Unusual interests/obsessions

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Anybody ever have unusual interest or obsession (I am talking strictly G rated here!)?

I got interested in hypermiling. This is where you try and get as many miles per gallon out of a car as possible. I have a Toyota Corolla. I have gotten as much as 50 mpg on it. You get something called a Scan Gauge, and work all these techniques (putting the car in neutral down hills, turning off the car at lights, etc.). There is an online group called CleanMPG. I think nobody there is NT (though not sure about how many are ASD). Anyway it was fun for while, until I couldn't get the ScanGauge to work correctly. Then I lost interest.

For awhile, a long time ago, I read everything there was to read about feral children. Though I have found out that that one isn't all that unusual. I think on ANI there were several people that had been into that.

This would be fun to find out. If anyone wants to add to this topic.

--des

For the longest time I had an obsession with the South Pole.. yep I know, odd... but it's now lions, and it will be for a while Maybe being obsessed with lions is not all that unusual but the South Pole sure is. IMO anyway.

I once got interested in a road called A41 just because it was outside my house and led to London. (London is far away from where I live. )

I enjoyed Incan history until I got to the source books in Spanish. I should have learned Spanish then, but I was already learning French.
Our friend, Don, collects yellow page phone books from all over Canada and the US. Some of you may have gotten a letter from me about that. When he comes over on a Sunday afternoon and we can get onto WP, I send out a few pleas with him watching over my shoulder. I have been surprised by how many at WP were willing to send us phonebooks from their towns.

I'v read about hypermiling competitions. One guy was doing this with a Honda Insight while writing an article for some magazine. He essentially "cheated" by having a Ford Excursion drive ahead of them so they could draft it. ;D. A lot of "green" minded people are into this practice for obvious reasons, I bet they didn't like this very much. My car (in theory) gets 30 mpg @ highway. I drafted a big rig once (from a distance I felt relatively safe at) for about 60 miles. I "refilled" my gas tank to measure my results = 40 mpg. Not recommended practice, no matter how high gas prices get!

As for strange interests, I've always had a thing for commercial airline disasters. I'm not really an aviation buff (though I'm interested), I'm more just into the experience of a plane crash. It's got to be such a bizarre way to die in modern society. You can probably guess I'm terrified of flying, and would only do it if I absolutely had to. Is this considered "G" rated? Crap..

I don't like using the word "interested" as much as I do like using the word "fascinated".

Interest implies something more, fascination implies a sense of wonder about it, which of course leads to interest, but not the same kind (for me).

I'm fascinated with some aspects of computer programming, likes strings and loops.

A string is simply a "string of characters". A character would be every individual letter, number, and symbol that you can access with the keyboard. So, a string would be a line of those. "This would be a string" and 'A' would be a character.

Loops are what they sounds like, a loop. It goes in circles and stops when its told to, performing actions within the circle. Like, if you set up a loop to just display the word "hi" 50 times, you could have 50 actions with just a few lines of code instead of a lot.

Of course there is more to it than the described, and that is what I find fascinating. I don't find all of computer programming fascinating, just things like that.


As for hypermiling, when I get a car I just may practice that. That is my kind of niche!

I have always been a 'People Watcher', examining behaviour and physical features. Look for perfect line and curves of the body, pretty faces, perfection and notice all the defects/odd features. Fascinated by men's arms that are muscular defined/cut and the female backside-the perfect shape. Non of this is sexually orientated and has been an obsessive interest since my childhood. Aslo watch peoples behaviour and mannerisms when interacting which I analyse over and over later in my mind.

Aren't most of our interests considered to be slightly unusual by the general population? Or do you mean unusual even for someone on the spectrum?

I never really had a deep, deep interest in any one thing. You be the judge of how unusual these are:
1) The evolution of Cape Breton music from the Scottish Highland Clearances to the present day
2) More generally, the effects of music when a culture is transplanted elsewhere
3) Sourdough starter
4) Crooked fiddle tunes, especially from Quebec
5) Shona music

Let's see... some of the more bizarre ones...

* Disastrous weather events, especially hurricanes and tornadoes. Life stopped for the Weather Channel's tropical update, and I would go up and update all my hand-drawn charts with the latest coordinates and predictions.

* Arena/Stadium construction and capacity. This one comes and goes, but when it really hits, I've had most of the Division I-A college football stadium capacities memorized or really close.

* Ozark folk music - I would spend DAYS checking out the Max Hunter Folk Song Collection and printing/playing the tunes, reharmonizing, and trying to memorize.

Fun, I guess...

-M

powerchairs, assistive technology, stock market, neurological diseases and disabilities, autism, sensory integration disorder, stimming, medical, photography, genetics, videography

my sensory based obsessions (due to my sensory integration disorder, a part of my autism certain things relax me or otherwise make me feel happy) are straps, blood pressure cuffs, tight warm things and places, deep pressure, being mummy wrapped, tight hugs, lead aprons, latex, PVC, rubber, silky, neoprene, nylon, rubberized nylon, slobbery kisses, leather, sticky mud, clay, quicksand anything of the likes.


YOU decide if they are unusual

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Ha, I've got a Toyota Corolla too, and one time tried going down a hill in neutral... well I accidently slipped and set the car into reverse instead, and my car immediatly jerked to a halt and the check engine light came on and it wouldn't start again... well for a few minutes anyway, it eventually started and things were fine but it did scare the crap out of me. Lucky I was only going somewhere between 5-10 mph!

Anyway, my more unusual obsession is probably radiation. I'm obsessed with all things radioactive, got plenty of samples of a bunch of radioactive isotopes including C-14, K-40, Cs-137, Ra-226, U-238, and Am-241, plus discovered different ways to extract radon daughter isotopes from storing radium watch dials with activated carbon. Also discovered how to make a typical incandescent nite-lite bulb into an X-ray tube. Most of my interest in radiation is from its ability to mutate things; I've always wanted to produce a mutant plant, something unique and new and never before seen on this Earth. Whenever I'm not using my radioactive collection for any experiments, it's just sitting there irradiating seeds, which I plant a few every 6-10 months or so just to see if any interesting mutations might've happened yet... so far nothing. All of my sources are legal and much less dangerous to be in the same room with than second-hand smoke, but it still seems to scare/concern a lot of people who don't understand it very well.

As a kid I was interested in knowing everything about the US map... I memorized all the interstates, every state's capitol/largest 5 cities... man I must've been really bored.

Would flamingos and pageants be considered weird interests?