Don’t get into woodworking if you have a compulsion to achieve accurate, precise results because wood is fiddly as fuck.
OR
DO get into woodworking if you have a compulsion to achieve accurate, precise results because it will burn that shit right out of you If you don’t die from an aneurysm first. It’ll teach you to build all sorts of wiggle room into everything in life, not just furniture.
People will think what you made was amazing, that it took so much skill.
Nope.
Only you know how you put everything together loosely, then tightened screws incrementally while adjusting clamps and smacking it with a rubber mallet until it looked right. There are pilot holes they can’t see that don’t go anywhere. You definitely missed gluing something important. You might have weighted a piece with epoxy and cat litter because you forgot to buy weights, it was 3 am, and you were unintentionally high as balls on stain fumes, but you really wanted to finish in time to surprise your partner for their birthday.
They don’t know, they’ll never know, and they don’t need to know.
Don’t forget the thousands of dollars in tools you’ll be compelled to buy and never being able to throw out even the small piece of wood because “you might need it someday”.
Tell me about it, and there’s always something better than what you have. How to be smart about buying tools deserves its own entire comment chain.
I didn’t know about these until recently, but I now recommend folks check out local tool libraries to get started and see what they want or need for low to no cost.
We have a one car garage full of maintenance and fabrication tools I’ve acquired over my life. They’ve paid for themselves multiple times over in even just the last decade, but the cost and space requirements are prohibitive for a lot of folks. It’s one of those “having money saves money” situations, but tool libraries can help a lot.
“It’s made outta offcuts.”
quietly pushes entire bespoke server rack under bed
My foray into woodworking began and ended with figuring “sheesh, custom picture frames are so expensive, how hard could it be?!”…
By the end of that experience, nothing felt real anymore. Every foolishly pure mathematical concept, every platonic ideal - shameful indulgences of the young and weak. Our grand edifices of knowledge, little more than piles of tattered rags with which we clothe our nakedness, arrogant and hubristic in our vulgar conceits.
Don’t do it y’all. That abyss gazes back.
Underappreciated comment of the thread.
You need to conjure the ancient dark magics of woodworkers long past.
I shudder to imagine such might. Utter your shriveled curses to the unwary, fiend, not to me!
My partner complimented my new shelf recently. Then she looked closer and realised it was a few boards stacked up on the cheapest engineering bricks I could find but rotated so the holes are not visible.
Only got a folding hand saw which I suspect isn’t the best for making straight cuts, I had considered cutting up a railway sleeper for blocks instead of the bricks. Bricks worked out cheaper. Wooden blocks could look nice though.
Just cut pieces of wood big enough to cover the front of the bricks, and glue them on. Wood on the front, and brick on the side, will look like a cool design choice.
That’s my dream, except I want to complicate it by building guitars. So it actually has to work, not just look like it might.
I can’t build a guitar. I can build a guitar-shaped object. But I cannot build a guitar.
After having worked with wood and son of a cabinet maker, I crave the strength and certainly of steel. I got into welding in a big way.some aluminium, but mostly steel. It’s such a wonderful material. Cut it, weld it, grind it, bam, new and bigger steel. You can’t make a piece of wood bigger.
shia_labeouf_slowclap.gif
LOL I learned so much from this, thank you.
And also: Fume and dust extraction is no joke!!
… but you’ll know
I just tell everyone where all the mistakes were.
The correct number of guitars to own is n+1, with n being the number of currently owned guitars.
Same for cameras, axes and chainsaws…
And bikes, and computers
And freeway lanes necessary to solve traffic
Civil engineering as a hobby, eh?
Tactical urbanism ftw!
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Cats
axes and chainsaws…
Thnx mate! I owe you! Gonna Take this to my wife now !!
Always happy to help a brother out.
Lenses maybe, camera bodies, nah.
Dice. Definitely dice.
This is true for reptiles and snakes as well.
