Cocaine can become addictive really quickly
In cheaper and more fun to get parts from the junk yard.
Warhammer 40K is what some may call…MEGA EXPENSIVE.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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…
Lenses maybe, camera bodies, nah.
And bikes, and computers
And freeway lanes necessary to solve traffic
Dice. Definitely dice.
I wish I’d known how much pot space fruits and veggies need to thrive. Indeterminate tomatoes are supposed to have at least like 20 gallons.
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 loads of stats". 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.
- Some game features may sound awesome but aren’t really fun for me.
I should have been less willing to buy an electric bass that’s too heavy to me. I got a maple-body Jazz Bass ~10 years ago, back then it was kinda heavy but fine for me, today I’m quite a bit less fit than I was then and no amount of wide, cushioned straps are able to make this a good experience for me nowadays, and since I play lefty it’s a PITA to sell it. Until the shoulder and back pain kick in it does sound and play great, though.
IMO, Ibanez Soundgear has the best ergonomics as far as relatively affordable basses go that aren’t headless - pretty lightweight and yet the opposite of top-heavy. I never liked their sound out of the box, though, and aftermarket pickups that fit the cavities without woodworking are kinda expensive.Ubass https://kalabrand.com/collections/new-ubass-arrivals
So much fun.
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.
Make everything yourself, do it cheap, because I drop hobbies like a mutha fucker.
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.
Losing Joann’s has made it really difficult to find fabric locally. Michael’s needs to step their game up.
Move to Chicago, we have good local stores for fabric.
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
Iwwish I’d known how difficult it is to make a good, functional conlang. I badly underestimated this.
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.
Emacs makes a better row counter than basically anything else.
Restoring old business laptops will usually get you a better laptop than buying a budget new one that costs the same.
