I recently started learning hand tool woodworking and won’t shut up about it haha. I found a few books and channels that are helpful and feel real. The more I do it, the more it’s apparent to me that many things around me are just distractions. It’s really nice to unplug from everything and make some things or practice using/sharpening my tools. Those little moments when something clicks feel weirdly fulfilling.
What do you all enjoy doing? Have you found any new passions? What do you like about it?
I love working on servers. My home lab is the one thing that I can sit down and actually work on for hours on end. I never really got into software development, probably in-part because my brain is mush, but deploying and maintaining systems is something that I love and am grateful to be able to do as a hobby and a career.
I also enjoy reading and writing, but recently I’ve had a lot of trouble staying still long enough to get anything done in that department. (I’m jealous of Alyaza’s incredible ability to churn through reading material.)
I hope you don’t mind my asking, but could you give some examples of systems that you are deploying and maintaining on your home lab? I’m interested in doing a deeper dive into this at some point and I am looking for inspiration.
I’m in a weird transition phase right now because I deprecated my big boi server when I moved into my new studio. I have a dumb Lenovo NAS with a mini pc that acts as the “brains” of the setup. (I actually need to do a reinstall of my OS because I’ve been having issues with my Debian setup.) This serves my Jellyfin instance and handles the brunt of my data hoarding activities. I also run a Nextcloud instance, but that’s currently running on my cloud seed box while I wait to build a new home server.
My biggest goal for this year is to get my new server built. It’s going to be the do-everything server for me. On top of NAS functionality, I also want it to serve a KobaldCPP instance. The biggest challenge there is going to be hardware selection, particularly trying to find a graphics card that has ludicrous amounts of VRAM without bankrupting myself in the process. I was considering doing some home networking stuff, but I really don’t need anything more than my ISP’s router for what I’m doing right now, and I’m pretty space-constrained since I live in a studio. We’ll see, though!
A home media server is a good start (jellyfin, for instance.) I also think nextcloud is a swiss army knife, and spinning up the nextcloud AIO would get you’re feet wet with relatively little effort to how much stuff nextcloud can do (all the differents apps you can install from the web interface. I use news, cookbook, bookmarks, frequently.)
I’ve started to tinker with home server and self hosting recently, I was just wondering if the feeling of ‘everything is held together by a thin wire that could snap at any point’ ever goes away? Thanks 😁
Feels like there’s alway some issue that requires a special unique workaround that could stop working at any point
Dancing! Both socially and performatively. It’s very fulfilling to me and is an easy way to raise my mood. there are very rarely any times where I come in and out with a foul mood.
Do you have an arts center or a class that you go to? Cause mine is working events, I grew up going to a performing arts center and while I’m not dancing inclined I do love acting, instruments and singing but I also LOVE all the tech to make a performance run.
All the hustle and bustle of generally happy and excited people, setting up the bits and pieces, running the shows. Ahh…
My least favorite part must be the paperwork involved but it is evils necessity!
I regularly go to classes for (non-ballroom) latin dance and occasionally dip my toes in a swing event. I used to professionally perform classical music and burned out real hard some years ago; It’s nice to have started something from the ground up. Enjoyment and mastery at my own pace.
It makes me happy to see techie enjoy the job rather. It makes the whole thing feel more human and connecting as everyone wants to be there showcasing their craft.
That’s awesome! The teams I’ve always been part of are usually artists as well, but there’s a lot of tech focused people too. Without you all we wouldn’t have such fun work! My favorite performances are always running dance shows, easily the most diverse and unique performances! And it’s always so dynamic setting up for preshow to help the vision come to life with stage lighting. I’ve done quite a few, salsa/Mexican Son, modern and hip hop, contemporary and ballet, capoeira and ariel dance! All of them are just so different from every facet of it, it’s really incredible! I can’t even pick a favorite!
Man, I actually miss working dance shows - so much less paperwork, events are usually much more focused and require less space setup and more show setup, and rehearsals are just getting a QLab set made… Theater sets are fun but oh so large, and I’m oh so small lmao.
I’m glad you’ve found the hobby, working with wood is incredibly satisfying. Our brains are wired for working with natural materials and it’s awesome you’ve tapped into that.
I love to sing, I’ll do it all day. I work from home now which makes it easier (less socially awkward) to do but it’s all the time. Sing in the shower, sing in the garden, sing to the animals… I’ll even invent and sing harmonies to movie scores (we don’t go out to the movies so it’s okay). There is often some dancing accompanying the singing.