There are moments when it can be n+2…
Eating all the food you cook will make you fat
Especially if you want to make “good” food. I’m not saying there isn’t good food that is healthy for you. But if you want to make things taste like they do in a high end restaurant, it’s probably going to require a shitload of butter/ghee and salt. And then probably cream. And also highly fatty meats.
It’s usually just butter. So much fucking butter.
And also highly fatty meats. It’s usually just butter. So much fucking butter.
Anthropology: The study of mankind’s quest for readily available fat.
And salt. Watch Gordon Ramsey season every single step.
Cocaine can become addictive really quickly
Skill issue
I have a pretty addictive personality and I thank the stars that I’ve never enjoyed coke on the handful of occasions I’ve tried it. It just made me feel overly talkative to the point of being annoying.
I have done a fair share of coke and while it was nice to be able to party for two days straight I never really felt addicted. But that’s probably just me cause downers on the other hand my god that’s shits addictive.
A ex heroin addict once told me that when I talked about the downers I was using that I sounded like an heroin addict and that I shouldn’t ever try heroin. (Which I guess is great advice in general but the way she said it still stays with me)
Understandable, my brains already unfocussed jumping around, coke would just make me say all that shit out loud, downers would calm me down and make me feel normal
I’m basically coked out by default, it would simply keep me from blacking out or bring me out of one when I used to use it. Otherwise no change, it’s the same with alcohol, it takes a lot to actually bring on a change, most people usually think I’m still sober or barely drunk blacked out apparently. Never really felt addicted to either, weed on the other hand, apparently not addictive, but it forsure ruins my mood when I try to quit. (Haven’t drank in over 6 months, and had a fat gap before that, don’t think of it, haven’t used coke for over 2 years probably, don’t think of it either, weed + nicotine I still use daily) I’m not trying to quit them either, just not around fun ppl or things to do since moving back home after college, so I just never think to do it.
Warhammer 40K is what some may call…MEGA EXPENSIVE.
I remember in college, when someone would get into MTG, we’d jokingly say coke’s cheaper.
Now, when someone I know gets into 40k, I much less jokingly say “MTG’s cheaper”
Then again, if you’re just playing for fun against friends, a $200 3d printer is cheaper than any army I’ve seen. Still costs more than a $45 booster draft, but at least the printer’s a one-time cost
Oh look, you just bought your way into a 3D printing hobby
I did that for unrelated reasons, I just 3d printed my way into a 40k hobby :P
I’m thanking my lucky stars I’ve newer really gotten along great with resin printing 😂
I only have an FDM printer xD You can still do a lot with it, though, especially if you’re willing to get a heat gun involved. Though after printing out the character in my profile pic, I did realize there’s a lot of small detail that gets lost with FDM.
Alas, though, small animals, a cat, and poor ventilation make resin printing a bad idea for me
Honestly, I don’t find it a ton of fun. I use mine so occasionally, you kind of forget how little post processing you do on an FDM print for the most part. Though I definitely see the advantage for minis especially if you’re going to paint it afterwards.
To piggy back on this, don’t chase the fucking meta. By the time you get your Exaction Squad and paint it, GW will balance it into being a total waste of your time/money/points.
Wait, you didn’t know this before getting into it? That’s the first thing I ever heard about it, and I’ve never owned any 40K anything.
Come give Warmachine a shot, army sizes are usually smaller and the rules are less “my rule book was published more recently, that means I win” (Plus the models are slightly cheaper).
I thought that too. That’s why i bought a resin 3d printer and made it 1000x more expensive, toxic and time-consuming. yey me
Losing Joann’s has made it really difficult to find fabric locally. Michael’s needs to step their game up.
