I mean, probably Linux at some point. I've dipped my toes in as a complete novice, but I expect I'll take the full dive eventually.
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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What's funny is that I have installed Linux on many of my family's computers and they have NEVER ever felt the need to go back to Windows. They probably think it's just Windows but I took the trash out of it. It just works and it's amazing.
Distro recs? I'm like @The_Picard_Maneuver insofar as it's something I think I'll get around to one day, but I'm not in IT and want something super stable.
Linux has been fun this year! Mint works awesome! I feel so dirty having to log into Windows for work.
Okay, this is going to sound really odd given the interest focus, but my personal identity.
I spent years knowing I wanted to explore myself more, feeling like there was something missing from myself, but kept shoving it aside. I had work to focus on, relationships, I'd have time to figure it out when things calm down.
Kinda just turned out I didn't have the time I thought. Those feelings were waiting to burst out, and now I'm struggling to keep my head above my own waters.
For less introspective, the drums. Always had an interest in music, I'm semi-decent on a piano, but drums have always been this thing to me. Just never really had the space to feel like it was worth investing in a kit. They're loud, kinda big, they're probably going to sound awful while I'm learning.
It's been a background "hey, this is neat" for most of my life, but recently I've found a deeper drive to get to where I can start.
What do you mean specifically when you say you want to explore yourself more? What would that entail?
That's more meant my gender and how I express it. I've done drag in the past, mainly for things like Rocky Horror, and it felt really comfortable. I always let it set to the side, there were other things going on and what I felt was probably just the magic of the stage. But its ate at me, quietly, rarely feeling comfortable in my own skin.
Over about the last two years I've went on a fairly deep dive into myself. Started with talking to my partner, telling them about what I was feeling, what pronouns I felt fit, and we went from there. I've bought dresses, skirts, feminine tops. Dived more into taking care of my skin, my hair, my nails. Things that, while I never would disparage another for, felt like lines I couldn't cross due to my perception of what it meant for me to be a man.
I've found that I love these things, alongside more typical "masculine" stuff, and as I've accepted that I love these things, that they are a part of me, I've realized they've always been there. That they have always been a part of this want to feel like my true, healthy self, just below the surface. That there's more underneath, I just need to let myself reach down to it.
But where I am right now, it's people online, my spouse, and a few close friends who know. It's not safe for me, in multiple ways, to really get to step outside, interact with the world with my true face. I want to know what that feels like. To know what it feels like to tell someone new "You can call me Rose". To see what new things come to the surface when I can fully embrace who I am, outside and in.
That's fair, and I'm glad you're in a part of the world that allows you to express yourself freely.
If being on the stage, dressing different, or playing the drums is something you want to go at, I'd say do it. You won't know it until you're in it. There will be some aspects you like, and some you won't. What you perceive and what actually is, are often different.
I've always found that the things I excel at, are the things I'm genuinely interested in. And when I follow those paths for a while, they all have similar lessons. It's like an all rivers lead to the ocean kinda thing.
Counter intuitively though, I also feel more liberated when I'm disciplined about getting little goals done on those paths. When I follow my exact, in the moment emotions, it usually leads me to addiction and forms of laziness. Just gotta push through the bullshit for a bit lol. "Beauty stems from pain" sort of fits with what I'm saying here. Might not be the same for everyone though, but for the past few years I've been excited to get out of bed lol.
Anyways, listen to your heart and you'll feel full. Good luck!
I kinda do, yeah. But Iβm not sure if Iβm referring to the same kind of thing as you.
I really want to:
- Do standup comedy
- Make and play music
- Publish some sci fi books
Trouble is, any time I start to engage in any of this work, it feels so good that it scares me. I donβt know what it is, but Iβm unable to do things I truly, deeply enjoy without getting freaked out and overwhelmed.
Stuff I kinda like but mostly just feel like an idiot doing, like smoking pot, playing video games, and dicking around here, I can do all day.
What about it makes you freaked out or overwhelmed?
Iβm not sure. I think it might be horror or grief, for all the years I didnβt do these things, didnβt let myself feel or even be aware of the existence of feelings that good.
