Could be a painting, a story, a movie, woodworking, absolutely anything. Also why?
Webdev. Wanted to do this to increase my tech skills and insulate myself from several degrees of idiocy at work. Just haven’t had the wherewithal.
If you have the time, I’d recommend trying it out. Creating a basic webpage isn’t too hard, and you probably have the tools to get started on your computer already (you can do it with just Notepad and view it in any web browser! Although I would recommend downloading a free proper code editor such as VS Code).
Bruh, I’m talking about a crud app. Possibly running on the shiny framework. It’s not going to be trivial.
Imma be blunt. Maybe your attitude is contributing to the ‘Several degrees of idiocy at work’
Dudes tryin to be helpful with beginner tips and you jump down his throat. The irony of you saying crud isn’t trivial 😂
Oh, okay. Still more doable than you might think, but of course not trivial. Good luck!
Let me ask, maybe you know: say I want to build a finance app that basically crunches a lot of data accessed from a DB, does some pretty intricate subsetting of the data, and produces Excel reports (XML). I currently do this with about 1300 lines of R code and a SQLite DB. Pretty lean and easy to use (was a bitch to write, tho, really stretched my understanding of lexical scoping and functional programming). If I wanted to webify this, the main challenge that I think I face is finding a framework that allows me to do all that nitty gritty data subsetting and summarizing - this is where R is really excellent, more flexible and expressive than SQL. What framework, if any, might you recommend? What kind of stack would be good for a beginner?
I think that’s a nice hot goal to have, but you’re shooting yourself in the foot by aiming so high (pardon the tortured metaphor). Start with the basics of webdev and work your way up.
Like I’m a senior dev, and for years I thought I understood frontend. Finally, I had to reckon that I did not, and took a course on how to build a web app using React on Typescript + various popular libraries (YMMV).
Yeah a lot of it was boring or stuff I mostly knew anyway, but actually sitting down and going to school on it, like with pencil and paper, was a big help. So now I can actually contribute to FE/web dev. And all those little things I feel I should know are either known, or knowable because now I understand what to search for.
Yeah. I’m like 46 now, and this just feeds into my “fuck it” mentality. Thanks for the input, seriously, that is not sarcasm.
Methadone for F2P Skinner-box games. An endless treadmill of dungeon-crawling, basically knocking off Path Of Exile or similar - but aggressively free. No mechanism whatsoever for taking your actual money. It’d use all the tricks that make spending bullshit currencies feel good, but you’d actually find those currencies, like it’s a video game or something.
A key conceit of the modern-fantasy setting is that credit cards are naturally occurring. Magic understands that plastic is money now, so they just kinda spring forth, as loot. Maybe less than loot. They’d grow on trees. Have as many as you like - you’ll enjoy it less than playing. The game’s incentive against spraying cash at every problem is that you still have to examine the in-game model and type in some long sequence of numbers to get a random quantity of dollars. It’s amusing but not really fun. You’ll enjoy the game more if you just play it.
What you’d spend that fake money on is a trickle of procedurally-generated variations for every form of content I can think of. Swords, guns, hats, capes, hairpins, familiars, particle effects, et very cetera. A maximized possibility space of stuff to look at and go “want.” None of it’s ever exactly what you had in mind, because each thingamajig is a random sixty-four-bit number. That entropy translates to a bajillion trim and shape combinations and then several materials and colors on top of that. There’d only need to be a few dozen models for each thing, and a few dozen textures for each layer, and their distributions would drift over time to create a sense of changing fashions.
A lot of this was a reaction to every live-service money-pit having “seasons.” That cyclical change would be textual and central. Summer’s ending, and it’ll come around again, but it won’t be the same summer. So - gear has affinity for its period in time. A summer sword is especially good against summer enemies. It’ll struggle against any lingering spring enemies, and eventually, against emerging autumn enemies. By winter’s end it’s just a prop. You can keep it as a display piece if you really like its randomized appearance, but all of its stats are gone.
Loadouts are visible as a partial halo over someone’s head. Their offensive and defensive capabilities are represented as shapes along that crescent, sliding from the near future into the oncoming past. Someone optimized to hell for right now will have one great spike at the center. And you can probably tickle through their armor with half-faded sword from last season, or any mediocre early drop for next season. All these things have their place and time. There’s never a reason to spend real money on them. They don’t last. They’re not real.
I love everything about that. Even a small tech demo with like one kind of item and a single quest would be really cool.
Pottery and learning blender and creating characters which I then can animate
Record an indie album with mostly acoustic instruments then send it off to a DJ to mix and master. It wouldn’t be a remix then, more of a collaboration.
A sequel to my first novel that people regularly ask me about 12 years after I finished it. I published it myself and sold to friends, family, work acquaintances. Two young kids and a busy job wildly delayed any free time I might have for grand modern fantasy. One of these years.
Can I have a copy?
I wanna learn more about poetry. I love reading poetry. I’ve written some too. Some of those even got published. But I feel like I don’t really understand how it works. I can write decent lines, make things rhyme, or not if that fits the tone better. But I don’t really understand why it works, if you know what I mean.
I guess I kind of want to study about how to analyze and appreciate poetry in a structured way. I wanted to take a few courses, but I’m in USA and they only have courses on Western poetry, which I’m not really that interested in. (It definitely very good, but I’m more fascinated with Indian, especially Bengali poetry. That’s what I grew up with.)