Yeah, there really hasn’t been a good alternative for fabric. Lots of people were quick to jump on the “lol join the 21st century and just buy it online” side of the argument, but buying fabric is an extremely tactile experience. You need to feel it to know that it will have the correct texture, weight, see it will hang, which direction(s) it will stretch, how much it will stretch, how easy is is to stretch, etc for what you’re trying to make, because all of those qualities will heavily impact the end product. Those things are difficult to quantify, and nearly impossible to judge purely from photos on an online listing. Two fabrics that look identical online can have vastly different weights, stretch, textures, etc…
It’s miserable. It was such a good store, Michael’s doesn’t compare for fabric yet. Hoping they get as much fabric as they’ve been sending me emails, might get a lot then lol
Move to Chicago, we have good local stores for fabric.
In cheaper and more fun to get parts from the junk yard.
Except the number of pick and pull yards seems to be dropping by the day.
I did astronomy like 25 years ago, yes a good telescope is kind of $$$, eyepieces, etc. I wanted to do some astro-photo but back in the days it was top$. But anyway the biggest problem, being in eastern Canada, is that you can only use it at night (hé), and in winter it is so freaking cold it’s almost unusable, so you only have summer where night starts at like 10PM… When you have a life, job, house, partner, house, kids, name it, you don’t have time or energy for this.
So I went to RC cars, cheaper!!! can be used during the day, even for 10 minutes, not requiring a setup, just take the remote and the car, make sure the battery is charged, that’s it. Buy one for the kid too, bash them, take a brand like Traxxas and you can find cheap parts everywhere for 20 years.
For coding, I wish I had known that I will need to basically relearn the entire thing every 2-4 years due to frameworks and language design changes.
Tell me you’re a front end programmer, without telling me you’re a front end programmer.
I had to do FE for a freelance work, I learned Angular built the thing and delivered, a few year later I wanted to do some other stuff went to check Angular documentation and it had changed completely, plus no one else was using it because everyone had migrated to React.
Yea, its a big reason why I try to avoid FE like the plauge! As soon as you learn what everyone is using, everyone is using something else, or its going through a major rework that changes everything.
This is why I only use languages and libraries that are “finished.” C, Pascal, Euphoria to name a few.
Absolutely isn’t true though, unless you only learned JavaScript for some reason and god help you if that is what you call programming
Yep. Redesign the entire library every few weeks because you discovered a better architecture.
I kinda wish I considered my social anxiety and picked a better solitairy instrument than drums. They’re super fun to play, but I was only ever in one band and I’m too anxious to play with strangers right now. I just jam by myself, but I suspect I’d have an easier time actually writing music if I had more experience with melody. I tried picking up guitar and violin later, but so far I haven’t had the energy to really devote the time needed to learn another instrument.
Guitar is difficult to learn, especially if you don’t know anything about music theory.
You might want to start with a basic digital piano, and learn basic keyboard skills, and music theory at the same time. As a drummer, you have good hand independence, and will probably pick up piano pretty quickly.
Music theory is a supremely elegant system, and you may find it soothing for your anxiety.
This is really intensely packed information, but EVERYTHING you need to know about music theory is on there, especially the basic stuff. You’ll find lots of great explanations on YouTube. It’s a lot like mathematics, one small thing leads to another, and it all develops into an elegant complex system built on logic at every step. Most of it becomes pretty intuitive once you figure out the basics.
When you get a keyboard, make sure to get one with weighted keys, so it feels like a real piano. I got a really nice Donner on sale, and it’s lasted for years.
And of course practice every day. Try to get 20-30 minutes a day, either when you first get up, or before you go to bed, or preferably both. Make it a habit, and you’ll get better quickly. Keep it up and you’ll get fluid at reading music, and then it gets fun. You can be there in a year. You can take up the guitar next year.
And don’t worry about playing with someone else, just learn to play keyboard and you can start making your own recordings on your computer, and you only have to play with yourself. That’s what I do, along with guitar and bass. I wish I played drums, I have to use pads and program drum grooves.
It’s a lifetime journey, have fun!
Can confirm, switch from drums to piano after trying the guitar.
