Any less than usual hobbies?

[Bellend Sebastian]

39 minutes ago, lifted*fox said:

 

I always liked the idea of keeping tropical fish. 

 

The guy we used to pick weed up off when we were kids used to have so many tanks and they were all these amazing colours and stuff.

 

BUT - there's something about watching little fish swim about with poos hanging off them that just... ruins it for me. 

 

They're all pretty and vibrant and then there's just a poo following it about.

 

I feel like I'm looking at the fish when it'd rather have some privacy.

 

Reminds me of a time we stayed in a hotel in Berlin and the toilet was only sectioned off from the room with a glass window. Trying to have a big poo whilst your missus is sat on the bed watching TV in full view is weird.

 

I guess that's how the fish feel. 

Here's some exciting news for you then. I know exactly what you're talking about - a resplendent guppy with a tod the length of its body trailing along behind it.

 

But GET THIS. Something must have changed in fish food manufacturing as since I've started keeping them again about 5 years ago, I've not seen a single stringy turd. Now they're tiny, dark coloured things that you only actually notice in the bag you bring them home in. The stringy fish shite has gone the way of white dog poo, it would seem

[Finnegan]

2 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Here's some exciting news for you then. I know exactly what you're talking about - a resplendent guppy with a tod the length of its body trailing along behind it.

 

But GET THIS. Something must have changed in fish food manufacturing as since I've started keeping them again about 5 years ago, I've not seen a single stringy turd. Now they're tiny, dark coloured things that you only actually notice in the bag you bring them home in. The stringy fish shite has gone the way of white dog poo, it would seem

 

This is easily one of the top five best foxes talk posts of the year. 

[lifted*fox]

1 minute ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Here's some exciting news for you then. I know exactly what you're talking about - a resplendent guppy with a tod the length of its body trailing along behind it.

 

But GET THIS. Something must have changed in fish food manufacturing as since I've started keeping them again about 5 years ago, I've not seen a single stringy turd. Now they're tiny, dark coloured things that you only actually notice in the bag you bring them home in. The stringy fish shite has gone the way of white dog poo, it would seem

 

Another type of shit never to be seen again, retired to the history books. 

 

I wonder how long it'll be until we just don't poo at all anymore. 

 

That'll be a fine day.

 

Using toilet paper is something that annoys me on a daily basis. How have we not come up with a better alternative in the year 2017? 

[Kalacs_Orthopedic_Shoe]

Here's some exciting news for you then. I know exactly what you're talking about - a resplendent guppy with a tod the length of its body trailing along behind it.
 
But GET THIS. Something must have changed in fish food manufacturing as since I've started keeping them again about 5 years ago, I've not seen a single stringy turd. Now they're tiny, dark coloured things that you only actually notice in the bag you bring them home in. The stringy fish shite has gone the way of white dog poo, it would seem

Likewise, I had 400 guppies at one point in a Goliath of a tank a mate gave to us. Never say a single string in 4 years. Packing last of them off to new homes this month as buying a house and just had a little girl, so need room. Will be missed, pot lots of pleasure out of it

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[Buce]

1 minute ago, lifted*fox said:

 

Another type of shit never to be seen again, retired to the history books. 

 

I wonder how long it'll be until we just don't poo at all anymore. 

 

That'll be a fine day.

 

Using toilet paper is something that annoys me on a daily basis. How have we not come up with a better alternative in the year 2017? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Kalacs_Orthopedic_Shoe]

A temporary hobby that I'd like to try again: following the FA Cup through from Extra Preliminary Round to Final, picking a match to attend in the Extra Preliminary Round, then following whoever wins each round.
 
I tried it twice before and had a great time, but aborted it: first time because my partner had a serious accident, second time because Coalville Town were too good.
Ended up in all sorts of weird and wonderful places I'd never visit otherwise: Belper, Market Deeping, Willenhall, Liversedge, High Wycombe, Scunthorpe.
I'd turn up a few hours early with a camera, have a wander around, take a few photos, neck a few pints (was still drinking then), then enjoy the match - often with a great atmosphere in those early rounds, where the FA Cup hasn't been ruined.
 
