What is a good hobby/skill that most people should give a try, and why so?
What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?
i feel like this is a descent question i guess.
Ditto. Like, I picked it up on the job, but I use it in my daily life all the time. I really like writing dumb little home automation shell scripts to turn lights off/on based on more specific conditions. I was also able to easily snipe an OG ergodox off of /r/mechmarket with praw back when those were all the rage. It's fun, and the rush you get when you finally solve a tough problem is hard to beat.
This actually got me working in the IT.
How hard would it be for a noob to host a Lemmy instance?
The technical part is probably easier than the content moderation.
ive been wanting to get into game dev but it seems like alot of work and i suck at everything, also im limted with software and im not even sure what game engine or thing to use, if that makes sense. do you hav eany advice or something you want to share?
Take a look at Gadot 4. As a beginner you can think of it like an open source unity. But they just had a major update and seems to make a lot of the tedious aspects of game dev and streamlining them. Everything is an object which is really nice and they have a scripting language based on python. Easy to read and write
Python with PyGame can be quite a good start. And if you're just trying to build something for fun maybe use free assets from the internet.
Taught myself python at 50 years of age. My God, being able to code is like a superpower. I started out doing some things to make my job easier, later developed an interest in web scraping and data analysis, now I am tinkering with machine learning. I regret listening to people who told me that a strong background in math is required for coding.
For most things code related you require minimal math skills (although a logic oriented mind can be hone by math). I’m glad you’re enjoying your time coding ❤️
I can only assume you got downvoted for this because people think you're advocating stealing assets. So for anyone else reading this, there are actually whole websites devoted to providing free assets for use in games.
Maybe it's a bug, but I don't see any downvotes on my side (from kBin). Didn't thought it was needed to specify that indeed, you should only use assets that are listed as free.
I reccomend trying out GB studio. It makes gameboy games and comes as one binary file. Not too crazy to learn. I liked the music player thing.
I'm a hobbyist game dev also. Main advice would be that yes it is a lot of work and you may suck at everything, but the only way to get any better is to get started.
Pick an engine, it really doesn't matter which for the most part (I used to use Unity and recently switched to Godot, the way people evangelise the latter can be a bit offputting but as an objective user of both I can say they've got pros and cons like anything else). The exception being if you want to make a very specific kind of game like visual novels for example, then you'd be best served learning Ren'Py since that's what the engine is for.
Other than that, get something installed and hunt down some tutorials for it. Doesn't matter if they're irrelevant to what you hope you'll one day make, you're just trying to learn the basics here. Take what you learn in tutorials, and modify it in some way, that helps things sink in better and gives you more understanding about what your code (or your blender animation, or whatever) is actually doing and how it works.
TLDR: Just get stuck in!
p.s. there's a few general "gamedev" communities on here so far but I think the most active one is [email protected] (direct link). Check out the pinned post in there with links to neighbours like engine-specific communities etc. Someone is also organising a Fediverse game jam for next month so that could be a good way to join a team and get started doing small tasks on a game that you wouldn't be able to make yourself yet.
Biking.
Moving under your own power has so many benefits:
My knees disagree but each to their own ;)
I cringe watching someone struggling to turn the pedals when they are riding a multi geared bike.
Cycling is good for the knees, if you're not staining to turn the pedals. That's why gearing exists.
Use the gears to make the pedaling easier.
Also to add, the seat height should be adjusted such that your leg is just under full extension when on the pedal at its lowest point. Otherwise you are wasting a ton of power with every stroke, and will feel it in your knees much quicker.
O yes. If you have problems, shift down, pedal faster. Everything above 70 pedal turns per minute is good for your knees. Everything below is bad
Wait a minute internet dude, did you make sure your seat was the right height? Having the seat at the right height I.e. fully extended legs, the down like an inch, really helped me out with the joint pain. I mention it because biking is generally considered a low impact activity. Knee surgery haver here, myself :')
Y'know that might be the problem. I always just assumed it was because I'm out of shape (although that's probably a contributor as well)
My Hemorrhoids also disagree
I started cycling to commute about a year ago and it's been such a wonderful thing for my mental and physical health, not to mention my bank account. Beware that you may get sucked down the Not Just Bikes rabbit hole if you're not careful and end up becoming a walkable/bikable cities advocate as I have.
epic!
UK weather says no
Norwegian mountain also said no, but that hasn't stopped some Norwegians from riding uphill on a one-gear rusty bike.
An instrument. It's soul food and extremely therapeutic. Even if you suck, just learn to let it go. I find it's really good for my mental health. I dunno, it's music ya know? Lol
I'm really grateful my parents pushed me to start playing the violin at 5, because it massively enriched my life. Even when I was bullied, abused, and miserable, playing my violin would help pick me up just a bit.