I also really enjoy gardening and interacting with the wildlife that becomes more present as our gardens mature and diversify. The wild birds have gotten used to me working, singing, and dancing within 5-10 feet of them and I’m hoping this is the year I can get some of them to eat from my hand (even if it means I have to stop singing sometimes).
Thank you. I wholeheartedly agree, learning to work with nature such as wood, instead of imposing our will on it definitely gives me perspective on considering our connection with nature. In the modern era, much of how we connect with nature is removed or sterilized.
I’m really glad to hear you sing. There are so many ways music and rhythm weave through our lives. I expect a follow up post if you Snow White like 20 birds onto your arms!
I have a lot of hobbies. I grew up very creatively minded and was in music classes from the 4th grade, I really liked the plays that we did and that continued for a while, in high school I really enjoyed stage combat. Was lucky to have a prolific teacher, many in total but unfortunately there just weren’t opportunities for me in theater or music. But I worked at the performing arts center for a long time doing the production side of things which I also enjoy a lot! But that’s my job now lol. I have a home music battle station. Got my synths, guitars, pedals, midi devices all (in progress) set up (eternally)!
After building a few computers I figured I’d get into some of the more simple electronics and use them as a basis for circuit bending, but various solder projects overall. I have worked on a few of my guitars and installed different pickups and strap lock mechanisms. It’s really fun to go to thrift stores to look around (for everything) for priced-down guitars that likely just need some love :)
I like doing movie reviews. When I was in college one of my favorite classes was Comedy in American Cinema, and in yearning for that feeling again I started a notebook for documenting my favorites or ones that really surprised me. It’s a good way to interact with and explore media, as it gives you a few different lenses to watch with.
I also like making zentangles, and a good coloring page is stellar. I’ve taken a few drawing classes over the years and my grandfather was pretty good at live sketching so I’ve been working on that some, I’ve been feeling better about them! I used to not enjoy my sketches. Unfortunately I have some early arthritis so I can’t do these for extended periods of time! The pencil hurts my tiny fingers :( lol
I like LEGOs, I mostly collect the Star Wars ships but there’s a few others that I like too. The Groot is adorable, I’m working on the Tallneck from Horizon: Zero Dawn right now which had a really cool biome for the base. I put together a LEGO table for something similar so it was cool seeing it in a set. I love Spider-Man but most of the sets aren’t quite right, I’m pretty selective with the Batman sets too. Though, I really want that Daily Bugle with all the different Spider-heroes!
I also like pretty much all games, I mostly play video games but a good board game is always fun. We’ve been playing Hues and Cues recently which is describing a color with just one, then two words, on an A1-J28ish grid! I’ve also been making an It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia board game on Tabletop Simulator, just because. It isn’t fully together yet but it’s real close now, a bit over a year from when I first started. Each character announces a goal and then uses cards to move towards it. It’s like a DND Monopoly featuring everything IASIP. Real board game maybe to come, FX hit me up. Lol!
And I like cooking, I have been making Japanese carrot bread this week that’s really good. I also made gnocchi for the first time, I didn’t have the tools to make them perfect but it wasn’t bad for a first time I’d say! I’ve also recently gotten interested in bartending, I was extremely surprised by Dinah’s Cocktail which was just some cheap bourbon we had for cooking, lemon juice (not fresh) and a bit of sugar. Lemon drops aren’t my favorite but this was really nice.
I would like to like doing homelab server stuff, but I hit a skill ceiling very quickly and it’s not something I can keep up with long term - every Pi project is a mystery to me now. I just built all the parts from my first PC into a server and wanted to get it pretty robust, but unfortunately it’s just again relegated to a simple LAN Plex server. I’ll get there, it’s just dedicating time to something I don’t enjoy as much for the results I would enjoy.
Finally, I’m really just a maximalist with an interest in getting stuff connected and put together and, ideally, a one and done set up! Putting all my movie tickets on the wall, displaying art and instruments, putting together display shelves. A clean and clear counter and space (as best as it can be), but with the walls just decked out with geometry of things. Closets are a little harder!
Hiking barefoot. I’ve enjoyed hiking for a long time, but recently started doing so shoeless. I find the enhanced situational awareness to be thrilling, and am excited to see how far I can push my feet. I think hiking has always been a way for me to connect with nature, and doing so barefoot adds to that immensely.
