A box of comics isn’t going to take up too much space.

Boxes of comics have taken over an entire room.

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.

I got into retro computing during lockdown. Kind of a nostalgia thing. Refurbed My Atari ST and ZX Spectrum. Got an Amiga, and Amstrad CPC464 and an old Atari 2600. Spent a lot of money and did loads of mods. Now they just sit there and I have no idea what to do with them. The games and demos were a fun novelty, but I’m not really a gamer. I don’t want to sell them, but they don’t really bring me any joy either. I’m pretty happy, mostly and have a good family life. Certainly not depressed. But yeah, this kit is just sitting in my den, rarely used. Probably should have anticipated that before I got so deep into it.

Hydroponics, how heavy a 10 gallon tote is filled with water. With about 8 gallons of water in it, it’s about 67 lbs. Thankfully I don’t need to move my basic deep water culture setup and it’s stable. It’s been a great learning experience, but moving forward if I expand I’m going with the nutrient film technique.

For digital photography, the only thing I wish I really knew was how to clean the sensor sooner. I made a decent choice with the tech stack for the camera.

Needlework is hard on rhe hands. I wear compression gloves and wrist braces when cross stitxhing to minimize the impact on my hands. I need to talk to a doctor about my hands but i try to take good care of them even when playing games i wear a brace.

3d printing, specifically FDM with PLA since I’m not down to mess with the chemicals for a resin printer. Keep printing until you’re out of an opened filament roll, otherwise your filament will absorb water and degrade. I often learn filament goes bad when a tiny piece breaks off in the feeder right above the heating element, requiring some annoying disassembly to diagnose and correct the problem. If you’re not sure what to build with the last bit of filament, a small square trash can/pencil holder is always useful.

Stick to a maintenance schedule. Putting off a lubrication or dusting can lead to debris getting stuck somewhere and ruining a print when you least expect it. Also learn about every component in your printer and how to get a replacement when it inevitably breaks. That way you can purchase a few of the more commonly broken parts to lower printer downtime.

Start off with a brand name printer that does auto leveling. That cheap CR10 you bought for a hundred dollars sounds like a bargain until you realize it can’t print a solid first layer, causing all sorts of other minor annoyances with your print quality. Trying and failing to fix the issues might eventually turn you off on pursuing the hobby.

I was already well versed in Solidworks, but learn how to use a CAD program. You can get a lot of use from the many publicly available models out there but you might eventually have an idea or require something that requires a custom design. Being able to physically manifest your own design ideas quickly was a big drawing point for me to get into the hobby.

I didn’t need to buy a base amount of Legos to create my own designs.

Bodybuilding style Lifting. Wish I knew that science based influencers are just using science as a gimmick to make new videos and bold claims for short form content.

Lifting is hard when done right but its not super complex. The basics are the same they were decades ago:

• be consistant and stick to a routine at least 6 months.
• Learn the proper lift techniques
• learn how to train to failure (failure is not mandatory every set but you need to know where it is in order to train close to it for adaptations to occur)
• Keep progressing weights when you can without sacrificing technique. (Progressive overload is both the driver and the result of muscle growth, as long as your work sets are close to failure the growth stimilus is there)

Losing Joann’s has made it really difficult to find fabric locally. Michael’s needs to step their game up.

In tabletop roleplaying games:

• Some game features may sound awesome but aren’t really fun for me.
  • For example, “let’s try to model the skills of PCs in a granular way by giving them loads of skills”. This is how The Burning Wheel tries to model character skills. Sorry, Burning Wheel fans! I do like the intention, though. It’s just too much paperwork and cognitive load.
  • Another example is “let’s try to model the skills of NPCs in a granular way by giving them long stat-blocks". This is how DnD 5e does it. Sorry, 5e fans! Again, it’s just too much paperwork and cognitive load.

What I learned from this is that games that are fun for me do not try to model the game world at a granular level. Instead, what really matters to me is choosing a game that consistently enables meaningful choice and is ergonomic.

• As to GM technique, forget about planning plots and buying gimmicks. Instead, get good at creating interesting scenarios and making rulings. I learned this by reading The Alexandrian’s book on GMing.

You get a much wider margin of error brewing 5 gallons in a bucket instead of starting with 1 gallon as a trial.

When I first made mead I just did a 1 gallon batch to see how it worked but that doesn’t really leave you with enough of a must to do proper gravity measurements without losing half your yield.

Rock climbing:

• Do regular full body workouts/yoga/antagonist work. A lack of core strength and scapular stability will end up wrecking you if all you do is climb.
• To get better at climbing, training helps a lot. But 90% of the training you need to do is just climbing more. Your problem isnt that you arent strong enough, it’s that you havent developed the necessary techniques to climb harder because you havent experienced enough rock. 90% of the change you need to improve your climbing is simply to start consistently logging what you do in your climbing sessions.
• Work your way up to climbing 20 pitches per day, 4 days per week, lowering the grade as much as needed to get the pitches in. You’ll find your biggest problem here is simply time management and finding a willing partner. This is a great time to get used to leading, since almost all your pitches will be quite easy.
• Once you can consistently get 20 pitches in per climbing day, start increasing the number of pitches at your onsight grade. Your sweet spot for progression is a climb that you may or may not be able to get on the onsight attempt, but which you will probably get second go. Aim to put 10 burns on onsight-level climbs per day.
• Once you stop easily progressing through the grades week by week, your climbing logbook comes into its own. If you find that a certain grade feels like it would take more that 2 or so attempts to put down, start tracking sends in the grade below it. You are only allowed to be disappointed in your inability to send the new harder grade in when you have put down 100 sends on the grade below it.
• When progress starts stagnating purely from increasing volume, start bouldering one or two days per week instead of rope climbing. It can be satisfying to send boulder problems, but spend at least some of your time on boulders that are so hard that you can only do one or two moves at a time - practicing doing just one or two extremely hard moves at a time is where you will really learn how to use your body. It is helpful to boulder in a big group, so you are forced to rest between burns.
• The easiest way to improve at climbing is to climb a lot with people who are better than you. If you can do this, disregard all previous instructions and just go climbing with these people.

Eating all the food you cook will make you fat

The correct number of guitars to own is n+1, with n being the number of currently owned guitars.