I couldn’t stick with the guitar but the keyboard, aw man, that’s awesome.❤️
Yeah, the guitar is really hard, you have to really want to play. There’s a long learning curve (endless, really), and it’s not very intuitive, ESPECIALLY when it comes to theory. That’s why guitarists have a much different approach to theory than other musicians.
Piano on the other hand, makes theory seem ridiculously easy, once you’ve mastered the notes on the staff.
I’m a guitarist, primarily, but I learned music theory getting a degree in music history about a million years ago, so I got the educational grounding BEFORE I really got into the guitar. It made it a LOT easier. I can’t imagine learning proper theory on guitar. I run through chord progressions on the guitar just fine, but so much of early theory is harmonic note leading, and that can only be taught, and learned, properly on a keyboard.
Once you’re decent on the keyboard, not a master or anything, but you know basic theory and can play some easy stuff, you can try to learn guitar, and transfer your knowledge over there. It should shorten the learning curve a bit, or at least make it less frustrating.
You’re fingertips are still going to scream either way.
This resource is awesome, thanks for sharing!!
Have you thought about an “MPC” type instrument like a Native Instruments Maschine? I feel like that might be a nice evolution for you as it would allow you to transition a love for percussion into a songwriting tool that is a blast to jam out with and make patterns with.
I mean, I really like nice finger drumming pads, but you could also just use a more traditional midi drum kit to record loops the point is that you can have a blast with an MPC type tool all by yourself with headphones on and you can then choose to share that or not, it is perfect as a solo instrument.
Bonus points you could record loops of yourself playing your actual drums and slice up the audio samples in an MPC, that would be super cool.
I also think as a drummer having an MPC might be really nice to throw loops of certain sections of songs into that you wanted to practice so that you could easily switch between them and keeping looping that section to practice as long as needed.
I had not thought about an mpc type instrument, but I’m going to look into it right now because that sounds cool lol
If you have a computer you can get a used/older NI Maschine for fairly cheap just make sure you get a software key. The pads feel really nice on those, but it is all down to preference.
A lot of people like the Ableton Push series of controllers but for me the pure playing feel of the Maschine is hard to beat and the ability to build loops into songs without looking at your computer screen while still having access to all the benefits of being connected to a computer (easy file access of samples for example) is really nice.
Go to Guitar Center or something and try out one, they are a blast I promise! They are inherently percussive instruments and I think having experience as a drummer is a great platform to enter into learning MPC type instruments from.
drummer here as well! I’m very glad to play the drums and not guitar or anything else. Okay, you’re the loudest one, but you also have your own safe space. I really see my drums as a wall between me and the rest of the stage/the band. It’s a comfort zone, a protection. Let the drums do the talking and hide behind your kit (figure of speech, not literally as that would be hard to play)
Unless you’re Dave Grohl. Than you can jump right through that wall
I definitely had similar issues with bass, it would have made more sense for me to start with guitar. Though either way, I do my best work when I’m programming synths. And I never really got good enough at bass to play the kinds of lines that made me pick up bass in the first place, anyway …
I started with guitar, but quickly grew bored with it because I’d rather play bass. Never really seriously played any instrument after that, though I have two guitars and three accordions laying around, along with another guitar, a ukelele and two keyboards from my kids. I guess I’m more of a collector.
I was fairly obsessed with bass, too, when I started playing instruments. I guess guitar never would have worked for me back then.
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
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.
I’m into playing guitar, bass and electronic music production, and IMO while there is definitely a “collecting instead of practicing/writing” issue to look out for, the right gear makes a pretty big difference. e.g. you do need a guitar with a good neck (not warped, good frets), you do need a guitar that’s not too heavy for you, you do need software (or hardware, if that’s your thing) with a workflow that works for you.
Currently struggling with the software part. Could well be that I’m just in a hole in general, but I was definitely more productive when I was making Game Boy chiptune with a simple tracker than I am with standard DAWs. At the same time, I’m very reluctant to enter into the rabbit hole of groove boxes, hardware sequencers etc.