Kinda like a βleaving homeβ feeling, like Iβm going through some door I canβt come back through.
Just trying to put words to it. Not really sure where it comes from. Just cried as I wrote this, and again Iβm unsure why.
I think itβs that I really appreciate your asking
I've been wanting to learn how to work with metal for a while now, my current long time goal is to get good enough to make a rotary valve train for my Subaru motor. I've been absorbing a lot of information about how engines work and how these parts interact I'm just missing all the practical knowledge for it.
What are you looking to make that is not commercially available?
A custom head + rotary valve train, the EJ25 uses standard valves with a standard cam design, this is fine, but rotary valves have their own advantages and disadvantages that I think would be fun to tinker with. Unlike a regular valve, rotary valves don't have springs, therefore they don't experience the "valve float" that standard valves experience at higher RPM's, allowing you to rev to very fast engine speeds. They also give better fuel economy since they are much lower resistance, standard valves have to overcome the force of each spring in order to open, rotary valves are just a hole. Rotary valves are also non-interference, and if I blew the timing belt, it wouldn't destroy the engine
I'd also just like to be able to make shit out of metal, it's a brainworm of mine I've had forever
It has been too long since I was into this stuff and I've mostly put cars out of my mind. For a long time I wanted to find a GC with a STI motor swap already done but never got around to finding one.
I had a hair brain dream of using some custom heads someone had sitting on a shelf that were made for a small block chevy and mechanical direct injection. I had come up with some combo of parts I needed along with a megasquirt setup that would push pump fuel to its max with water injection and my B&M miniblower. I was working on long tube headers and a custom fabricated exhaust when I got the broken neck that took car stuff away from me completely. The heads were off and I had no way of salvaging so had to sell the WIP. My family sucks so much they practically gave away my car with my small lathe and mill at the same time. The latter actually hurts more. Tools are like oxygen to me.
Good luck with the Scooby. Hope you find your way to many fun drives.
Oh yeah. Music is one of em. Never learnt how to read sheets or much of anything about music theory. I mean, I only just learnt how time signatures work. I play the guitar sort of okay, and have a decent ear. But everything I've learnt has been by feel, and I really want to properly learn theory. I want to know how the circle of fifths works, how polyrythms work, etc. like, I have a feeling of how they work but I couldn't really talk about it at length and I'd have a hard time figuring out why a section of a song sounded interesting. I dropped that desire some years ago, but with every new artist I discover I'm trying to break down how the music works in my head and often come up short.
Carpentry is another. Ever since I started playing guitar I wanted to build my own guitar from scratch. Then I took some industrial design classes in college and it cemented my interest in it. During lockdown I bought some tools but got distracted with other fleeting interests. Once I have enough space for a workshop, I'll get on that.
Lastly, storywriting. Whatever I write, it feels like it'd be at home in a technical manual. Regardless of what language I write in, it feels stilted and sterile. I've been working on this one lately though. I'm DM'ing a campaign with a ton of homebrew and wrote and designed a 70 pages long handbook for my players. The ones that took the time to read it really liked the flavour and worldbuilding I did, so, progress.
Edit: forgot one, mead, and spirits in general. Made one batch years ago, with apple juice, cinnamon, and cloves. It was good after about 2 years. I still have a 2L bottle in my closet. At this point I think I should just bin it. For a time a friend and I were talking about making large batches of it and selling it on the DL as party drinks. Pineapple mead, mango mead, etc.
Wait are you me? Just replace guitar with piano, although I still would love to learn music well and carpentry and how to write. The things I would do if I was retired, or just didn't have to work as much or commute as far...
Reverse Engineering Software.
It's been on my bucket lists for ages, but I never found the time. I've stuck my thumb into numerous tech pies, but I've never finished a crack me. I've done binary patching to skip bunches of code to call other code, but that's not quite the same.
Metal casting.
I have some steel and aluminum cans and a 3-D Printer. I'm good at blender, FreeCAD, and tweaking prints, but I haven't setup a foundry to make some solid metal parts. Yet. But I'm pretty sure I want to.
I feel like I'll probably watch that Mayfair Witches show starring Alexandra Daddario at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.
