Hobby and Outdoor Pursuits Essay Example for Free

Hobby and outdoor(a)sy Pursuits EssayPlease economic aid improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved ) Any material not support by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since June 2006. A hobby-horse was a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like the real hobby. From this came the brass to ride ones hobby-horse, meaning to follow a favourite pastime, and in turn, hobby in the modern maven of recreation. Hobbies argon practised for occupy and enjoyment, rather than financial reward. Examples include collecting, creative and artistic pursuits, making, tinkering, sports and adult education. loving in a hobby can lead to acquiring substantial dexterity, knowledge, and experience. However, psycheal fulfillment is the aim. What are hobbies for some people are professions for otherwises a plunk for tester may enjoy cooking as a hobby, while a professional chef might enjoy playing (and helping to debug) computer games. slackly speaking, the person who does something for fun, not remuneration, is called an amateur (or hobbyist), as clean-cut from a professional.An important determinant of what is considered a hobby, as distinct from a profession (beyond the lack of remuneration), is likely how easy it is to make a living at the activity. Almost no one can make a living at cigarette ride or stamp collecting, but many people find it enjoyable so it is commonly regarded as a hobby. Amateur astronomers very much make meaningful contributions to the professionals. It is not entirely uncommon for a hobbyist to be the first to discover a celestial body or event.In the UK, the pejorative noun anorak (similar to the Japanese otaku, meaning a geek or enthusiast) is often applied to people who obsessively pursue a particular hobby that is considered boring, such(prenominal) as train spotting or stamp collecting. edit Development of hobbies into other ventures Whilst som e hobbies strike many people as picayune or boring, hobbyists reach found something get and entertaining about them (see geek). Much early scientific research was, in effect, a hobby of the blind drunk more recently, Linux began as a students hobby.A hobby may not be as trivial as it appears at a time when it has relatively few followers. Thus a British environmentalist recalls that when seen wearing field glasses at a London station in the 1930s he was asked if he was going to the (horse) races. citation needed The anecdote indicates that at the time an interest in nature was not astray perceived as a credible hobby. Practitioners of that hobby went on to become the germs of the conservation movement that flourished in Britain from 1965 onwards and became a global political movement within a generation.Conversely, the hobby of aircraft spotting probably originated as part of a serious activity designed to detect arriving waves of enemy aircraft entering slope airspace during World War II. citation needed In peacetime it clearly has no such practical(a) or cordial purpose. Types of hobbies Collecting The hobby of collecting consists of acquiring specific items based on a particular interest of the collector. These collections of things are often highly organized, carefully cataloged, and attractively displayed. Since collecting depends on the interests of the individual collector, it may select with almost any subject.The depth and breadth of the collection may also vary. near collectors choose to strain on a specific subtopic within their area of general interest for example, 19th Century tender stamps, milk bottle labels from Sussex, or Mongolian harnesses and tack. Others prefer to keep a more general collection, accumulating principal sum Trek merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world. Some collections are capable of being completed, at least(prenominal) to the uttermost of owning one sample of each possible item in the collecti on (e. g. copy of every leger by Agatha Christie).Collectors who specifically try to assemble complete collections in this way are sometimes called completists. Upon terminate a particular collection, they may stop collecting, expand the collection to include related items, or demoralise an entirely new collection. The most commonplace fields in collecting have specialized commercialized dealers that trade in the items being collected, as well as related accessories. Many of these dealers started as collectors themselves, hence turned their hobby into a profession.There are some limitations on collecting, however. Someone who has the financial direction to collect stamps might not be able to collect sports-cars, for example. One alternative to collecting tangible objects is collecting experiences of a particular kind. Examples include collecting through observation or photography (especially popular for carry-over, e. g. train spotting, aircraft spotting, metrophiles, bus sp otting see also I-Spy), bird-watching, and systematically visiting continents, countries, states, national parks, counties etc.Games pic pic nib game, 1895. A game is a structured or semi-structured recreational activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment (although sometimes for sensual or vocational training). A goal that the players try to reach and a set of rules concerning what the players can or cannot do