Absolutely, im grateful every day I can pick up and play. One day my bones will be to weak to do much of anything yknow.
I agree, singing does that for me as well. Could be having a shit day but after choir things always seem a bit better
music is pretty epic and cool.
This is the one I was looking for. Everyone should learn an instrument. The struggle is so rewarding. Music is such a natural means of expression; if you're happy, depressed, in a mood, annoyed.. all of that can be put into music. It can be the purest joy or the most intimate therapy.
I know, there really is no barrier to music. And it's SO tactile or something, like there's no middle man to your own expression and emotion. You can play music with anything anywhere. And it feels so good, on a biological level, music is engraved into our DNA. It's the most fulfilling thing in my life and I think it's made me a better person. I'm sure the same can be said for many hobbies, music is just the one I chose I guess (:
Thinking of learning sign language....
I tried sign language on a whim in college and ended up loving it! It's really unique and fun to use. It ended up being my secondary focus on my degree. Also, Deaf people are always super happy whenever there is someone to speak with, even if you stumble through it they are always patient and try to help
Do you get to use it often? I'd imagine it's easy to forget how to sign if you don't keep practising, just like languages. Would be cool to learn it though!
Not nearly as much as I would like, luckily my partner knows it too though. So we are able to have some side conversations with it!
how long did it take you to learn it?
I studied it for about 4 years doing a mix of learning and being a teaching assistant for the intro classes, but realistically I was conversational after 2 classes or about a year.
Some tips if you want to learn. I learned American Sign so your mileage may vary for others:
-Find out what sign language is primarily used in your country ASL (American Sign Language) in the US, BSL (British Sign Language) in England, I think some parts of Canada use FSL (French Sign Language) but I cant remember. Universal Sign exists, but is never used so dont learn that.
-Use your dominant hand for all single handed signs
-Learn the alphabet, there are not signs for every word that exists. Often times words are spelled out (fingerspelled) instead of having signs. So by learning your alphabet you can always default to spelling things out if you dont know the sign.
-Facial expressions are super important. They feel really weird at first and often times are what beginners struggle with the most, but they are used to show tone in the conversation and without them you are missing a large building block of the language.
-I found the best way to practice was to sign to myself instead of talking to myself. It helped me remember the main signs that I would use in conversation and helped me practice my finger spelling.
If anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out. Im still very passionate about the language and culture.
Thank you for all the tips and everything!! South Africa use their own sign language - went on their website and they offer a course! I enrolled for it.
Interesting what you say about facial expressions - it makes sense!
Can't wait to start with it.
that sounds wholesome! I'm going to try to learn it!
that would be useful.
*That would be handy
I only know the tiniest bit (learned some as a kid, I don't remember why) but even if it never comes in useful I can confirm it's a great party act.
lol, how it a party act?
Everyone should try to regularly do something that lets them 'play' and be creative, like music, singing, writing, acting, etc. Our day to day is largely rule based so I think it's important to have some time operating outside of that.
Also people should try and do something with their hands (no not that). I've been getting into Lego and jigsaw puzzles as a way of reducing my screen time and it's doing me a lot of good. Picked up crochet recently and going to try and make a baby blanket for my incoming niece.
Super agree with the creativity. I believe most people are creative and have ideas they'd love to express, it's so cleansing for the soul and makes life so much less depressing and monotonous.
Sewing, at least to the level of basic mending. Helps one realize what well made clothes look and feel like.
Hiking.
Getting up amongst the fells and mountains, mostly in isolation from noise and other people. Sure there's touristy spots where alot head to but there's still plenty of other, maybe slightly more difficult to hike places if you wanted pure zen.
Navigation is important, don't just go up with Google maps expecting her to tell you when the next left is. Get some research done, and head out. Don't overcomplicate things with buying loads of gear that youtubers "recommend", don't send it up a 3000ft hike either. A slight ascent, around a lake - start small, find your feet and grow from there.
The best thing I could ever have started for my mental health.
Agreed! Just some quick safety tips for people who might be getting into it:
Baking - fresh warm bread is so good!
Sewing - it's nice to add pockets to things 😁
Oh my god yes the lack of pockets! Changed my life when I learned to sew.
I do not know how to live without a handbag.
And cooking! Being able to really master techniques and understand the interactions between flavours and ingredients is incredibly satisfying.
Second this! Just made bread a few days ago using the King Arthur easy bread recipe and sure enough it was super easy and came out really good!
bread is good and sewing you get to make cool cosplays sometimes, so overall bread is good.
