Needlework is hard on rhe hands. I wear compression gloves and wrist braces when cross stitxhing to minimize the impact on my hands. I need to talk to a doctor about my hands but i try to take good care of them even when playing games i wear a brace.
You get a much wider margin of error brewing 5 gallons in a bucket instead of starting with 1 gallon as a trial.
When I first made mead I just did a 1 gallon batch to see how it worked but that doesn’t really leave you with enough of a must to do proper gravity measurements without losing half your yield.
A box of comics isn’t going to take up too much space.
Boxes of comics have taken over an entire room.
Bodybuilding style Lifting. Wish I knew that science based influencers are just using science as a gimmick to make new videos and bold claims for short form content.
Lifting is hard when done right but its not super complex. The basics are the same they were decades ago:
- be consistant and stick to a routine at least 6 months.
- Learn the proper lift techniques
- learn how to train to failure (failure is not mandatory every set but you need to know where it is in order to train close to it for adaptations to occur)
- Keep progressing weights when you can without sacrificing technique. (Progressive overload is both the driver and the result of muscle growth, as long as your work sets are close to failure the growth stmilus is there)
Hydroponics, how heavy a 10 gallon tote is filled with water. With about 8 gallons of water in it, it’s about 67 lbs. Thankfully I don’t need to move my basic deep water culture setup and it’s stable. It’s been a great learning experience, but moving forward if I expand I’m going with the nutrient film technique.
that there are no women
Buying more expensive and better gear will not make you better at it. I not even going to tell you what the hobby is because this applies to so many of them. If you can do your hobby with the gear you have and you think “oh man I wish I had that, I could do awesome things” - it’s only worth it if you spend a whole lot of time on your hobby. If you’re like me and you only spend a couple hours a week or month on your hobby, it’s usually not worth it. Unless it’s something that let’s you do stuff faster. Because then you can do more in the few hours you have. I’m sure there are other exceptions to the rule, but in general, before you buy some shit, think to yourself “Do I really need this? Or do I just want it?”
“Meh, I’ll upgrade the server RAM when I need it, zswap is working fine” <- clueless idiot from last year
Not sure what hobby this is, but honestly it goes for almost every one of my hobbies. Especially photography. I could probably just get good with my Canon EOS 40D for digital and my Canon EOS 300 for analog photography. But collecting new gear is so satisfying. There’s always something new to improve. “If only I had X, then I could really do Y well”. Though I at least feel like I’ve somewhat contained myself. I haven’t bought any new camera or lens that was more than like 500 bucks, and honestly with what I have now I don’t really feel the need to upgrade.
Definitely applies to climbing. Technically more expensive shoes may help with certain climbs, it certainly won’t help a beginner.
Is your hobby guitar lol i’m curious
It is not, but it’s music related. But I also have outdoors hobbies. And electronics hobbies.
This does NOT go for watercolor painting! While you certainly dont need a lot of colors and brushes. The quality of both is paramount for progress and a decent outcome! Paper is even worse. You need a lot and of the expensive stuff. Acrylic paintig is not as bad but still…
3d printing, specifically FDM with PLA since I’m not down to mess with the chemicals for a resin printer. Keep printing until you’re out of an opened filament roll, otherwise your filament will absorb water and degrade. I often learn filament goes bad when a tiny piece breaks off in the feeder right above the heating element, requiring some annoying disassembly to diagnose and correct the problem. If you’re not sure what to build with the last bit of filament, a small square trash can/pencil holder is always useful.
Stick to a maintenance schedule. Putting off a lubrication or dusting can lead to debris getting stuck somewhere and ruining a print when you least expect it. Also learn about every component in your printer and how to get a replacement when it inevitably breaks. That way you can purchase a few of the more commonly broken parts to lower printer downtime.
Start off with a brand name printer that does auto leveling. That cheap CR10 you bought for a hundred dollars sounds like a bargain until you realize it can’t print a solid first layer, causing all sorts of other minor annoyances with your print quality. Trying and failing to fix the issues might eventually turn you off on pursuing the hobby.
I was already well versed in Solidworks, but learn how to use a CAD program. You can get a lot of use from the many publicly available models out there but you might eventually have an idea or require something that requires a custom design. Being able to physically manifest your own design ideas quickly was a big drawing point for me to get into the hobby.