That sounds like a unique experience. When I had a running coach for a short while, he said I should curl my toe down as I pull my leg back. The lack of exercising that bottom foot muscle often contributes to flat-footedness. This wasn’t probably an issue when people walked barefoot because we naturally dug into the earth for traction.
Do your feet ever get sore?
They would get pretty sore when I started. Sometimes I’ll get some foot cramps at night if I push it too hard. And gravel, miles on gravel trails will leave my feet tender the next day, even after over a year of toughening up my soles
Your mom etc etc obligatory
Honestly though, learning, obsessing, diving deep into a fictional world. I love learning all things whether it be my academic studies (physics), random subjects that will never influence my life like why chlorophyll is green which is way more interesting than I expected, and political theory. I love obsessing over subjects such as those for months at a time and learning everything I can fit into that incredibly short period. I love diving so deep into a fictional universe that I end up with nothing left, I want to know every intricacy, every detail until eventually there is nothing left except my own personal theories. A great example of this is The Magnus Archives, it’s such a fantastically constructed world of horror and mystery where I can find a missed detail with every listen. I’ve listened to the entire series including the q&as 3 times now and I loved every second. My favorite feeling though, what I love most, is not knowing. I crave the hunt for information, I crave the onset of obsession, the manic desire to do nothing but absorb every minute detail.
I remember as a kid reading late into the night, as late as 4am at the age of maybe 10 possibly less. Then I’d go to school and read some more. I’d plow through book after book at a rate I still can’t match and at one rivaled by few of my peers. we had a wall of reading scores based on short quizzes you’d take about a book you read, I was never less than top 10 even including the grades above mine at the time. Looking back I think it was escapism but I don’t regret it. It fostered in me a wonder, though much more dim, is still yet to fizzle out. Sometimes I do worry that I’d be much more satisfied with the mundanity of our reality had I not consumed so much escapist fiction as a child. However, I don’t think there’s much use in dwelling on what may or may not have been.
I hope my love for discovery was evident in my rambling, it’s 6 am and I haven’t slept again so it might not be all that coherent.
I can relate with the passion for learning. I think that is so invigorating. Since you like physics and reading, if you haven’t already, I would highly recommend Project Hail Mary and Artemis, each by Andy Weir. He is an astrophysicist, so his works occur how they would likely physically happen as we understand physics currently. Super neat but different plots for each.
I like adapting after finding out I made a mistake or contradiction
it’s still a bit painful/cringy when I realize I fucked up but it’s slowly becoming like a cathartic powerwashing routine when I can get rid of some personal bad habits/traits
I’m the same way. It’s led me to one of my “sayings”,
Whatever you do, do it spectacularly. If you gotta fail, fail spectacularly.
The worst results I can get are ambiguous ones, then I have to go over every piece of input and test them individually - it’s almost easier to just abandon the question and come up with a new one.
For maybe the last decade, the last 5 years at least, my new years resolution has always been the same. Stop getting in my own way.
Ive held a stance, with myself and with other people, for as long as I can remember, that “No is always an ok answer.” This is pertinent because it keeps me fluid in my planning and taught me to table any emotional attachment and wait until I have the thing to feel the thing. The deftness of my ability to plan shouldn’t be hoisted onto other people’s shoulders to bear, that’s MY responsibility, so if I’m asking favors, no is ok. I’m fact finding, not emotionally blackmailing or leveraging. I’ll call someone back as a last resort a burn a favor, but it’s gotta be life or death. If it’s a blown engine, I’ll just pay for a tow, y’know, but I got buddies with trucks and tow rope.
That can be further refined to, Don’t Stress Over the Imaginary. Stress is essentially double overtime, burning your life force at 200+%. Does stressing over paying your phone bill get you a discount on that bill? No? Then why spend currency that they aren’t accepting? (That being said, never extend real feelings to an artificial entity, real relationships require reciprocity). Is the stressing helping you find a solution faster? Really? REALLY?! I didn’t think so. You don’t need to punish yourself more than a “oh, this and this didn’t work, noted, avoid in the future.” No one and nothing benefits by a self imposed penence, you’re just wallowing. Really. Stop wasting time. That’s right, i said the thing we all know but don’t even admit to ourselves. A great man, a better man than we, once said, “Life is short, we must hurry” and I’m inclined to believe him.
