Clearly, I have at least two significant interests. I invest extensive amounts of time to programming and technology in general. In addition, being behind the technical side of The VG Press points to being apart of the gaming community.
Both are true, yet neither can really be considered my hobby. They are two of many interests in my overall "hobby": to learn.
Over time I've made efforts to learn and practise this incomplete list of topics and skills: sketching, writing, baseball, bowling, chess, linguistics, music composition, piano, computer software, computer hardware, and gaming.
Some obviously have had more devotion, but that is mostly due to time restrictions. Of any defining characteristic, for better or worse, for me it has to be that I want to know everything; and when I say everything, I am quite serious.
Lou Gehrig's career batting average was .340. The first person to win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was John Carpenter. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicavolcanoconiosis is a condition of an excess of silica particles in the lungs. Pi to 40 digits is 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197. The higgs boson is a theoretical elementary particle often referred to as the "God particle" and its measurable detection and demonstration is one of the goals of the Large Hadron Collider.
Those are all recalled from memory. Do I have a reason to maintain any of that information? Other than for its own sake and my own self-satistifaction and demand, no.
From grade 8 onward, I specifically trained myself to learn in the truest sense, and not the broken version of learning suggested by the educational system. This meant an end goal of no studying for tests and no note-taking. Notes were a distraction from taking in the lesson, and if I needed to study then I hadn't learnt the material at all anyway.
Now, if you don't mind, I have to go look up the largest known star.
Both are true, yet neither can really be considered my hobby. They are two of many interests in my overall "hobby": to learn.
Over time I've made efforts to learn and practise this incomplete list of topics and skills: sketching, writing, baseball, bowling, chess, linguistics, music composition, piano, computer software, computer hardware, and gaming.
Some obviously have had more devotion, but that is mostly due to time restrictions. Of any defining characteristic, for better or worse, for me it has to be that I want to know everything; and when I say everything, I am quite serious.
Lou Gehrig's career batting average was .340. The first person to win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was John Carpenter. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicavolcanoconiosis is a condition of an excess of silica particles in the lungs. Pi to 40 digits is 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197. The higgs boson is a theoretical elementary particle often referred to as the "God particle" and its measurable detection and demonstration is one of the goals of the Large Hadron Collider.
Those are all recalled from memory. Do I have a reason to maintain any of that information? Other than for its own sake and my own self-satistifaction and demand, no.
From grade 8 onward, I specifically trained myself to learn in the truest sense, and not the broken version of learning suggested by the educational system. This meant an end goal of no studying for tests and no note-taking. Notes were a distraction from taking in the lesson, and if I needed to study then I hadn't learnt the material at all anyway.
Now, if you don't mind, I have to go look up the largest known star.
Yes, but are you good in the Humanities?
There is only one good, knowledge, and only one evil, ignorance. --Socrates
I'd call that more of a goal than a hobby.
I salute you. In an effort to help with your hobby/quest, here's blog i think will be right up your alley (somehow i think yarcofin might also appreciate it). you might already use it but in case you don't ... it is a great source of knowledge and information on a number of burning issues.
http://fuckcopyright.blogspot.com/