I would go so far as to say, if you aren’t interested in learning CAD or some other 3D modeling software, forget a 3D printer. Because if you rely on Thingiverse and Printables, your 3D printer is a trinket machine. You’re going to print a few toys, a benchy or two, a paper towel holder that doesn’t work, a shop vac adapter that’s the wrong size, a phone stand the $200 Creality you bought just cannot get through, and then it’ll sit gathering dust.
I’ve only ever modified files I’ve found online, never designed anything myself in Cad and I find plenty of real uses for my 3d printer. It probably paid for itself just printing organization bins and other things for the house. Just last week I bought some cheap shelves from IKEA clearance without any hardware, printed out some feet and now I have a new monitor stand. I regularly print accessories that I would otherwise have to pay extra for (like tripod mounting plates)
Plus there are some pretty amazing projects out there that get a lot cheaper if you have access to a printer. Personally I’ve printed a pair of astronomy binoculars https://www.analogsky.co/ and a custom mechanical keyboard fitted to my hand. https://ryanis.cool/cosmos/beta
Let’s say I learn CAD.
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What do I do to make it more than a trinket printer.
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Why should I get a printer.
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Should I skip the owning part and just use commercial 3d print shops?
I’m going to take these out of order.
Why should I get a printer?
If you have a continuous and frequent need or strong desire for small plastic objects. If you have a hobby like cosplaying, cosplayers find 3D printers quite useful for making costume parts or props, tabletop players like printing minifigures or playsets, if you’re an electronics hobbyist it can be useful to print cases and enclosures for projects, if you’re a woodworker you’ll never stop needing jigs, brackets, vacuum hose adapters.
Or, if you’re interested in 3D printing itself. There are folks doing like, 4-axis non-planar stuff that’s industry leading, for the fun of it. Hell and gone smarter than I am.
Should I skip the owning part and just use commercial 3D print shops?
If you have one project in mind, or “might occasionally find a use for it,” hire it done rather than buying a machine.
There’s kind of a trap for newbies to 3D printing: Inexpensive printers tend to be projects unto themselves. Which can be a good thing if you’re interested in the hobby of 3D printing itself. If you want to buy a machine, plug it in and it just works, expect to spend $1000. Because you’re either going to buy a Prusa, which start at about $1000 for an assembled MK4S, or a Bambu Labs machine for about $500 and then they’ll getcha somehow. Bambu Labs sketches the fuck out of me, they’re trying to be the HP of FDM.
Even then, if you have one of the “just works” machines, you still have things to learn. What plastic to choose for this model that needs to be outdoors? Do you use a textured or smooth sheet for PETG? Can you print ASA without a heated enclosure? Should you use glue stick for TPU? Can you print PC-CF with a brass nozzle? What do the eight pages of print settings in the slicer do? If you can envision the printer sitting turned off for months at a time, does all that seem worth learning?
What do I do to make it more than a trinket printer?
Mainly, have something you need to 3D print for.
I have found that Thingiverse and Printables are both full of idiots. They let literally anyone on there, and I’ve found the dumbest shit.
“It’s 7% shorter in the X axis because my printer prints 7% long in that direction so I squish all my parts to compensate. And then I upload them like that because my mom let me eat paint chips as a baby” has to be my favorite, right after “This design relies heavily on trapping hex nuts in hexagonal recesses, and I looked up the “diameter” of M3 nuts and modeled that as the across flats dimension because my mom is my dad’s mom!”
If you want to print anything other than flexible dragons and Bender Bhuddas, and then actually use them, you’re going to need to know how to alter things other people ruined through incompetence, or design things from scratch. The ability to design the thing YOU need is what really unlocks the power of a 3D printer.
- What do I do to make it more than a trinket printer.
CAD is just a tool. You can use it to make more trinkets yourself or create a special bed basket, custom camera bracket, etc. If you see something at work or home that could benefit from a product that doesn’t exist yet, you might be able to design and print a fixture for it.
- Why should I get a printer.
Unless you’re constantly coming up with things to print then you don’t. Plenty of libraries offer free 3d printing services but keep in mind you get what you pay for. If you’re lucky, some universities or hacker spaces might let you use their printers and are of generally higher quality.
- Should I skip the owning part and just use commercial 3d print shops?