At work, I have a reputation for being the guy who never shuts up about trying to get new people into scuba diving. If there are 2 or more divers at the lunch table I honestly feel a little bad for everybody else. The cost of getting trained and renting or buying all your gear can scare people away, but I would at least strongly recommend that anybody on an island vacation or cruise at least try a "discover Scuba" class. You'll learn everything you need to know to not die by watching a quick video, and working in a pool, then you get to go have an amazing dive in the ocean with an instructor.
I hate swimming in general, doubt I'd be into scuba diving
Crochet
Pros
Cons
I love the smushing! Find it so hard to learn though
Sounds like you have the most important part of the hobby down already, at least!
(see my reply to the other comment for various maybe-helpful links)
Any online tutorial that could help me get started you recommend?
Well, I don't want to be That Person but technically I made a (long) video for total crochet beginners that I know quite a few people have used to great success. It's frontloaded with theory though and more for people like me who learn by understanding the "why" of what they're doing.
If you prefer to do it in shorter chunks or without all the tedious theory, which let's face it most people do, I've heard really good things about this Bella Coco series which has, um, slightly more views than mine 😅
There's a fairly new (aren't they all) crochet community over at [email protected] (direct link) that seems very nice so far, I'm sure they'd love to help with your first attempts too!
I like crochet, even though I'm really bad at it. It's very peaceful (unless I'm counting stitches, then it's a constant fight against my ADHD), and I have a bunch of cool scarves now.
I think that's part of why I suggested it over knitting, you can do the complex projects with the counting and the actual effort OR you can just mindlessly crochet a long scarf or a bunch of cotton washclothes and end up with something practical.
Knitting is a lot slower and also less suitable for some of those small projects like washcloths so unless it's basic garter stitch you pretty much know you're gonna have to concentrate at least a little bit.
My girlfriend does both, and it's definitely amazing how much faster crochet is! Like, "oh, here's a giant amigurumi dragon I whipped up in a week," or "here's a poncho made over the weekend for our vacation," with crochet, versus "I have to frog 4 weeks of work because I slipped a stitch and didn't notice." Granted, she's much better at crochet (by her admission), but knitting seems tough. Love the stuff you can make with it though.
Haha, yep that sounds about right! I do love being able to do both, some things you can do with knitting you just can't do in crochet especially if you need to create a nice drapey fabric. Being bistitchual is the best of both worlds!
Cooking! It can be so rewarding, a fun way to impress or care for others, and you need to eat every day anyway so ample time to practice.
Almost all cooking can be done with practically no hardware beyond a sharp knife, a good sized cutting board, and a good pot or pan.
There's so many patterns and combinations and different takes on the same ingredients that you can learn. The basics get you 80% of the way there
Public Speaking
You never know when you'll have to say something in front of a crowd.
I’m so sorry, but I have to reply to this, I misread this as public spanking, and have been giggling to myself for about 15 minutes.
Apologies.
How dare you, you dirty dirty child. You have a dirty, filthy mind. You should be...
Wait, what were we talking about?
It really is a skill. I struggle with it, but it just takes practice, outside of extreme cases where severe anxiety are involved, but in those cases it's a great resource for mindfulness and cbt.
that is true.
Cooking is a very nice, relaxing hobby and you also get to eat some good food!
It’s also very useful and an easy way to impress people.
It's extremely difficult for me to cook regularly anymore, I just don't have the energy. When I do choose to, though, I make it a fun event and it's so satisfying. Put on some music, drink some beers and go to town.
I made Chinese noodles from scratch a while back and while they were SOOOOO GOOD, it was so labor intensive that I would only do it for fun and not to satiate myself lol. They were nice and bouncy noodles, cut a little smaller than chow fun.
noted
Learning to cook can save you money, and make you more healthy. (It can also do the opposite, but thats on you.)
Learning a new language. You learn a bit about how languages work, understand other cultures a bit better, usually learn new vocabulary for your native language, understand the relationship between different languages, learn the roots of loan words and generally helps your brain stay healthy, even by only studying the basics.
what lauguage would you recommend for people who only know english?
Not OP, but I've asked myself this as well. I think it depends on where you live and what you want out of your language learning experience. If your goal is to learn something more useful in everyday life and you live in the southern US, Spanish is a great option. If you're from Canada, French is probably the most useful. German and Mandarin are useful in the business world, but the latter is significantly harder to learn. If you're not worried about maximizing the utility of what you learn, Norwegian is considered one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and let's be real, Norway is awesome.
It's more important that you stick with whatever you choose though. That's the part I've struggled with.