So yeah, IDK how to do it. But I’ll love to. Maybe I can mail some professors and ask for books? Or maybe actual poets might be better? I’m not sure. But I’ll love to do it one day.
Look for online courses, like that archive of free MIT lectures. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found something worthwhile.
I haven’t been able to find anything like that yet.
If you’ve had poems published without really understanding poetry itself, you may naturally have an intuitive grasp on poetry. I think it would be interesting if you continued writing and reflect on what you write, how you write it, and how you feel while writing it. Maybe write a poem expressing your feelings on poetry!
Then again, studying could give you better means and terminology to express your internal understanding. Either way, I wish you well!
I actually did start once, but didn’t get very far.
I wanted to design a mall out of Legos. I got it all set up on Stud.io, and I even started making an entrance with doors, lights, a drive-up and a little park. I’m not good with the building techniques, so it’s a super basic flat wall and everything. Also it takes a long time to do much of anything in that program.
Learning any instrument and creating music
I’ve considered making a youtube channel discussing politics with a heavy emphasis on organizing unions. I’m extremely proud of my achievements as a part of a successful union campaign, and I want to share what I’ve learned, give folks some of my war stories, and teach people the political and practical necessities to organizing. The reason I haven’t is because I feel like I would get entirely drowned out in the political youtube space
LeftTube (definitely covered by union-oriented content) does a fairly good job of propping up important messages and messengers. You might try uploading a few videos and sharing them with the likes of Hasan Piker, TYT, Big Shaun, and PhilosophyTube (Abigail Thorn). Getting your videos in front of the right eyes can expose them to an enormous audience, and most of these people do nothing but consume recommended content in one way or another.
It almost never happens overnight, but I think there’s an importance to your story, and we need more union-centric content. Shoot me a link, and I’ll be a day-one subscriber.
i personally would love to hear your story
I’d subscribe just to watch the comment sections.
Sobriety
If you need a random mf to talk to hmu. Do it. You don’t gotta be a square just because you clean yourself up. You just may fuck up a few times, so may as well try sooner than later.
I keep telling myself I’m going to draw monsters. But I never do.
What about starting with a really really small monster. Like a tiny little itty bitty marginalia monster
Small monsters outfitted in cast off household junk that has been repurposed is a longer term goal.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
I’m quite literally in no position to criticise, but I’d like to brainstorm some ideas with you. I struggle with this too, but have managed to make some progress over the years.
Do you take notes for work or something where you could scratch out a concept or two in between tasks? Would an app/phone timer like Lock Me Out help get your phone time down to a level you’re happier with?
This kind of stuff has worked for me anyway. Not to say it isn’t still a challenge
I jot down notes in SimpleNote on occasion. I need to gather my supplies.
Like your drawing tools? That’s a good idea. What’s keeping you from that now?
A complete lack of organization and an air conditioner that hasn’t worked in three years. It’s frequently been 87 to 89 in my house for over a month now. It kills motivation to move. But I did just go outside and remove all the 4 foot tall grass from my brick patio. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.
I need to draw monsters that do yardwork. They work outside. Elves make shoes inside. Goblins prune and edge.
Would you start with big scarry teeth and draw the rest of the monster around that? Or start with the shape and worry about details later?
Body type. Reptile, humanoid, insect, vacuum cleaner, etc.
I just constantly have ideas that need a lot of setup and never have any time.
contact microphones on a canvas run through distortion making noise art is probably the most likely thing to happen next, but again I never seem to find the time.
user name checks out
Your mangled brain would like you to know that there is a boxer called Contact Mike.
My lesson planning for this year.
I have several small ideas that seem like they’d go together in a work of fiction, but there are also so many gaps that seeing it ruins any forward thinking I might have about it.
The best way really is to just start. You might chop and change, write and rewrite, many times but you will find a way to make it come together. Writing notes and a list of plot points helps, or even writing out the separate sections and then finding a way to make them meet. Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of sentences and paragraphs. Getting the bare bones down in your starting point. I used a spreadsheet and would add in new points and landmarks as and when they came to me. I still ended up spending ages editing, and adding, and amending until it felt right. Taxing but cathartic to get it all out.
I want to get into a little machining and welding.
Unfortunately I have a smallish townhome that doesn’t leave me much room for a workshop, and even if I had the space, I’d probably have to go in to the tune of a few hundred if not thousands of dollars worth of machines, tooling, equipment, and materials pretty quickly, and I have other things to blow my money on.
I generally just like working with my hands, making things, figuring out problems, etc. and having some machining projects to figure out seems like a good way to fill in the gaps left by a pretty shitty math curriculum in my high school (I’ve probably learned more trig from watching some machining videos and only half paying attention than I did taking an actual trig class)
Why not 3d print? I’ve taught myself a ton of CAD and sm now learning surface modeling. When I’m ready for a CNC, I’ll be ready.
I also want to get into 3d printing, and probably will before I find space for a lathe and mill
But that kind of scratches two different itches for me. I know there’s a bit more to it, but pressing a button and letting the machine do most of the work doesn’t really appeal to me, I want to do it manually.
There’s also the issue of materials, I don’t often find myself needing/wanting a plastic part, but I do find myself wishing I could get some custom made metal pieces
Nothing about 3D printing is set-and-forget when you’re designing from the ground up…