98-99: For 1st Round Proper, had a trek up north of Newcastle for Bedlington Terriers (small even for non-league) v. Colchester.
The Terriers thrashed them 4-1, and were taunting the Colchester fans by chanting "Have you got your Asda bags?" (ground was next to Asda and they had some Asda free gift pack for fans)
Here we go: 
 
 
04-05: Decided to start at Coalville as it was their first ever time in the FA Cup, expecting them to be out within a round or two.....but they won through 6 rounds, only losing 0-1 at Wycombe in the First Round Proper (late Roger Johnson header).
Couldn't bring myself to continue after that.
 
 

This is a brilliant exercise, fair play mate. Always fancied a bit of ground collecting when I'm older. I've lived outside of Leicester since I was 12, so only been away a handful of times with City and my list is poultry!

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[Bellend Sebastian]

2 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

This is easily one of the top five best foxes talk posts of the year. 

It's going to transform the world of fishkeeping. Right now loads of FTers are heading off to their local aquatic retailer shouting over their shoulder to their confused partner that they're going to buy a fish tank and then their partner shouts after them 'but what about the stringy chods?' and then they shout back 'go on the hobbies thread on Foxes Talk' and then they do and suddenly it all makes sense

[Buce]

2 minutes ago, Kalacs_Orthopedic_Shoe said:

Likewise, I had 400 guppies at one point in a Goliath of a tank a mate gave to us. Never say a single string in 4 years. Packing last of them off to new homes this month as buying a house and just had a little girl, so need room. Will be missed, pot lots of pleasure out of it

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk
 

 

A few guppies wouldn't have made much difference...

 

[lifted*fox]

3 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I've been sitting on it forwards and using it to wash my balls. 

 

In all seriousness though - surely that'd absolutely soak the **** out of your under-carriage blasting left over bits of poo everywhere.

[SpacedX]

8 minutes ago, lifted*fox said:

Using toilet paper is something that annoys me on a daily basis. How have we not come up with a better alternative in the year 2017? 

Custom made? Limited choice though.

 

http://www.midlandsmemorabilia.com/premier_league_football_rivals_toilet_paper.html

 

In the meantime you'll have to make do with this -

 

 

[Finnegan]

5 minutes ago, lifted*fox said:

 

I've been sitting on it forwards and using it to wash my balls. 

 

In all seriousness though - surely that'd absolutely soak the **** out of your under-carriage blasting left over bits of poo everywhere.

 

The first time you press the bum wash button is the most terrifying and suspenseful moment of your toilet life. 

 

Then you feel a sensation that will almost certainly make you laugh out loud, squirm then go "oooh..." and feel somewhat conflicted. 

 

10/10 would violate self again. 

[lifted*fox]

3 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

The first time you press the bum wash button is the most terrifying and suspenseful moment of your toilet life. 

 

Then you feel a sensation that will almost certainly make you laugh out loud, squirm then go "oooh..." and feel somewhat conflicted. 

 

10/10 would violate self again. 

 

You'd never get me off the thing. 

 

Wife: "What you doing? You've been in there 30 minutes!"

 

Me: "Nothing."

 

Real Me: Wanking on the bidet.

[Samilktray]

25 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

The first time you press the bum wash button is the most terrifying and suspenseful moment of your toilet life. 

 

Then you feel a sensation that will almost certainly make you laugh out loud, squirm then go "oooh..." and feel somewhat conflicted. 

 

10/10 would violate self again. 

I'm crying

[Stadt]

Reading this has made me realise how boring and ordinary I am. I’m really into football which isn’t unusual at all on a football forum but I’m especially into tactics and I can see myself getting into coaching one day - the trouble is I’m horrifically lazy and self-centred.

Recently I’ve started reading up on football analytics too which is probably more of a niche but still quite a large community of professionals and I guess hobbyists. 

The fan scene and culture is really interesting as well, I’d love to go to a few Buenos Aires derbies. The noise, colour, atmosphere and how it varies globally is fascinating.

[urban.spaceman]

3 hours ago, Buce said:

I write short stories.

