[...] don’t require professional grade equipment, but why would you?), running or hiking, chess, Naked Eye Astronomy, website design, drawing, writing poetry, and the list goes on. I do several of these things [...]

[...] I’m not sure why I’m writing about the Burning Crusade, or if I’ll be able to resist the temptation of playing it at least for a little while. The bar tabs keep adding up, and the fifteen dollar a month fee to play WoW sure was cheaper than going out so much. I tried searching for a cheap hobby, and Google gave me this: Naked Eye Astronomy … at least there is nudity involved. [...]

1) Stellarium: You’re in a field looking at the sky. You enter your coordinates, and the sky as it looks at the moment is displayed. You can fast-forward/rewind the time, watching the stars progress and the sun and moon rise and set. You can toggle the constelations outlines. Lots of cool features, short learning curve. Very fun!
http://www.stellarium.org/

2) Celestia: You can zoom arround space, visiting other planets and stars, and even viewing the milky-way from far off. Not exactly good for constelation viewing, but it can give a better perspective on scale in the universe. It’s got a slightly longer learning curve, but it’s really fun to use.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Both run on Linux, Windows and OSX.

Tip: If you’re using stellarium outside at night, get some red plastic paper (like that clear plastic giftwrap) to cover your monitor with so you don’t ruin your night vision.