It gets expensive very quickly. Most commercial places I’ve dealt with for work will rip you off because they’re targeting industries that have more money than common sense. I once needed to print a few simple boxes with ESD safe filament and they wanted over 400 dollars for just one. A lower end prusa costs the same as 3 of those prints so it made more sense for us to purchase our own printer and filament and make it ourselves. The cost of making additional fixtures plummeted too once we considered avoiding some traditionally machined parts in favor of printed ones.
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PLA does not absorb moisture. You can submerge a roll in water overnight, dry it and print just fine after. It does become brittle eventually just being exposed to the elements though. Either vacuum seal your filament in bags with a desiccant and store in a dark place or use it within 3-6 months of opening a roll as a general rule of thumb. Shorter timespan if you keep it in the light and if your ambient room temperature fluctuates considerably.
PETG on the other hand will absorb moisture and will crackle like a bag of popcorn when it tries to print with wet filament as it gets superheated at the nozzle level.
Also cheap printers are absolutely asinine for proper workloads, but if you’re a tinkerer that learns “on the job” so to speak while troubleshooting the nonsense you’ll see your prints perform, then it’s usually a great starting point, otherwise yeah, quality and reliability costs extra.
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IIT: lots of wisdom
The predatory FOMO nature of Games Workshop is real and harmful to the hobby as a whole. The editions of the games could last for years yet we’re on a 3 year cycle to adjust stats and change rules that don’t need changing. It creates a cycle of I liked this edition but everybody moved on so I’m forced to move up or give up on the game.
Luckily there’s a million other games but they’re micro in comparison. You’re stuck either creating a community on your own or hoping there’s a group within a reasonable distance that you can help with. If not… Sorry about your wasted investment.
If you do get sucked into it and you end up investing into every GW game system with multiple armies across every system, you’re gonna run out of space. Unless you live in a multi story house or have a shed with nothing in it, these things take up space.
Yes, tabletop gaming is so much bigger and more varied than GW’s games. I love 40k and Warhammer fantasy, but just as one part of the hobby.
The high pricing and FOMO churning is pretty perfected by GW. It is easy to fall into just thinking and buying GW products at MSRP. There are many ways to avoid it and play for much cheaper, but it means breaking out of the GW exclusive ecosystem. (I have many specific suggestions how to do this btw.)
I can’t stand the modern tournament culture which has this sort of e-sports stink on it.
As a mild piece of good news OnePageRules seems to have decent traction and isn’t too difficult to find groups who play in stores. It has its shortcomings, but at least the rules aren’t subject to the constant market driven churning updates.
Oh I know there’s so much more than GW. I got my start with Warmachine. I had a group of 6 that met bi weekly for years until the game imploded. Then we scattered. Infinity was the next big thing. That got two of us and another from the store I frequented that wasn’t apart of the Warmachine group. Then that dwindled and all that’s left is GW.
We tried converting some of the 40k players to Infinity. They all like the look, like the idea, see the elaborate tables we cook up, and show enthusiasm for the game. None of them pull the trigger. There’s never a right time. It’s like trying to pull Artax out of the mud.
I understand both sides because I had a friend try to get me into Otherside and iirc that game doesn’t even exist anymore.
OPR skirmish is the easiest to talk people into since it uses GW minis they probably already own. All it needs is people reading the free rules and making a list. It feels like a proper skirmish game instead of the strange hero battle game modern Kill Team is. This is doable if a store has a Discord or something to do barebones meetup planning even with strangers.
A little more difficult, but doable if you’ve eased people into alternate ideas is getting people to agree to an older 40k edition. It requires buying or, uh, finding the rules and codexes, but it sidesteps the problem of constant rules changes. My preference is 3e (I have very little personal interest in Primaris marines) which is much less bloated than modern armies of the same points value.
Rock climbing:
- Do regular full body workouts/yoga/antagonist work. A lack of core strength and scapular stability will end up wrecking you if all you do is climb.
- To get better at climbing, training helps a lot. But 90% of the training you need to do is just climbing more. Your problem isnt that you arent strong enough, it’s that you havent developed the necessary techniques to climb harder because you havent experienced enough rock. 90% of the change you need to improve your climbing is simply to start consistently logging what you do in your climbing sessions.
