I'm pretty much a giant dork across the board...
- Absolutely rabid film geek, particularly when it comes to foreign films and anime. I keep a profile on Film AF under the same username as I go by here, if anyone's really curious, but the collection is sadly half what it used to be, as my ex and I were together for 7 years and had joined all our stuff together, so everything was basically chopped 50/50 when things ended. Getting it back into shape, little by little, but it's a slow process.
- Drawing, painting, and graphic design, and I was a design major in college (who didn't finish). I haven't gotten to do nearly as much as I'd like the past couple years, mostly due to life not providing me with enough space, and school really taught me to appreciate working on larger pieces.
- Collecting music, mainly various genres of experimental, industrial, noise, and dark electronic stuff. I'm pretty rabid for vinyl, and that's almost exclusively what I buy these days, as I find it makes me more discriminating about what I pick up. Like the movies, this collection was also split in half post-breakup. I don't mention it much to people anymore, but I'm also a former goth/industrial club DJ, and did that weekly from around 1997-2003 - if you know where to look, there are pics of me wearing vinyl pants floating around online :p
- Building up what little hi-fi I can afford. I'm not the type who buys into snake oil about cables and other silly tweaks, but I've put together a pretty decent system on a budget, the highlight of which is a pair of Focal Chorus 706-V speakers; they're arguably the single most expensive thing in my apartment, which is kind of nuts to think about. Started building my own cables a few months back too, which has been surprisingly easy, and a lot of fun. I'm hoping I can maybe do a dedicated stereo setup at some point, ideally something focused around a vintage Marantz amp and Rega turntable, buuut... not in the cards right now.
- Building computers. I've been doing the DIY thing since I was 12, and apart from my laptop, have never owned a pre-built system. I also have a big interest in retrocomputing, particularly old SGI hardware, but lack the space to do much more than read about it. Mainly running Windows 7 these days, but I have a lot of affection for Gentoo and Arch Linux, too.
- Synthesizers. As with most things, my interest outweighs my budget and living space, but I currently own an Alesis Ion, along with a healthy dose of software. This is probably a collection that will grow in the next year or two, though. I make music mainly for my own enjoyment, so it's strictly amateur hour.
- Reading comics and manga, though this has slowed waaaay down over the years as my tastes have veered further away from superhero stuff and into more twisted, serious territory. I'm mostly into a lot of Vertigo stuff, but I dig my fair share of seinen like Blade of the Immortal and Gantz, and I'm an absolutely rabid fan of under-appreciated gems like Queen & Country and Poison Elves.
That's more or less what occupies 98% of my free time, anyway
