Welp, CloudFlare and AWS have been knocked out yet again. Due to this corporate-mandated touching of grass time, I wonder what do y’all like to do offline? Computer-related activities still count, but I would love to hear your tech-free activities too!
I will kick things off. Of course, I love to play video games, that is a given. I’ve got plenty to speak on that but I’ll leave that for a different thread.
I am also a huge fan of literature of all forms. Books, magazines, comics, and zines all have a home in my little library. Whatever doesn’t fit, I get from my local library too! I tend towards Sci-Fi and Horror, but a good Superhero Comic doesn’t escape me either. A few all time favorites are Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, House of Leaves by Mark A. Danielewski, Good Game No Rematch by Mike Drucker, and Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta. Lot more to talk about this one too.
I also absolutely love film too. Unsurprisingly, I also tend toward Sci-Fi and Horror for my film taste, but I my film spectrum is pretty wide too. Similar to my book library, my home media library is quite large. Whatever I don’t have, I watch in local theaters or rent from a media preservation focused non-profit near me, among other means. All-time favorites for film are a bit harder to pick for me so I’ll skip on that for now, unless anyone else is particularly interested in film.
I’m excited to hear about your favorite things to do!
1 Like
I bought and still haven’t read House of Leaves… (thanks MyHouse.wad). I really should get to it… I used to hoover up sci-fi books but now it’s mostly short stories (I offline as many short stories as I can to read later like stuff from Clarkesworld and Lightspeed Magazine and some manga).
Me personally, I like just doodling. Sometimes while looking at pipes and wires and such and sometimes just starting with some random lines/shapes (helps to start with a dirty piece of paper) until you fill some space nicely. You can doodle while on public transit, or on vacation, or waiting for something to finish. It can be on small paper or large paper, or not paper at all. Any writing implement works, but a pen is ideal so you have to keep moving forward, nothing is a mistake it is just novel opportunities. It isn’t trying to be a representational drawing, there’s no expectation. It is just whatever comes out. I find it relaxing and expressive.
p.s. If you’ve never heard of or read Worm, I think it might be in your wheelhouse. It is a great mix of Sci-fi, Superhero, an occasional dash of Horror, and a lot of grit. It is also pretty darn lengthy but I promise it’s worth it if you enjoy it, it goes places. I’m sorry that this falls outside the “offline” scope unless you put in some extra effort to make it available offline (I eventually did so I could have a nice ereader version on my phone).
1 Like
MyHouse.wad is also why I ended up reading House of Leaves haha, although I had heard of it before.
I can’t get enough of Sci-Fi short stories either. I’ve recently (within the last couple years) read short stories from William Gibson, Martha Wells, and Olga Ravn. I also love crowdsourced works like Orion’s Arm and SCP.
I used to doodle a lot in school and during meetings. I feel like that’s changed now that I don’t have as much in-person meetings. I used to do it on the bus too but I eventually got fed up with the bumpy roads here. Now I mainly spend my commute time reading. I miss doodling a lot.
I have not. This looks awesome! I’ll check it out 
I’ll count it haha. I actually ended up finding an epub on Anna’s Archive so I might pop that into my ereader. Thanks again for the recommendation!
1 Like
Ooooh, I do love SCPs (some I have bookmarked are 354, 093, 294, 1983, 1322, 4001, 261, 342, 738, 1437, 1050, 3008) but I haven’t heard of Orion’s Arm before! Hard SF? Very cool, I’ll definitely give it a look! If you have any suggestions of some stories to start (or even SCPs), I’m all ears!
In particular, I enjoy playing board games a lot. My taste skews on the heavy end – so some of my favorites include games with very high weight (read: complexity) ratings on review site Board Game Geek like High Frontier 4 All, Kanban EV, and On Mars.
There are some simpler board games I really enjoy like Quacks of Quidlinberg, Pathwork, and Scout, but I definitely prefer the heavier, crunchier side of the hobby.
As for the classics, I also enjoy Go quite a lot. I don’t care much for Chess.
Will have to check out some of the hard sci-fi reccs in here, I LOVE hard sci-fi.
1 Like
Since @ZeikJT and @exodrifter were both interested, I highly recommend starting with the illustrated primer the Orion’s Arm folks have. It’s a great way to get started with the worldbuilding and they link introductory pieces for each of the topics they cover.
1 Like