- Work your way up to climbing 20 pitches per day, 4 days per week, lowering the grade as much as needed to get the pitches in. You’ll find your biggest problem here is simply time management and finding a willing partner. This is a great time to get used to leading, since almost all your pitches will be quite easy.
- Once you can consistently get 20 pitches in per climbing day, start increasing the number of pitches at your onsight grade. Your sweet spot for progression is a climb that you may or may not be able to get on the onsight attempt, but which you will probably get second go. Aim to put 10 burns on onsight-level climbs per day.
- Once you stop easily progressing through the grades week by week, your climbing logbook comes into its own. If you find that a certain grade feels like it would take more that 2 or so attempts to put down, start tracking sends in the grade below it. You are only allowed to be disappointed in your inability to send the new harder grade in when you have put down 100 sends on the grade below it.
- When progress starts stagnating purely from increasing volume, start bouldering one or two days per week instead of rope climbing. It can be satisfying to send boulder problems, but spend at least some of your time on boulders that are so hard that you can only do one or two moves at a time - practicing doing just one or two extremely hard moves at a time is where you will really learn how to use your body. It is helpful to boulder in a big group, so you are forced to rest between burns.
- The easiest way to improve at climbing is to climb a lot with people who are better than you. If you can do this, disregard all previous instructions and just go climbing with these people.
your biggest problem here is simply time management and finding a willing partner.
Can I progress on a diet of 95% bouldering and indoor centres?
Sure. There are many paths to Babylon, and if your goal is to improve your climbing grade, and what you are doing is improving your climbing grade and is convenient and enjoyable for you, then there is no reason to change anything.
I suppose my main point is that climbers who are new to trying to push their grade often try to push their grade too early, and end up plateauing and becoming discouraged. If, for example, you are stuck at the V3 grade in the gym, you may be very motivated to climb V4. You will then wail on whatever V4 in the gym seems most doable for you for weeks, hoping that one of these times you actually stick the moves and send it. However, this pattern leads to slow progress, frustration (as you fail to send before they take the problem down), and possibly injury (due to repeating the same moves many times while tired).
So my point is that climbers seeking to push their grade for the first time should realize that movement - not strength or endurance - is the master skill, and the main way to improve is therefore to climb more mileage to improve their intuitive movement patterns. And if your goal is to rack up mileage, then you should track that mileage. If you want to send V4, but have only sent 5 V3s, you have no right to be dissappointed in your inability to send the harder grade, and the fastest way to send the harder grade is to climb a lot more at the easier grade.
So we start by increasing volume at a very easy grade, just to increase the number of routes/problems climbs in a typical session. Often this is enough to spur improvement, simply because it teaches the climber better time management. And as they increase the total amount of climbing they are doing, they are also spurring the necessary physiological adaptations to support long climbing sessions so they can accumulate more volume faster.
Then once they are regularly cranking out a sufficient amount of mileage, we start increasing difficulty. We say “how many climbs can you do at your onsight grade in a session?” We want them to be cranking out onsight or second-go sends, because this is usually the sweet spot for climbing improvement - just hard enough that you have to try, but not so hard that you get bogged down and turn it into a mega-proj. Then we simply say “okay, I know you are eager to get to X grade - but send 100 of X-1 first”. This gives them a tangible, measureable goal to work towards. And with a high volume of X-1 climbing per session, hitting that mark feels acheiveable. Eg, if your goal is to send V4, but your onsight grade is V2, we say “Log 100 unique V2 sends before you start working on V3”. If they are only sending 2 V2s per session and only climbing 2 days per week, then it will take them 25 weeks - nearly half a year minimum - to send 100! But if they are sending 10 V2s each session 4 days per week, then they will tick 100 in under a month with time to spare for additional rest days plus a 1 week vacation.
(An important aside - volume should be increased only as recovery allows. If the climber is showing up to every session with sore shoulders, achey elbows, and raw skin, they need more rest or less volume until they can handle the physiological demand. This is also where adding in a minimalist lifting routine or yoga practice can be helpful. As a lifting program for a new climber, I recommend 2 days per week, 3 sets of 3 or 2 sets of 5, adding weight to each set. one lift each for push pull and legs - switch up lifts every couple months to keep from getting bored. Keep the weights quite light - maybe 70% effort on the last rep of the last set, so that movement quality stays high. The whole workout should only take around 10 or 15 minutes, and you should walk out of the gym feeling limber and energized - I often like to use this style of workout as a warm up before pulling on to climb.)