To be honest I'm not a native English speaker so your advice is probably more useful anyway. My husband is British and has studied plenty of languages, finding Swedish and Norwegian definitely the easiest to pick up. Romance languages have more complicated grammar but you'll find a lot more TV and movies to watch to casually pick up a bit more of the language, which I find useful because I only speak English as well as I do from watching a lot of TV (first with subs) when I was younger.
do you have any swedish tv shows or movies you could recommend? the more the merrier please, or any resources for it at all?
Some from recent memory:
I think those might be easy enough to find online depending on where you look.
Spanish: it's the most return per effort.
Italian! Really close and easy to learn. It sounds so pleasant to hear.
Bit of an off-the-wall suggestion but I was having real trouble learning other languages mostly due to all the cases (and sometimes genders). So I started learning Esperanto, which admittedly is not the most practical language to know BUT it really helped me understand languages more in general. It's very simple to learn and easy for an English-speaker to pronounce, as well as having lots of recognisable words (the Esperanto for "yes" is "jes", which is pronounced "yes" lol)
Now that I've gone back to learning German I'm feeling much more confident about learning in general just because I got some of the grammar concepts from a much easier language. Might be worth a look if you've struggled before.
Esperanto is reckoned an easy pickup, has speakers globally, and will improve your default in most romance languages. The community is also quite nice, in my experience.
Esperanto seems to be pretty useless to invest so much time into learning it. Wouldn't be learning "normal" language more beneficial anyway?
Depends on your goals. If you're going somewhere with one language to spend time, or especially value a particular language, studying that language makes sense. If you want access to a global network of the sort of people who would pick up a conlang intended to be a universal second language, one speakers of can be found anywhere, Esperanto's your pick.
Mi lernis Esperanton ĉar mi volas havi amikojn en ĉiaj la landoj de la mondo.
I am Polish native that can easily read Ukrainian, English and also some German and I have no clue what that sentence means in Esperanto :D. I can only guess that "lernis" is probably something like "learning" and "mondo" refers to "world" (guess based purely on 'Le Monde' - French newspaper). Rest looks like some random Lithuanian stuff. I don't think knowledge of Esperanto could give me any advantage when traveling across Europe. Idea is cool but to be honest English is the new lingua franca and I think that's good because it's easy to pick up and already widespread.
If you're curious...
"Mi" - pronoun meaning I/me
"lernis" - learned (The root is "lern-". The following rules apply to all verbs: "-i" is the infinitive form, "-is" is past tense, "-as" is present tense, "-os" is future tense, "-us" is conditional tense (kind of like could/would), and "-u" is imperative/command form.)
"Esperanton" - obviously Esperanto, but the "-n" suffix denotes a direct object.
"ĉar" - because
"volas" - (verb, present tense) want
"havi" - (verb, infinitive) to have
"amikojn" - (noun, direct object, plural) - root is "amik-", the "-o" suffix denotes a noun, "-j" makes it plural, and then the "-n" for direct object again
"en" - in
"ĉiaj" - all
"la" - the (this is the only article in the language; incidentally, there is no indefinite article)
"landoj"- countries ("-o" is noun, "-j" is plural)
"de" - of (there are actually multiple words that can mean "of" but that's another topic entirely)
"mondo" - world
The letter "ĉ" is pronounced like "ch"; Esperanto doesn't do two-letter phonemes because one of its foundational principles is one letter = one sound.
Sewing is useful and satisfying. I'd like to say it's also easy but I have never figured it out myself (which doesn't say much, anything that involves using my hands is... questionable)
Indoor gardening/hydroponics. Even in the smallest flat you can grow your own salad, peppers, radish, tomatoes, microgreens, etc.
Like a tiny stardew valley at home.
Self-hosting. You learn how to use Linux, security, managing services, and after all that you have your own little ship on the internet. After all that you gain a massive understanding of how the internet and the technology you use daily work and run (to an extent).
Two things: chess and piano. I downloaded the chess.com app and play whenever I'm idling for more than a few minutes. Got to a very proficient respectable level in a few months, and it's a ton of fun, endless combinations, no upper limit to how good you can get.
I also bought a cheap keyboard for under $300 and got proficient at it within a few months. Half hour here, twenty minutes there, an hour there. I'm not Chopin or anything and I can barely even play him but again, respectable.
So now if you ever go somewhere and see a chess set or a piano you can be like hey I know what to do with that!
for a second I thought I was on /c/mechanicalkeyboards and thought "omg i wouldn't say that's cheap"
Oh I just meant cheap relative to like a grand piano or something. I don't mean to be insensitive, I'm doing pretty well financially, so to me $300 for decent quality but still entry level equipment isn't really a huge investment, especially for something I could return if it doesn't go well.