I really loved Interview with the Vampire, so I was very excited for Mayfair Witches. But wow, those two are very different shows in tone, pacing and dialogue. It was very hard for me to get through Mayfair Witches, and I only finished it, hoping I'd end up liking it in the end. But I won't be tuning back in for season 2, that's for sure.
To be fair, I've never read the books. I have only ever read the Vampire Chronicles. So it may just be that I wouldn't care for the books either.
However, in the spirit of this thread - I do want to check out the source material, Lives of the Mayfair Witches at some point. Could be that I'd enjoy it, even if I didn't like the show.
Sorta related, I've made a conscious decision not to get into programming. I know myself, I couldn't possibly dabble. If I cracked open that box, I would deep dive so hard that it would consume my life, I would have no self control. That's not the kind of life I want to live. I try actively not to learn too much about the inner workings of software when I use it, for fear of falling down the rabbit hole.
What do you do for a living/what are you into that isn't super deep in some way? What field did you rabbit hole into in the past that makes you go, "never again", now?
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cars to paint to engines to electronics hardware programming to cycling to fab/maker junk and other chains of interests
I took a deep dive into cars when I was about to start driving. I wanted something unique. That lead me to car mod culture. Some random magazine article claimed paint was the one thing most hotrodders saw as the impossible dark art in the hobby. So that is the first thing I learned, and owned a body shop... twice as little more than a dumb kid. I got into airbrush, graphics, and prototyping composites with fiberglass over clay too.
Eventually, I worked in machine shops even spending a short while porting heads and intakes for nostalgia dragsters, and built several motors. I knew carburetors really well, but put off learning electronics on a deeper level. When I had the misfortune of breaking my neck on a bicycle ride to work, (because what use is a supercharged motor in a car with a fat guy that can't modify his own inner engine), I started playing with electronics. I had no idea how complicated that dive would really be.
Since then I have gotten deeper and deeper with Arduino, KiCAD, breadboard computers, Forth, Micropython, and etching PCBs. There are many aspects that I want to expand within these, but there are deep dives that are completely outside but related. Eventually I will dive into radio, and FPGAs.
I have similar chains of interests in cooking, astronomy, CAD design, CFD, self hosting, welding/metalworking/machining, and cycling, although the last one is limited. I know eventually I will dive into metal casting, ceramics, and will likely get a sewing machine and learn that too.
This all feels natural to me in structured thought and interests, and I am only scratching the surface. Looking around at others I grew up with, I thought we were all being a bit cagey or private about our interests for whatever reason, but I am starting to think I assumed wrong, and maybe I'm the odd one here. Not that I'm special or unique, more that I grew up within the social isolation of a conservative religious cult like group where there is no value placed on curiosity. So I lack a frame of reference. So, am I the odd one?
This all feels natural to me in structured thought and interests, and I am only scratching the surface. Looking around at others I grew up with, I thought we were all being a bit cagey or private about our interests for whatever reason, but I am starting to think I assumed wrong, and maybe I'm the odd one here.
Are you asking if you're the odd one for having interests this varied or deep, or are you asking if you're the odd one for being cagey or private about your interests?
If the former, no you're not odd at all. If the latter, I wouldn't use the word odd specifically but most people probably aren't cagey/private regarding their interests by default. I was also raised around people who had a distinct lack of curiosity, due to what sounds like similar reasons. It is a bit hard to learn as an adult how to share enthusiasm for something with other adults, especially when coming from that kind of upbringing though. I guess it just self-selects for friendships with people that really share your passions though?
Warhammer miniature painting is a hobby I intend to pick up when I retire in 20 years.
Not in any way, no. Our brains can't predict what we will be interested in or good at.
But we do have predispositions. If you are able to focus intently on things, or are creative, or are more athletic, which are reflected in neuronal connectivity, you might be more interested in more detail-oriented or creative or athletic hobbies.
I think what OP means is, are potential rabbit holes that we have noticed but not explored yet.
Like maybe you've baked a sourdough bread once and felt that it could be fun to 'learn some more' about that at some time.
