Your closest friends are generally the ones you have most in common with, and that often means sharing hobbies.Some of these things you do alone, while others are wholly social affairs.Many of them are even better when combined with a self-hosted project in your homelab.
Board and card game nights Track your collection and stats or plan nights I feel like I’m always trying to organize a board game night yet forever failing to do so.That might be because organizing the logistics can feel like an uphill battle.Not only do you have to figure out to play, but you also have to decide when and where to play it.
BoardGameTracker is one tool that can help out with this in a big way.It allows you to create a library of games, figure out what your collection is worth, and even keep track of who’s borrowing what so that nothing gets lost.You can also keep a record of your shelf of shame, the games that you own but never play.
The platform includes support for session logging and player statistics.If you’re looking for a lighter tool that primarily focuses on this aspect, take a look at MeepleStats instead.Travel and road trips Plan your next trip together Travel can be an expensive hobby, so it’s worth taking the time to get it right.
Preparation usually pays off, whether you’re someone who likes to meticulously plan every last stop or someone who knows roughly where they need to be and when.Thankfully, there are some great tools available for planning trips together.AdventureLog is a polished travel planning tool.
It works using locations (places you want to visit, or have visited) and collections (whatever criteria you want to use to group locations).By adding a bunch of locations to a collection, you can set a trip start and end time and start to plan an itinerary.The app feels like the sort of tool you’d use months or years before a big trip to keep track of the places you really want to see.
You can use your plans as inspiration for future trips, create rough itineraries, and share your ideas with others.It works best when used with potential travel buddies who can suggest stops and help you plan.By contrast, TREK feels less like the sort of tool you use while window shopping for a vacation, and more like a rapid trip planner for your next adventure.
It’s a little more focused on the nitty-gritty, like cost tracking and currency, and it feels a little less “Pinterest” compared with AdventureLog.Reading, lending, and discussing books Set up your own digital library Just as you probably have a shelf full of “real” books in your home, you should also start thinking about a digital library for your eBook collection.This allows you to keep everything in one place, track what you’ve read and what’s next, and share books with other members of your household relatively easily.
By exposing a platform like BookLore to the internet using a reverse proxy or VPN connection, you can share your collection with more than just those living under your roof.The platform supports multiple logins, so each user can track their own progress.Alternatively, you can keep the hosting in-house and use one-click sharing to send a book to any Kindle or email address immediately.
You can do the same with audiobooks by setting up Audiobookshelf, making it available remotely, and creating accounts for your friends.If your friend group eats, sleeps, and breathes books, then you might be interested in taking the hobby to its natural conclusion with your own book club.Plan your next get-together from your homelab with the free self-hosted tool Hardcover Bookclub.
Movie night wherever you are You don’t even have to be in the same room Being locked up at home during the COVID-19 pandemic was no fun, but we had to find a way to make it work.One neat little trend that emerged during that time was watching movies together over the internet.With streaming and playback sync, you could watch along with your friends (usually while chatting as if you were sitting in the same room).
Though we can get together and breathe on each other again, you can still have these distanced watching sessions if you like.Jellyfin is the best truly free and open-source media center, and since Plex axed its Watch Together feature, Jellyfin is the best tool for the job.You’ll need to set up a Jellyfin server, make it accessible remotely either using a reverse proxy or a low-latency VPN solution like Tailscale, and then give watchers their own login.
You can then create a room by clicking the “SyncPlay” button once you’ve started to watch something.You’ll need a good upload speed for this (typically 15Mbps or greater for 1080p, and 50Mbps or greater for 4K).While Jellyfin does the heavy lifting to make remote movie night a thing, a tool like Movary can track everything else and works great for both in-person and online watch sessions.
Multiplayer video games Especially persistent worlds Close Hosting your own servers for gaming purposes is a lot easier than you probably think and comes with a range of benefits.Hosting a server yourself is completely free outside of the electricity cost.On top of this, if you and your friends all live relatively close, then a server hosted in your town or city might provide slightly better performance than one you rent from a company that’s hundreds of miles away.
Some games benefit from a self-hosted server that’s always online, particularly those with “persistent” worlds.is the classic example (and we have a guide all about hosting that), but it works for many other games, including survival crafters like and resource management games like .You can even self-host your own server with AzerothCore.
The big benefit here is that the “host” doesn’t need to be online and playing for others to jump in.So if you have a server running and someone wants to hop on and build something or gather resources, they can do so whenever they like.Just make sure that you take care of backups to avoid disappointment if something goes wrong.
You don’t need friends to reap the rewards of self-hosting.Take a look at some altogether more solitary hobbies that can benefit.
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