Also thinking about buying a 6" telescope like this bad boy right here
Again in the $300 range, entry level but still good value.
One lesson I've taken away from it is that playing good chess is much less about coming up with astonishing brilliant moves than I thought. It's more about making good decisions, positioning yourself well, and continuously applying pressure. If you keep doing that you will have good results most of the time. Great life lesson, hit me in the face like a ton of metaphors when I realized that.
You should! My grandfather figure taught me how to play chess, I look back on the time we spent together fondly
Brain fog is real, definitely not talked about enough! One of the worst things to come out of being depressed and then being on SSRIs is that I struggle to read these days. I love reading but I don't have much brainpower left to take things in anymore
Hey dude hope I'm not stepping your toes but if you are here on Lemmy you may be interested in lichess.
It is a free and open source alternative to play some good chess. It is also very active and there are all kinds of levels of players so you wouldn't be losing anything from switching :)
Chopin does have pieces that aren't too bad, though of course few if any for beginners.
I've had no formal piano training (and my main instrument is guitar) yet can play several pretty well. Nocturne Op 9 No 2 for example is both beautiful and not too difficult.
Valse Op. 69 No 2 is harder but still doable.
Waltz Op 64 No 2 is probably harder still but with practice not as bad as it looks -- but it is likely the most difficult piece that I can play without skipping any parts. Really fun to play since it's at my edge at my ability and it feels amazing to pull it off when I feel it should be much too hard to my skill level.
Some form of metal working, and specifically machining. I really enjoy machining, and I've been able to make some genuinely useful things. The tools are actually really quiet and stateful, unlike woodworking power tools which SCREAM at you like horrible demons. Seeing people look at their first top, or pen, or miniature cannon is great. Plus, things made in metal are at least slightly shiny.
For example, you could make dumbbell handles and plates like this: a photo of dumbbell handles and weight plates
Or a metal yarn winder like this: a photo of an all-metal yarn winder
The major downside is that it's not cheap (not as expensive as boats, possibly more expensive than photography), and it requires at least a bit of space that you wouldn't mind getting dirty. Luckily, I feel like makerspaces are starting to have more and more metalworking equipment.
you make some really good points!
Wood working. Can fix things and build things. It’s very rewarding. Can find second hand tools and slowly build your collection and upgrade them as you develop and hone your skills until your wife surprises you at home with your closest friends and family and they proceed to tell you that you have a problem and have to decide between investing time and energy into a living family or your woodworking hobby.
3D printing. Suddenly you are able to fix small plastic shit in your house which would otherwise mean throwing out the whole goddamn thing. Best feeling ever to repair and save stuff.
i wish i could 3d print board games and such but printers are so pricey.
Check your local public library!
I've heard good things about Ender 3 printers and their clones if you're willing to tinker. AFAIK, the experience right out of the box isn't great, but they can be modded and upgraded over time and can be fairly capable.
That being said, those might still be too expensive depending on your geo. I seem to recall reading about reprap projects designed to be built as cheaply as possible using harvested components from things like old scanners and shit.
You might want to check out laser cutting. Same prize range and so much faster for board games. (basically works like a 2D lasercutter, most commonly used with wood or plexi glass).
Playing an instrument. The challenge of playing successfully a melody will give you more reward than listening to a good one.
Cross stitching is fun and pretty inexpensive to get into! All you need is cloth (Aida), needles, thread, and a pattern. There are plenty of free patterns available, and a skein of thread is under a dollar.
Juggling!
It can be done dirt cheap
It's really therapeutic
You can practice it almost anywhere but especially alone in your room
If you git gud at it, you have a cool skill to show off
Hah, I tried. Couldn't get past tossing one ball from hand to hand. Good exercise, though, with all the chasing after and bending over.
Running. Fairly cheap. Can set your own schedule. Improves physical and mental health, increases self confidence, can help with sleep and weight loss.
Hiking, there are a wide range of hike trails depending on fitness or time levels, it gets you moving and seeing nature and it can help build stamina and endurance which can be helpful in so many other day to day things. Also to start out on smaller hikes there are very few start-up costs its also lots of fun and can be alone or meet new people also hiking i find a lot of kindness and friendliness in a lot of the hiking community.
@QuietStorm Fishing: it gets you outside, and helps you learn about the natural world as a participant, not just an observer. You don't need to spend a lot to get started and its often best if you go with a friend. I always practice catch-and-release and the experience is a morning or evening of peace.