More like, I made sourdough and thought I wonder what this looks like under the microscope and how bacteria can be isolated and cultured to make unique flavors in a practical DIY at-home context. Then putting that idea on a mental back burner to find yourself actually pursuing the idea a decade later when you encounter a great deal on a microscope.
I find new hobbies that involve sitting at my computer constantly. I get really into one for a while, and spend a few hundred on a cool piece of equipment. I usually get board and move on to something else by the time the equipment arrives...
I have a number of interests that I'm not actively, or even lazily, pursuing right now, mostly because I'm already filled up with way too much stuff that I'm into and not really looking into properly.
Many are directly related to programming. x86-64 and RISC-V Assembly, understanding the dark arts of how graphics programming works (this video does an excellent introduction to the kinds of calculations done for 3D scenes), the bare minimum to make USB bootable "operating systems", properly understanding Justine's "actually portable executables" and replicating them with a different language like Nim or V (she's a real programming genius), getting into game and software cracking (all I know is that you need a disassembler first, then most of the work is renaming stuff into human readability and organizing the code)... All of this just related to programming! I know that the 3D stuff is what I think about most often, given my 3D printing shenanigans and fiddling with Blender.
Related to my 3D printing, I keep looking into, then leaving for later, ways to make proper silicone molds, or 3D print reusable molds in order to create large quantities of tiles for square or hex games, plus modular terrain features. Printing them is easy, creating molds not so much. My limited experience with trying to press 3D printed shapes on a dough had less than ideal results, mostly due to the dough sticking to the damn print, even after applying oil and vaseline all over it. Might try applying varnish to the print before applying vaseline and try again sometime in the future.
I also think frequently think about stuff like making bricks out of molten plastic mixed with sand. This thing is easy in theory: no need to separate the many different types of plastic, just shred it all, dump in a big cauldron, heat it up to 200ΒΊ Celsius, mix in some sand, press the resulting paste into the desired form or mold, wait for it to cool. The problem is that I can't quite figure a way to make it work without spending 10k USD in heavy equipment. Then I think whether I should directly contact the local recycling center and ask whether they know someone who does these bricks, or if I should start a business with that, the latter option being super risky given my lack of funds for such a venture.
Regarding the assembly and cracking stuff, I've actually taught myself that (not RISC-V, but x86, arm, and a little mips and PPC). The way I did it, was largely practice by doing. Specifically, I tried to almost every weekend put some time into competing in CTFs. Focus on the reversing challenges, look for writeups on similar challenges, fail, and once the CTF has ended, read the writeups and try solving again. Rinse and repeat, each weekend you'll slowly get better and better.
Additionally, start messing around with an assembly debugger. For me, being able to step through instruction by instruction and watch as the values of the registers change, made everything sort of click. Start with making your own program in c, then debug the assembly, and pay attention to how your c code got converted to assembly.
There's also some decent books out there, I like NoStarch (there's a malware book and also hacking: the art of exploitation, the malware book is more reverse engineering, but both should be decent starting points for assembly).
Btw, picoctf is a good starter one that is hosted year round.
The way I did it, was largely practice by doing.
For me, being able to step through instruction by instruction and watch as the values of the registers change, made everything sort of click.
This is exactly how assembly and reversing started to make sense for me as well. I just had to dive in for the words I was reading to start really making any sense.
I also agree on CTFs being a great entry point to getting those reps in. If you're up for a challenge the Mandiant Flare-On CTF is a doozy. All the old CTF binaries are still up on the Flare-On site for anyone to grab and work through. The CTF is usually in the fall, September-ish I think? Definitely before Thanksgiving in the US, and the SANS Holiday Hack stuff.
I was having similar thoughts about Nim and portability when I saw this Github project (it uses APE but it's more like a runtime for software? though I'm not sure if actual usage is easy like other frameworks/libraries etc). Though honestly I will probably sooner do something with Godot or Raylib via bindings instead, which is unfortunate because the 2D polygonal style is not well supported* unless you keep it really simple.