Oh for sure, completely agree with all of that, but there is a point of diminishing returns. Like you definitely need functional equipment. And it’s nice to have nicer equipment. But buying yet another guitar doesn’t make you better at the guitar, and you can probably get better by practicing more often with what you have.
Don’t get me started on music software. I could spend $10,000 a week on plugins that I would never use because they all look so awesome.
Sequencing on something like LSDJ is great because you are locked into this tiny little ecosystem and you have to get creative.
there is a point of diminishing returns
Definitely, just thought it needed clarification.
Sequencing on something like LSDJ is great because you are locked into this tiny little ecosystem and you have to get creative.
This exactly. When I use a standard DAW, I spend SO much time searching for (or making) samples, synth patches, tweaking effects to usually little effect, while the constraints of LSDj force me to have a relatively consistent sound from the get-go and into actually making music. Unfortunately, it’s hard to translate that into something that isn’t chiptune or some other genre that I don’t particularly care for right now like rock.
Definitely applies to climbing. Technically more expensive shoes may help with certain climbs, it certainly won’t help a beginner.
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…
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.
The benefits of keeping old devices. Before we moved several years ago, I had several computers/laptops, storage devices and some other miscellaneous devices that I’d be able to use and actually benefit from if I had kept them.
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I have games that I can’t get working on either Linux or newer versions of Windows.
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Hard drives from old computers and laptops can be relatively cheaply converted into external hard drives and, while they wont be fast and possibly not reliable if used too much, they offer decent storage for the price.
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I often use smaller storage devices (like SD cards and MP3 players) for transferring files from one computer to another and I also like to use them as temporary storage to preserve my hard drives when I don’t need fast storage.
Another thing I wish I had known about, was just how quickly emulation would get good for older games. I’ve wasted so much money from buying older/retro consoles because I thought that emulation would stay as just a niche interest. Nowadays, while some games and systems are still iffy, you can emulate a wide variety of consoles and a lot of emulators even work well on some older and low end devices.
Old SD cards are so convenient. Pair them with a small USB card reader and you can carry a bunch of temporary storage in your pocket without buying anything extra.
Some games still don’t work emulated, or at least didn’t used to, like wrath unleashed
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Climbing is fun but climbing outdoors requires mountains. Getting to mountains requires a car, or at least people willing to drive you.
- It’s always more expensive than I thought
- It’s always more physically demanding than I thought
- There’s never a local hobby/support group for it
… Sums up pretty much every hobby I have tried/am trying
There’s never a local hobby/support group for it
This is the hardest part…
Photosensitive polymer resin is nasty stuff, and stereolithography 3D printing requires a lot more safety considerations than FDM printing does! No regrets though, it’s still a lot of fun
My boss pushed us to research and acquire a resin printer a couple years ago. My coworker pushed the high-budget Form Labs direction due to his poor experience with resin printing in college. I had zero experience with resin (mostly only used Prusa FDM at that time) and pushed toward the relatively low budget Anycubic Photon direction, from the standpoint of “this is really not what we need to be doing with our budget, and this doesn’t make sense for our use case, so I’ll try to waste less money.”
Now that my coworker’s been gone for over a year, my boss thinks no one uses it because we don’t know how. I know how, but FDM is just so much more approachable. I can swap filaments, click print, and walk away in about two minutes and trust that I’ll come back to a usable part.
Changing out resin is its own special hell, and good luck if you have a print fail and have to clean off the bottom of the tray. I didn’t get to a point of trusting prints to finish. Even when it does finish, you still have to wash and cure, and every part I ever made in resin seemed to be dimensionally unstable. Even the sample parts a Form Labs rep sent us were badly warped in shipping. The Photon hasn’t been used in well over a year. CEO wants us to get rid of it, and I agree. Boss isn’t letting go.
Meanwhile we just got two P2S printers that are cranking out parts like a champ. I would rather take a leisurely stroll across Eastern Ukraine than print with resin ever again.
I absolutely hate gunk on my hands, so I stuck with FDM.