Basic knitting. It's a great way to relax in the evenings. And makes for good gifts.
tying knots. All you need is a couple of pieces of string to get started. The right knot, well tied, is like a good friend - you can count on it. Shipyard workers sometimes make fun of how inexperienced mariners tie up their boats to a dock with "if you can't tie a knot, tie a lot!?" (full disclosure, I am a sailor).
someone else mentioned sign language - that is also extremely useful sometimes! My wife and I learned it when we learned to SCUBA. We do not have any deaf friends, but sometimes you meet a person who is reliant on sign, and if you can at least spell out some words, 'they are so grateful'.
You know I've often wanted to learn more knot tying options, especially when I'm doing things around the garden. I'll have to take your advice and learn some!
Do you have an recommendations of which ones to learn or resources?
Someone else here mentioned AnimatedKnots.com and I second that recommendation. For gardening, I'd learn the bowline and the trucker's hitch. The Trucker's Hitch is what I use to cinch a bundle of cut branches together with twine. You can get it really tight and it's really dead simple. You can also use it anywhere you want to stretch a line and have it not sag. I've used it to lash things to the roof of a car, too.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=binding+knots&iax=images&ia=images there are so many wonderful choices! The simpler looking ones are usually the best. :) But they are hard to describe with text . . .
Thank you for the link!
I firmly believe that most active people should know how to tie a bowline knot one-handed. It's not hard relative to some other knots, and it could save a life.
I learned how to tie a bowline one handed in boy scouts 25 years ago. I legitimately don't know how to tie a bowline with two hands.
I suspect I'd feel the same about welding or smithing, but I haven't tried those (yet).
Cooking. So many people don't even have the bare minimum ability to throw something together from raw ingredients that's vaguely nutritious, palatable, and won't give anyone food poisoning, so of course start there - it's so much cheaper than ready meals and there are plenty of recipes that are fast if time constraints are why you use ready meals. In fact, a trick I've always used is to cook something that serves 4-6 people, divide the extra into tubs, and freeze it. That's a few nights where making dinner is as quick and simple as defrosting something, maybe boiling some rice or pasta to go with. Do this with a half-dozen meals and you can alternate and not have to cook for weeks.
Beyond that though, learning a little more about flavour and technique, how to season a dish like a pro, some more unusual flavour combinations etc. can add real interest to your diet for very little extra effort, time, or cost. A few cheap herbs and spices can cost less than a single portion of what you're cooking and give you enough to enhance months worth of meals.
Cooking yourself a treat is great therapy. Cooking something a bit fancy for someone makes for a cheap yet heartfelt date night. Cooking a meal your family enjoys is really satisfying. Everyone should learn to cook, just a little.
And if you have plenty of time (relatively speaking), but don't want to put in a lot of effort?
Get a cheap slow cooker! There are so many amazing recipes that are just "toss five ingredients into a cooker and put on low for 8 hours".
Absolutely! Another great thing about slow cookers is that they allow for time travel. When you get home from work, you're tired and can't be bothered to cook. Slow cookers let you borrow a few minutes of your morning, when you're awake and fresh, to do your evening cooking! Prepare it in the morning, set it off, and when you get back tired from a long day at work, all you have to do is dish up. Magic.
Knot tying is a handy skill and easy to acquire. All you need is a short length of rope and watch a few videos. There may be thousands of knots you can learn, but most people should take the trouble to learn a few tried and true knots. Maybe you want to move a mattress on the roof of your car. Maybe you want to tie a pen to a clipboard. Maybe you want to tie back the legs when roasting a turkey. Maybe you need an impromptu collar & leash for a stray dog. Maybe you have to move a huge bundle of brush you've cut. Maybe you want to tie neat looking stopper knots on your hoodie's drawstring. Knowing how to tie a few different knots will give you options when you're trying to get stuff done.
animatedknots.com is a great resource. I’d recommend learning the bowline knot first. Also get a one foot piece of nice rope from the hardware store and melt the ends to practice.
Ham radio. It's a lot of fun and has something for everyone. I like the outdoors, so I took my portable gear to a park and operated Parks on the Air today. There are all kinds of digital modes for people who love computers, there's morse code, there's using kites to hoist your antenna, hot air balloons, talking with the space station, etc. All kinds of stuff. If you're the least bit nerdy, it likely has something for you.
My Dad was hugely into ham radio throughout the time I was growing up, and yeah, it was the quintessential nerd hobby before home computers came along.
that sound slike something worth giving a try.
Check out SDR dongles if you are on PC. I’d say it’s the most interesting $20 I’ve ever spent. It uses an HDTV tuner and you can use CubicSDR (or similar) to visually see all of the signals out there.