 

 

3 hours ago, lifted*fox said:

Any particular style / theme or whatever you feel like at the time?

 

I've thought about doing some creative writing but I dunno. Whenever I read a really good novel I always wonder about the creative process for writing something so long. Planning it all out, keeping it on track, padding it out, etc. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Buce said:

 

Science Fiction/ Fantasy.

 

I get most of my ideas when I'm high, tbh (top tip: keep a notepad beside you at all times).

 

I write screenplays. Well, OK, I've written 3 (so far... another 3 in the pipeline), but the whole writing process is fairly long-winded and really, really enjoyable. Everyone has a different process - I keep all my notes on my phone - everything that makes me laugh or any idea that pops into my head I write it down then try and incorporate it into a general story idea. For example, I have about a thousand notes on my phone app, some of which are about 10 pages long, just with ideas, lines, gags, scenes, set-ups etc.

 

I let these ideas percolate over time, and once I'm ready to start writing a script I'll do a digital detox; I'll go out and about in cafes/pubs, outlining in a notepad by hand maybe 2-3 times, before reproducing those outlines in Final Draft. Then I'm ready to begin - I expand on each point in the outline until it's looking more and more like prose, then I separate each part into what resembles scenes. Then in come the scene headings. And then I start writing the dialogue. If you've done all the hard work on your characters and scenes then the dialogue comes quite naturally. It takes me about 2 months to go from blank page to a finished first draft screenplay.

 

This process might be long but it works for me. I developed the process after doing a course at the Phoenix, which really helped. 

[The Fox Covert]

6 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

I enjoy researching family history. Not an unusual hobby.....for a female pensioner (was going to say that even before Carl's post!).

 

I find family trees of limited interest. What I do enjoy is all the life stories and the reasons for people's life trajectories ...

 

Uncovering hair-raising stories is part of the fun....

I did this some years ago. I found not-that distant relations who have a bi-annual meetup in Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire, where my father's side of the family originally came from.

I have a 2x great uncle who was a well-known plant collector who made several successful expeditions to remote parts of Japan and south-west China. He was one of the first Europeans to visit south west China and maybe it wasn't the best plan of his employers, Veitches of Kew Gardens, to send a six foot man with red hair and a beard there. The Chinese associate red hair and beards with the devil and he was lucky to escape with his life, but his pioneering expedition did blaze a trail followed by other well-known plant collectors like Ernest Wilson.

I have a 3x great grandfather who was a civil engineer who built a long stretch of the Great Northern Railway, as well as other canals and railways. He was killed by being thrown from his horse while inspecting work on the Dutch Rhenish Railway in 1854. Quite likely, had he lived longer he would have become very wealthy and my family's life pattern would have been very different. With no employer insurance or social security, his family were rescued by his brother who owned a shop in South London. The ten children mostly ended up in bread-and-butter jobs, the girls generally in service and boys as tradesman and labourers. My great great grandfather ended up working in an iron foundry.

I also have a more remote branch of the family who escaped from religious persecution and went to the fledgling United States. As a result I am distantly related to Merle Haggard and Richard Nixon (ulp!).

People used to do unusual things to make a living. My Yorkshire great-great grandfather was a farmer who had an apparently unpleasant sideline - he made sulphuric acid in one of the barns on his farm.

Career changes were also nothing unusual. Yorkshire great-grandfather, who actually lived in Lancashire most of his life but never lost his Yorkshire brogue, started out as a farmer but branched out into the building trade and built hundreds of houses in and around Accrington and Burnley, many of which are still standing today. He also owned a cotton mill at one time.

[Alf Bentley]

On 11/3/2017 at 18:43, The Fox Covert said:

I did this some years ago. I found not-that distant relations who have a bi-annual meetup in Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire, where my father's side of the family originally came from.

I have a 2x great uncle who was a well-known plant collector who made several successful expeditions to remote parts of Japan and south-west China. He was one of the first Europeans to visit south west China and maybe it wasn't the best plan of his employers, Veitches of Kew Gardens, to send a six foot man with red hair and a beard there. The Chinese associate red hair and beards with the devil and he was lucky to escape with his life, but his pioneering expedition did blaze a trail followed by other well-known plant collectors like Ernest Wilson.