Then, when the climber has racked up sufficient mileage at the lower grade but is still not progressing in the higher grade, we add in a more intense style of climbing - limit bouldering - since trying really hard will spur neurological and physiological adaptations in the muscles, teaching the climber to pull harder and maintain maximum body tension.
And then if this still does not spur improvement, we could talk about fingerboarding, technique drills, periodization, targeted lifting programs, or any number of other specialized techiques for spurring improvement. But the point is that we aren’t going to add unnecessary complexity to our training until it is actually needed; and we are mostly going to improve at climbing by improving our movement via direct experience by doing (1) a lot of climbing and (2) very hard moves.
Contrast this with some more typical climbing routines -
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The gym bouldering newbie. Shows up to the gym twice per week, and immediately walks over to the new set. After a short warm up, they work on 2 or 3 problems at their project grade until they are smoked, then maybe try a problem at their project grade +1, finding it utterly impossible. They progress very slowly, because they rack up mileage very slowly, and never actually try really hard moves when they are feeling fresh.
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The weekend warrior large group climber. They show up to the crag with their crew of 20 people. They climb 1 warm up, then shakily lead up something at their onsight grade (praying they don’t die as they make every clip, despite being completely safe), and finally wail on a toprope that was put up by the “strong” climber of the group before declaring that they are gassed and heading to the bar with everyone else. Again, they progress very slowly because they never actually climb that much.
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The frustrated go-getter. They used to be in group 1 or 2, but are tired of climbing at a low grade, so they begin a highly structured 12 week climbing program with words like “mesocycle” and “anaerobic work capacity”. Depending on how well the program was designed, they may progress quite reasonably… but now they’ve turned rock climbing from a fun activity with friends into another grinding chore.
Contrast with what I outlined above - each step is a simple, clear goal that can be applied to any given session. It is simple and intuitive to explain to a climbing partner “I want to climb 20 pitches today, no matter what” or “I want to climb 10 V5s today”. You can have days when you just work on the new set with your friends or try to send the mega-proj (you just recognize that these days aren’t moving you towards climbing harder as fast as possible). Climbing stays fun - it just now has different metrics for success depending on the day.
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wow
I can keep going, lol. This is the tip of the iceberg
ok first of all what is a grade
I got into retro computing during lockdown. Kind of a nostalgia thing. Refurbed My Atari ST and ZX Spectrum. Got an Amiga, and Amstrad CPC464 and an old Atari 2600. Spent a lot of money and did loads of mods. Now they just sit there and I have no idea what to do with them. The games and demos were a fun novelty, but I’m not really a gamer. I don’t want to sell them, but they don’t really bring me any joy either. I’m pretty happy, mostly and have a good family life. Certainly not depressed. But yeah, this kit is just sitting in my den, rarely used. Probably should have anticipated that before I got so deep into it.
Get your kids into it. Don’t let them know modern games exist.
I had them playing Golden Axe, Pang, IK+ and Stuntcar Racer, when they were about 6 and 8. They did love it, but it can’t hold their attention the way Fortnite, FIFA, Minecraft and Harry Potter games on the playstation do, sadly.
Know the feeling! Although I do a fair bit of gaming, it’s more the overwhelming choice of every single game every released and being paralysed by so much choice!
How about some retro software? Music, 3D modelling, pixel art, programming etc. Plenty of those on the Amiga.
There’s a lot I don’t know about the Amiga. I was always an ST kid, and viewed Amigas with a jealous resentment! There’s definitely a lot to learn and do with it, but I don’t feel the same connection as I do to my ST, despite it’s shortcomings. That said, the dilemma still remains. I’m just not that excited by them. It’s definitely a ‘me problem!’
Ah shame. Well, maybe the retro computing spark will come back for you eventually.
I have too many hobbies. Can never find enough time for everything. Gaming has probably been my longest and most expensive one though. Between all the hardware and software purchases I wish I had simply been more patient earlier in my engagement. Could have saved so much money. These days I cruise the steam sales for indies and I’m having a great time.
For digital photography, the only thing I wish I really knew was how to clean the sensor sooner. I made a decent choice with the tech stack for the camera.