Agreed! I bought an SDR dongle on a whim, set it up on a raspberry pi and built a homemade spider antenna with some PVC pipe and old coax I had on hand. I started tracking aircraft with it using an easy walkthrough for setup from FlightAware. I can see and track planes from 220 miles away.
The fact I got that setup impressed myself, so I bought another SDR dongle, built a second antenna and am tracking boats/ships with it.
Slöjd-style carving. You can really do a lot with just a few simple tools, a knife, an axe and a saw.
Morakniv has an excellent series of different knife-grips/cuts on their youtubechannel here
The thing I like most about it is since you are just carving with a knife, you get big shavings of wood that you can easily sweep up, instead of wooddust all over the place.
Juggling is fun and makes you really great at throwing things (but only mildly better at catching them hehe) 👍
Photography. It gets you out and about, you move, do exercise, discover interesting places and people, and when you get good at it, they make for great decoration/art/gifts.
Mindfulness and Breathwork! Mindfulness is an incredibly valuable practice that can be a game changer for mental health and anxiety. Breathwork goes a long way as a fundamental technique.
There are a variety of free tier apps like InsightTimer that have beginner courses in meditation. Working to create space in your life between things like work and family give you breathing room. Starting to live in the moment allows you to step out of the anxiety of the past and worry of the future.
I'm not saying mindfulness can't have serious benefits. However, I would caution anyone who's into it to read the book McMindfulness. A lot of the "science" behind it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, there can be genuine drawbacks to it, and it's often used in unethical ways--like to make CEOs of ruthless companies more able to shove aside their feelings of guilt, or to sharpen the minds of soldiers for killing.
Interesting suggestion, I’ll have a look over the book. I mainly was referring to practicing meditation, doing things like gratitude lists, trying to maximize peace in my life on a daily basis versus maybe a lot of what other mindfulness practices teach. I will check out that book though, thanks for an alternate perspective.
Wait, there's people making money off of this shit‽ Like, my therapist and I work on mindfulness, but for me that just means being present in my body (not escaping into books/games/videos), considering my wants and needs, and listening to my emotions (even when they're unpleasant). Is there some other definition? I like talking to people about it, but I'll have to be more specific about what I mean in the future if there's someone out there selling something.
I mean, look up "mindfulness" on Amazon. There are a million books for sale out there. And people like John Kabat-Zinn have made plenty of money selling mindfulness to everyone from mental health clinics to the military.
Mindfulness in this context is generally just defined as paying attention to the present moment. But that's ethically neutral and can be used to, for example, make the horrors of late-stage capitalism more bearable for its subjects, or to help soldiers focus on the act of killing rather than the horror of it.
Bleh, I like my version better. I feel a more diverse range of emotions, and I feel those feelings more, not less. I used to be able to ignore things that made me unhappy or were actively hurtful/harmful, and now I can't really do that (except for trivial things). I'm now aware that I feel progressively more miserable if I don't take some sort of action to deal with my feelings. I'm coming at this from a place of intense childhood trauma, so that may explain the difference. I had to do a bunch of EMDR and other very unpleasant things to reach the point where I could stand to live in my own head. That's probably where the disconnect between my mindfulness and the commercial self-help mindfulness comes from.
FWIW, this was a new issue to me. I’ve only encountered mindfulness practices like you’ve described.
Gratitude journaling, breathwork, meditation. Pulling yourself into the present to avoid things like lingering anxieties or future worries. I combine this with exercise and really prioritizing sleep to good effect for me.
I think there’s always gurus trying to sell something but like most things there is no easy roads or short cuts. And it’s interesting to hear others perspectives.
Good luck on your mindfulness journey. Do you have any practices that work for you?
I do, but a lot of it is focused on dealing with fairly intense childhood trauma. Mindfulness for me might mean being aware that I'm feeling worse, until I help myself. Small techniques are deep breathing (4 seconds in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold), going to my comfort places and trying to pick out as many details as possible (I'm lucky and have a backyard with a pond and a lot of birds), and in extreme cases, I'll smell tea leaves. That last one is more about getting out of a traumatic disassociation rather than getting into a state of mindfulness, but disassociation and mindfulness are mutually exclusive, so it's sort of a mindfulness thing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Like, before I worked on my mindfulness, I'd hide from my problems for months or years. Hell, I'd be so zonked out of the world that I wouldn't know I needed to use the bathroom until I started to feel physical pain. I could numb and hide my feelings so well that I just ghosted through life. Now, I can't do that and I don't want to. Things hurt, things are stressful, things are miserable. Things are also joyful and happy, or are deep and meaningful. I get to have the full gamut, rather than just snark, sarcasm, and nothing. It's probably not comparable, and on further reflection I'm glad that most people will never have to go through the process I went through. Trauma sucks and the recovery sucks too.