create the challenge and structure in a game, and are thus central to its definition. cognize to have been played as far back as prehistoric times, games are generally distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration.Because a wide variety of activities are enjoyable, numerous types of games have developed. What creates an enjoyable game varies from one individual to the next. Age, understanding (of the game), intelligence level, and (to some extent) personality are factors that determine what games a person enjoys. Depending on these factors, people vary th e number and complexity of objectives, rules, challenges, and participants to increase their enjoyment. Games generally involve mental and/or physical stimulation.For this reason, they are beneficial after a large meal or a enormous and tedious task, but counterproductive if played immediately before sleeping. Many games help develop practical skills and serve as exercise or perform an educational, simulational or psychological role. open-air(prenominal) recreation Outdoor pursuits can be loosely considered to be the group of sports and activities which are dependent on the great outdoors, incorporating such things as hill walking, trekking, canoeing, kayaking, climbing, caving, and arguably broader groups such as wetsports and snowsport.While obviously enjoyed by many as a bit of fun, an adrenaline rush, or an escape from reality, outdoor sport is also frequently use as an extremely effective medium in education and team build. It is this ethos that has given rise to links with late people, such as the Duke of Edinburghs Award and PGL, and large numbers of outdoor education centres being established, as the distort on the importance of a balanced and widespread education continues to grow. Depending on the persons desired level of adrenaline, outdoors can be considered a type of hobby.As interest increases, so has the rise of commercial outdoor pursuits, with outdoor kit stores opening up in large numbers and thriving, as well as outdoor pursuits journalism and magazines, both on paper (for example Trail 1), and online (such as Eclipse Outdoor 2). The increased accessibility of outdoor pursuits resources has been the source of some negative publicity over the years also, with complaints of destroying the landscape. A widely-seen example is the destruction of hillsides as footpaths are eroded by excessive numbers of visitors. Creative HobbiesSome hobbies result in an end product of sorts. Examples of this would be woodworking, software projects, artistic projects, creating models out of card or paper called papercraft up to higher end projects like building or restoring a car, or building a computer from scratch. While some of these may just be for the enjoyment of the hobbyist, there have been instances where it has come into demand at the request of friends or passerbys observing said project. At this point it has the potentiality to become a small business. Cooking Cooking is an act of preparing food for eating.It encompasses a vast order of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavour or digestibility of food. It generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingredients in an ordered mathematical process in an effort to achieve the desired result. Constraints on success include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools and the skill of the individual cooking. The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritionary, aesthetic, agricultural, econom ic, cultural and religious considerations that encroachment upon it.Cooking requires applying heat to a food which usually, though not always, chemically transforms it, thus changing its flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties. Cooking proper, as opposed to roasting, requires the boiling of water in a receptacle, and was practiced at least since the 10th millennium BC with the introduction of pottery. There is archaeological evidence of roasted foodstuffs, both carnal and vegetable, in human (Homo erectus) campsites dating from the earliest known use of fire some 800,000 years ago. citation needed edit gardeningGardening is the art of increase plants with the goal of crafting a purposeful landscape. Residential gardening most often takes place in or about a residence, in a space referred to as the garden. Although a garden typically is located on the land near a residence, it may also be located in a roof, in an atrium, on a balcony, in a windowbox, or on a patio or vivarium. pic pic A gardener Gardening also takes place in non-residential kilobyte areas, such as parks, public or semi-public gardens (botanical gardens or zoological gardens), amusement and theme parks, along transportation corridors, and around tourist attractions and hotels.In these situations, a staff of gardeners or groundskeepers maintains the gardens. indoor(a) gardening is concerned with the growing of houseplants within a residence or building, in a conservatory, or in a greenhouse. Indoor gardens are sometimes incorporated as part of air conditioning or heating systems. piddle gardening is concerned with growing plants adapted to pools and ponds. Bog gardens are also considered a type of water garden. These all require special conditions and considerations. A simple water garden may consist solo of a tub containing the water and plant(s).