool tricks video on the topic:

Discovering a hobby: Butterfly knife (balisong) tricks

Most of you probably know of butterfly knives, also called balisong.

You've most likely seen some bad guy flipping them around in some 80's movie.

When I first laid my hands on one friend's knife many years ago, he quickly showed me the most common trick for opening it which I spent the afternoon trying to master.
Next time I saw him, I was the one showing how to do the dozen or so tricks I had learned or invented.

There is a huge online community dedicated to the love of those particular knives, and the many flashy tricks you can use to open, close, or just juggle them.

Flipping balisong is an impressive, not that hard, and only moderately dangerous hobby (well, it at least depends on you how much risk you're willing to take in learning any given trick).

In this article I will give you some leads on how to get into this very accessible hobby, that will surely impress your friends.

What is this blog about?

There are countless times when people get bored.

The Internet provides a nearly infinite source of entertainment, and many communities develop around more or less known hobbies.

However, it is often very difficult to discover new things, especially as most sites try very hard to tailor content to your habits or expectations.
That gets you caught in a bubble of familiar things that you never get out of and you never stumble upon new interesting things.

This blogs aims at featuring some of the lesser known, quick, fun or cool hobbies projects or experiments you might have never considered or didn't know existed.

I hope it helps you discover new topics or things to try, or maybe hobbies to pick up.
Be it for a rainy weekend project, or to fill your retirement time.

For each topic, I'll try to share with you a bit of background,a getting started, some essential or advanced references, and my personal feedback on it, because yes, I've personally done all of the things I will write about.

Not to spoil anything but, some of the topics we will cover over time will include:

- Badass past times such as, butterfly knife and Zippo tricks,whip making and cracking, knife throwing, fire eating and breathing, lock picking
- Craft and DIY past times, such as metalworking, forging, metal casting, knot tying, paracord stuff, mead and beer brewing, origami, electronics and radio, hydroponics or phography tricks
- Cool past times such as magic, escapology, building RC models and quadcopters, bushcraft and survival,making slings slinghsots,blowguns, hypnosis
- Old school games,past times or simple things or weekend projects,
- And some niche unknown past times such as as the ancient art of dorodango, juggling begleri beads, furoshiki or playing mumblety peg.

So if you are bored, a jack of all trades looking for your next hobby or an aspiring cool kid around the block, I hope you find something interesting in those pages.