I have a 3x great grandfather who was a civil engineer who built a long stretch of the Great Northern Railway, as well as other canals and railways. He was killed by being thrown from his horse while inspecting work on the Dutch Rhenish Railway in 1854. Quite likely, had he lived longer he would have become very wealthy and my family's life pattern would have been very different. With no employer insurance or social security, his family were rescued by his brother who owned a shop in South London. The ten children mostly ended up in bread-and-butter jobs, the girls generally in service and boys as tradesman and labourers. My great great grandfather ended up working in an iron foundry.

I also have a more remote branch of the family who escaped from religious persecution and went to the fledgling United States. As a result I am distantly related to Merle Haggard and Richard Nixon (ulp!).

People used to do unusual things to make a living. My Yorkshire great-great grandfather was a farmer who had an apparently unpleasant sideline - he made sulphuric acid in one of the barns on his farm.

Career changes were also nothing unusual. Yorkshire great-grandfather, who actually lived in Lancashire most of his life but never lost his Yorkshire brogue, started out as a farmer but branched out into the building trade and built hundreds of houses in and around Accrington and Burnley, many of which are still standing today. He also owned a cotton mill at one time.

 

You've reminded me of another aspect of family history as a hobby: it can be a more personal, stimulating way into general history.

 

Most of my ancestors were Irish Catholic peasants so there tend to be familiar stories: rural poverty, getting land or avoiding eviction (tenancies, later ownership), the odd political agitator, massive families most of whom emigrate to USA if they don't die in infancy, the few bright sparks becoming priests, teachers or doctors, some daughters becoming nuns or staying single at home to look after aging parents.

 

The US Census is a great source, though, as it's available through to 1940 (only 1911 in UK). So, you can see what became of all those Irish (or English) emigrants. Some of the men led lives of grinding manual labour or even died in horrific work accidents, while the women generally worked "in service" until marriage. However, with others you can see them move up socially, acquire skills and more middle-class jobs, even wealth in a few cases: just this week I came across a distant relation, one of about 12 emigrant siblings and he'd somehow got into manufacturing with pearls and was honeymooning in Cuba in about 1915!

 

My English family line has a very different background: lots in the Royal Artillery in the 19th century, including a set of g-g-g-grandparents married in Corfu at the time of the Crimean War....must try to find some military records to see what action they saw.

 

Likewise, my father-in-law's family were all from the Midlands and you could see the story of the Industrial Revolution through his ancestors: farm labourers who switched to digging canals, canal diggers who switched to laying railways etc.

 

Your bearded giant of an ancestor in China brought back an unconnected memory from when I was wandering around Peru with 2 Swedish blokes. Particularly up in the Andes, most Peruvian people are quite short. I was suddenly a fairly tall man at 5ft8, but one of the Swedish blokes was 6ft5 with a big beard. Locals would just stare at him in the street, as people would here if a bloke 7ft6 tall walked past.

[The Fox Covert]

2 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

Your bearded giant of an ancestor in China brought back an unconnected memory from when I was wandering around Peru with 2 Swedish blokes. Particularly up in the Andes, most Peruvian people are quite short. I was suddenly a fairly tall man at 5ft8, but one of the Swedish blokes was 6ft5 with a big beard. Locals would just stare at him in the street, as people would here if a bloke 7ft6 tall walked past.

It is interesting when you have an ancestor you know quite a lot about to find out that you actually have quite a lot in common. I look like my great uncle, although I don't have red hair or a beard, and I share a lot of the same character strengths and weaknesses with him as well.

[Dr The Singh]

I post on forums

[Webbo]

17 minutes ago, Dr The Singh said:

I post on forums

Weirdo.

[The Blur]

5 hours ago, Webbo said:

Weirdo.

 

I like to volunteer as one of the moderators on a football forum that I dip in a fair bit.  

[Guest seanfox778]

On 03/11/2017 at 15:38, lifted*fox said:

Using toilet paper is something that annoys me on a daily basis. How have we not come up with a better alternative in the year 2017? 

 

Soon.