I'm thinking about tinkering with low-poly 3D+mostly untextured models (vertex colors, see vertex color skyboxes as an inspiration for the style/concept) to sidestep the 2D issue (as it's well-established in 3D). My mousewheel is currently broken, though. And I'm not totally happy about the idea of using Blender, though any 3D editor opens up more options (in-engine stuff is cool, but probably locked-in).
It's also difficult finding discussion about Nim on the fediverse, particularly when people don't explicitly say nim-lang. That and often Kbin doesn't properly federate Mastodon replies so potential conversations are just broken. And I haven't seen other languages that come close to the same feel, some scripting languages might be OK if their performance wasn't a problem (and often there are options to help, but it also makes me question if it also wrecks their compatibility with bindings when it's a different thing).
* = 1. Godot 4 has a still-in-PR-stage feature that can be used for art but may not perform well enough to be used for an entire project with MSAA, also still no Nim bindings. Also even then, the editors could be better (vertex colors and internal vertices).
2. I am not aware of polygonal tools for Raylib at all, started making a text format and loader but got bogged down on details. And it would be even more basic than Godot's polygons, no animation aside from just making multiple frames and swapping (or maybe some basic transform effects, but this would all need to be done manually while Godot has in-engine animation).
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Probably woodworking. I'm pretty sure I'd love it but I live in an apartment in a city centre. So, not very suitable to have such a hobby at the moment.
It's certainly a challenge, but it is very doable in a small space. If you have a patio or a balcony, you can start by making small things with just hand tools.
Maybe circuit board design.
I've hand etched a few basic boards in the past, but I'd like to do a few "properly" using some CAD tool and have them professionally fabbed.
So far each time I've tried, I have failed to wrap my brain around the CAD workflow and after a few weeks I give up in frustration and move on to something different.
You have to start smaller, and specifically, you need to plan on a minimum of fully redesigning the entire board twice, three times if you want to get it to a really good state.
You're largely guessing what will be the optimum configuration for routing. After the first work through, it will be obvious here major circuit blocks need to be routed to make the design work at all or, at least, make sense. The second time through things will fall in place much more quickly as you'll know where the major problems are and start by routing them. At this point, with a little experience and thought you'll probably see the last major issues related to things like ground loops and likely electrical noise issues that can be solved if you completely redo the design.
If you start out like this, you'll likely start thinking about your designs inside isolated little circuit blocks, like the power, analogue, digital, communications, sensors, etc. Then you can start simply redesigning these little blocks as needed while you also start saving these blocks in KiCAD and dropping them into future designs with minimal changes.
Once upon a time, I saw someone say "design is done in blocks" and I tried to start out like this, but that was ineffective for me. I needed to learn how everything fit together first and that made the blocks design methodology click.
Just as a few tips, make your traces as large as you can/defaults are way too small, make your through hole pads much larger so you can desolder stuff several times without lifting a pad, and route a ground trace through absolutely everywhere possible and connect it to as solid an infill plane as possible, use 0R connections to save yourself from mistakes in routing and add an easy location for pull up resistors. Finally, print absolutely ever design on paper with the back side inverted, and glue this to a piece of card stock like cardboard. It can be from any food packaging like a cereal box. Then use a drill or awl to make all of your holes, place your components, and check the fitments inside your project enclosure, this alone will save you MANY mistakes.
GL
Thank you. I'll keep that advice in mind when I get brave enough to try again.
Idk what tools you've tried but there are some that are pretty easy to use. I personally enjoy LibrePCB, but I think Fritzing might be easier and it even has a protoboard thing that's really cool.
One thing I'd suggest, is learning how to do the schematics stuff first (if you don't yet,) I feel like this is what helps the most in understanding these tools. I don't have an electronics background, so this was holding me back at the beginning, now I find them super intuitive.
As a side note, be careful with those acids - aside of being dangerous to handle, disposing them improperly is super destructive to the environment.
The schematics are no problem for me, I've been drawing those by hand since the '80s.
It's the steps between that and generating the Gerbers that mess up my mind.
I don't keep a list, I just get interested in various things and feel compelled to learn more/get better at it.
I identify interesting rabbit holes as I go, and I do eventually pursue some of them when the timing is right. It's not really subconscious though, conscious me is making those decisions.
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