As a car enthusiast, I’m a little biased with this one, but beyond knowing how to change a flat, you should know how to do basic maintenance on your vehicle. Oil changes, brake replacements, etc. Some people are just not interested, which I fully understand, but for those who are, you can save some money with labour costs (and parts in some cases) doing the maintenance yourself.
Whilst I know this should be easy, the penalty for failure is so high I don't think it's worth the risk. Yes it's £130 for a change at a garage, but it's cheaper than a new engine.
Super valid argument. There are hundreds, if not thousands of videos on YouTube now showing you how to do it. However, if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself, don’t risk it turning into a much more expensive maintenance item :)
Writing and drawing!
It requires no upfront investment, can be done individually, and it's one of the few arts which is constrained by skill rather than budget. You can write a bestseller novel with just your computer but good luck doing a blockbuster film on your own.
ive always wanted to create a book or a comic but i stink at everything and im bad at spelling, i can only draw stickmen, but i still have the urge to be creativ eand share it.
Sucking at something is the first step towards being kinda good at something. The more you write / draw, the better you'll get. Just keep practicing, take constructive feedback into account, and you'll start getting better and better.
(PS: Even if stickmen is all you can do, that's totally fine-- one of the most popular web comics of all time, xkcd, is almost entirely stickmen!)
Drawing gets a lot easier if you approach it as a muscle-memory skill like calisthenics or juggling - if you can write letters neatly, you can also learn to draw shapes you've practiced. The early exercises in books like Keys to Drawing (Dodson) or The Natural Way to Draw (Nicolaides) introduce ways to practice those skills, and then the rest is "find subjects you want to draw", which can be as simple as watching a video, pausing it, and quickly using that for the exercise. Do that for a few minutes a day for a few weeks and drawing skills will magically emerge.
There are tons of "how to draw tutorials" that don't explain any of this, speak about it conceptually, and tell you to go draw a thousand cubes, which will make you better at drawing...cubes. (There is some point to that kind of technical skill, but it's not the thing to invest in if you just want to use images to tell a story)
You should check out My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable and Get Your War On by David Rees.
He made a great comic strip that didn’t involve any drawing skill at all.
For writing, practice writing short stories using writing prompts (I normally use Reddit's /r/writingprompts but I'm trying to find an alternative here) and post them on the thread even if they suck. The commitment is low since it's a short story and you can afford to twist the story to match your writing style rather than the other way around. You'll also get votes and feedback from other members.
I started drawing as a kid, stopped for a while, and got back to it in my teens since I started doing a lot of writing then and wanted to visually depict what was happening as well. One thing that helped me a lot was to not look at other people's art or photographs but rather solely work with what you're visualizing in your mind and reiterate (with many many strokes) until the quality becomes acceptable. Use pencil and sketch with short and light lines. The point here is to develop your own intuition for perspective, splitting an object into basic shapes, and so forth.
I'll also add that it's extremely important to create your own style both for writing and drawing. Make your stuff look good, but always keep in mind that it's fine to have your own quirks and distinctions. E.g. if your lines are a bit sketchy or if your circles aren't perfect that can easily be part of your style.
I have to do some searching but I like the looks of the community on Beehaw. I think there is one here but I haven't looked around very much (I was waffling between Lemmy and kBin, and have turned back to kBin because of the versatility).
Sounds like you just volunteered to start the writingprompts magazine.
There already is a https://kbin.social/m/WritingPrompts, but there isn't much content.
Takes time. I always wanted to be part of r/writingprompts but I would see a new prompt and the there would be a novel written about that prompt 30 seconds later. I can type pretty well but that is out of my league.
The way Reddit works is that the first commenter with a decent response gets all the karma, so yeah people rush it. It's good practice for writing under a tight time constraint though as you go through the entire cycle of planning to draft to editing in only 30 minutes - 2 hours.
You get better with time and you'll be surprised as to how quickly you can improve after doing dozens of them. Here's my WP archive for reference, the oldest responses at the end of the "archive 1" pdf (from 8 years ago) I laugh at today but the skills I learned there carry over to the recent ones.
I've been recently taking up writing again and I've been really deeply enjoying the process. It's also helped me kindle a friendship with a guy at my university which has been a cool bonus!
The problem is sign language is not a universal language for some reason. I really feel that is one language that could be easily unified.