Things, ALL things, will be done when they are done. That statement is at once both as direct and as vague as you want it to be. And it’s been that way for all time. Always. Just like we will never know the end of Pi, or simultaneously witness the ends of the superposition of an atom, life is just “fuzzy.” You’re welcome to scream about that into the void if you want, if you need more ways to come at the absurdity if it all. But again, things will be done when they are done. Putting an artificial time limit on it won’t change that. Getting upset over trivial missed deadlines is you getting upset about something that was never real in the first place. That is literally you getting in your own way. Spending currency that they aren’t taking.
As such, if I find out or am shown I’m wrong in any way, I acquiesce and admit. I’m not perfect, that’d be boring anyways, and doubling down on error just makes you look so soooo much worse than saying “ah shit, I didn’t realize, my bad, fucking thanks mate.” I lose NOTHING in the exchange. Nothing that I’d want to keep anyways. The truth has got to be holier than personal attachment, otherwise there is no objective reality, and therefore no way for us to ever truly be seen or known, or understood. Which I’m convinced is what we all ultimately want. Acknowledgement, understanding and vindication.
The only failure is the failure to learn the lesson.
The grace to live this seems so rare in people it’s like a super power.
“Mistakes teach you more than success” was something I heard and put almost no stock in for quite some time, but I really do believe it’s true. When something fails you can observe the results or catch the problem in real time and determine what’s gone wrong and make adjustments; when something succeeds without failures or breakdowns it’s difficult to know if it’s what you did that caused success, or if it was other factors outside of your control or measures. It can take a while to learn how to be open and accepting of those opportunities.
The only failure is the failure to learn the lesson
There was a teacher who said “it’s only a failure if you haven’t learned from it” and I might not have taken it to heart if she hadn’t also told me “it’s better to be a smartass than a dumbass”. These days I’m very glad to have figured out how to handle what I haven’t figured out yet.
A friend of mine’s father likes to say “Sadness and regret when we make mistakes is our brain’s way of making sure the lesson sticks. The worse you feel, the more important it is to grow from it.” It’s helped me to frame my negative reactions with positive meaning and see them as another tool for personal growth, and I hope it does something similar for you.
I’ve been getting into woodworking too! Feel free to share the books and videos you found useful!
Oh man, I have many many written down. I quickly found out that there are many schools of thought for approaching woodworking, so it’s helpful to think about what you want to make and what you like or dislike as you try different things. I decided I wanted to go the sharpening route, as opposed to continually buying electro-hardened blades, and I wanted to use as simple as tools as I can learn how. This ends up being axes, chisels, saws, and I did get a hand-crank grinder from 1910 for those heavy grinding situations.
I almost always have the Mortise and Tenon podcast on as I’m doing things. Joshua and Mike’s discussions really resonate with me and the philosophical elements really prompt some introspection. Joshua has two books that I’ll probably get soon. Otherwise, I bought Sharpen This and the Anarchists’ Toolkit; anything from Lost Art Press is probably worth the money.
As far as channels, Matt Estlea has many great videos for the essentials of sharpening and good form for chiseling and sawing. He also has other videos that I would consider “optional” but I did end up making his sharpening block stop, because it makes sharpening quicker. I may try to do free hand honing though, since the heavy cambre is difficult with a honing guide.
Paul Sellers has so many great videos. I especially loved him making a bench without having a bench. So many people show you how to make things already having many other tools and setups.
James Wright (Wood by Wright) has some really good videos and offers honest opinions. Beavercraft has some nice simple ones for getting started with carving. I haven’t explored one for tool restoration yet; if you have any that you suggest, I’d be happy to hear them. I eventually want to just make my own wooden planes.
Thanks! James Wright and a Paul Sellers are great yeah! Loved watching Paul hand planing that work bench for like 7 hours in real-time 😂
I really enjoy reading dense hard science fiction that I don’t fully understand. I’m only really capable of reading when my ADHD med kicks in, so this is kind of an issue since there are many other things that require my medicated attention. But reading sci-fi when my brain is properly tuned is a source of great pleasure to me. A lot of what I read is about characters that are somewhat deranged and post human. I imagine that a lot of people find those characters unsettling, but I feel cozy around them since I’m not conventionally human myself.
I’m talking about authors such as Greg Egan, Greg Bear, Peter Watts, and some things by Robert Heinlein, Asimov, and Philip K. Dick.
