Ask Lemmy

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.

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

Eating all the food you cook will make you fat

Cocaine can become addictive really quickly

Warhammer 40K is what some may call…MEGA EXPENSIVE.

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

In cheaper and more fun to get parts from the junk yard.

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.

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.

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?"

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

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.

• I have games that I can't get working on either Linux or newer versions of Windows.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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.

That those forensics chaps can find the tiniest spatters of blood on your clothes, on your skin, and in your hair. And people make a lot of spatter.

That my knees were going to go to shit, and carrying a backpack through the mountains needs good knees. Fuck, I miss those trips.

For guitar and bass:

• The mostly ortholinear grid relationship between frets and strings mean that you can think a lot about "shapes", or positions of notes relative to other notes. Unless open strings are involved, sliding any shape up and down the next gives you the same quality of chord or scale just shifted up and down in pitch/key. (Not all instruments have such an intuitive layout!)
• You don't need to memorize the note names (C, C#, D, Eb, etc.) of every fret on the fretboard! It's essential to learn the names of the open strings first, so that you can tune your guitar using a tuner. But did you know that the notes at the 12th fret (often marked with double dot inlays) are the exact same notes 1 octave higher? This means that everything above the 12th fret is an exact copy of everything on the lower half of the fretboard (cutting the task of memorization in HALF)! Similarly, because the lowest and highest string are both tuned to "E" in standard tuning, they have the same notes all the way up and down the neck (that's another 7.5% of the task eliminated). Finally, I recommend starting to memorize the note names strategically, starting with only the inlay/dot frets (3, 5, 7, and 9) on the 2 fattest/lowest strings (E and A string). Once you've memorized these key "landmarks" on the lowest/fattest strings, you can use logic to deduce the other notes pretty quickly! (What's the note between A and B? Bb! Between C and D? C#)
• Finally, learning 2 note intervals will eventually be your best friend. Not only can you use octaves to make deducing note names easier while memorizing the fretboard, but you can also play octaves to enhance all kinds of music from punk to jazz. A perfect 5 interval is the heart of the "power chord". And knowing intervals will help you do everything from reading sheet music to writing interesting guitar parts in all genres.
• The huge number of popular rock music that you hear can be played with 2 or 3 note "power chords" alone. This is important because it means that you can become proficient enough to play rhythm guitar parts with a band in a matter of weeks of solid practice! All you have to do is memorize the note landmarks on the lower strings, be able to build a power chord on the appropriate note, and strum it in time with the music! Whether it's guitar or bass, you don't need to be an expert to start playing or writing songs.
• When you eventually learn your first scale, try to learn it in 2 positions on the neck. For example, if you learn E-minor pentatonic, learn it starting from the 6th string at the 0 fret (which is the same as the 12th fret, remember!) AND learn it starting from the 5th string at the 7th fret. This may seem harder at first, but over time you will learn how to connect these scale shapes with intermediate shapes, and you'll unlock the entire fretboard for soloing!
• On a right-handed guitar, your right hand can be mostly thought of as a rhythm instrument, just whacking away at strings like a drummer whacks at their drums. Whether you hit all the strings, some of them, or just 1 string at a time, the rhythmic aspect is what matters most. It takes practice to become fluent here, but looseness and fluidity is key. Eventually you can incorporate other techniques to change the timbre of the rhythms being played, but remember to keep the rhythm going in constant movement. (On a left-handed guitar or bass, this would apply to your left hand.)

The predatory FOMO nature of Games Workshop is real and harmful to the hobby as a whole. The editions of the games could last for years yet we're on a 3 year cycle to adjust stats and change rules that don't need changing. It creates a cycle of I liked this edition but everybody moved on so I'm forced to move up or give up on the game.

Luckily there's a million other games but they're micro in comparison. You're stuck either creating a community on your own or hoping there's a group within a reasonable distance that you can help with. If not... Sorry about your wasted investment.

If you do get sucked into it and you end up investing into every GW game system with multiple armies across every system, you're gonna run out of space. Unless you live in a multi story house or have a shed with nothing in it, these things take up space.

What the consumables are. As a noob, you don't look at a metal bike cassette and think "that's going to wear out". Or at a metal 3d printer nozzle. Or at paint brushes (I keep ruining expensive ones! 😭).

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.

I want to know why I have to be naked all the time. I didn't sign up for this.

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.

For cycling, more expensive parts don’t really help much. Mid range everything is fine. I don’t need clip on pedals, regular ones are great. For kayaking, anything inflatable is really slower than hard sides and it matters for the enjoyment.

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.

I wish I'd known how difficult it is to make a good, functional conlang. I badly underestimated this.

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)