During the pandemic I decided to get a barbell and start lifting at home. Fast forward a few years and I have a full on powerlifting rack and weights and completely changed my physique from “skinny runner” to “quite stout”. I’ve never felt or looked better in my entire life, and will yap uncontrollably if anyone mentions lifting within earshot
Same. Systems dynamics, mathematics, physics and metaphysics, etc. If people have tried to devise a system to explain everything, I’m interested in looking it over. I gotta know at least the basics of basically everything.
I have a system dynamics question! Maybe you could point me in the right direction? If I have the system response to a step input, what is the simplist way to derive the transfer function? I’ve only ever learned how to use a system to do modeling, not how to reverse engineer the model.
In a broad solution, you need to reverse the convolution of your system’s output.
Assuming it’s a linear continuous system, and it’s Single Input and Single Output (SISO), you do the Laplace transform of the signal L{y(t)}=Y(s), obtain the Laplace transform of the input L{x(t)}=X(s), and then obtain the transfer function of the system: H(s)=Y(s)/X(s), you must be aware the transfer function of the step is 1/s, therefore: H(s)=Y(s)/(1/s) => H(s)=sY(s), then you do the inverse Laplace transform: L-¹{H(s)}=L-¹{sY(s)}, which, depending on your system, may require partial fraction expansion. By the end you have h(t) (got a bit lazy here since y(t) is not known, but the step function is very well known).
Of course I made a bunch of assumptions about your system, if your system has discrete steps, the Z transform is of interest, with its own caveats mind you. Then there are filters and other numerical approximations for a reverse convolution.
I finally have some land, and I’m trying to figure out how much I want to do, how soon, and in what order. (I’m working on my first vegetable garden here currently)
For many years now, unions. It started when I became a union organizer in 2021. I love the rich history of the labor movement, the unending struggle against capitalist forces, the drama, the conferences, all of it. I’m going to Labor Notes this year as a rep for my local!
I tend to have distinct phases of special interests, and I still find the topics interesting after they fade. The earliest I can remember is tractors, then space, then castles and knights, then guns, then ww1, then ww2, then computers and programming. Now it’s unions
Huh.. I have definitely played Anarchy Online at some point in my life but only just remembering now after checking YouTube to find out what it actually is. I think I didn’t get very far at all..
The UI and aesthetic is so nostalgic. I miss games like this, except for the unnecessary complexity that got in the way of the game.
With all the extra processing power we have now, I wish we could see more games like this but polished.
I used to play all the time with on again off again groups. Even when I wasn’t playing I was still immersed in the culture and constantly thinking of fun quest or character ideas. But, adulting gets in the way and I haven’t had a group to play with since COVID.
That last one I mentioned during COVID was online, I didn’t have any problems meeting up that way. (Although it was a little tricky being 3 hours ahead of everyone on the West Coast.)
Maybe I’ll put some real effort into finding groups who are willing to take in a poor stranger.
For another 2¢ from me, there are a lot of paid DMs out there if you can swing the bill.
After turning in my own DM cloak, I decided to jump into a beginner friendly PF2e game and met a ton of friends. Also became good friends with the GM there and they don’t have our group pay any longer. It’s just friends playing for fun now.
Not to say that will surely happen, but it’s a great way to at least expand the social circle if you want to work your way toward free games some day ahha
And with history i mean EVERYTHING
Music, philosophy, archetecture, theologie, society, musical theory, design, aso!!
EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE JUST IS SO BEAUTIFUL!!
Currently on developing a mod (well development is on a hold because so many things happening that keep me buissy so there was no update since last august sob crying) for europa universalis 4 that expands on religions! So many interesting proto-protestant groups! The evolution of christianity really is interesting!
For the past several years I’ve been slowly teaching myself audio production and engineering. I worked as a professional musician for decades but never bothered to learn that side of the craft. So once in a while I’ll go down YouTube rabbit holes, watching tutorials on, say, creative uses of EQ and/or compression, or an analysis of the mix of a well-known song, or bouncing ideas and feedback off a small group of friends. Then I try to apply that to the songs that I’m working on.
The results I’ve gotten from my learning approach are decent, but I’m always comparing my own work to that of other established recording artists, and I have a lot yet to learn.
Its a lot more complex than it sounds. I have a post grad in geo spatial intelligence, even though its not something I do professionally.
These maps are stylised, meaning that the location of some things in some cases is moved slightly to improve readability. For example, I want the map to cover the entirety of my small city so the scale has to accommodate that. However, in some areas like beach fronts and tourist precincts there’s a lot of important features to include, which the scale just doesn’t really allow for. So you take some editors license to move things in a way that fits everything, but no one reading your map would think “Hey that path is supposed to be 30m to the west according to this map.”
For this reason the whole thing is more of an exercise in graphic design than it is one of geo spatial manipulations. Im using inkscape to create the map but i have qgis open alongside for things like street names and suburb boundaries.
The photography im using as a background on which to draw streets and paths is published by our state government. Its a tiled view of the entire state compiled from aerial surveys by plane. The resolution and quality available is truly beautiful.
The thing about this process which is truly captivating is that despite living her for 40 years, and growing up here as a curious and nosy scallywag, I’ve discovered so many little things in my area I didnt know existed. For example, there’s a network of paths that runners use behind a lake that I always thought was just a swamp.
There are also features I suspect may be similar to “crop lines” - vegetation growing in a different way due to man made features beneath the surface. In this case, fish traps constructed by first Australians perhaps hundreds of years ago. Or maybe its not that at all.
Certainly not to this degree at all, but I do love having a satellite or aerial view to just look around my area. I recently found there’s sprint boat races on a small man made course nearby and I’m excited to go check it out!
Good luck on your future endeavors and I hope you find some more neat stuff :)
Most things animated. If I’m watching any type of television or movies, there’s a very high chance it’s animated with a higher likelihood of being a cartoon. I don’t watch as much yt storytime animators, but at one point I did watch at least Dan Plan ( I think that was their name ).
But I also have a special interest that really leans into that: anthropomorphic animals. A ton of the cartoons I watched growing up contained anthro animals and now I am known to occasionally search specifically for anthro animal/furry content for new games to look at or shows/movies to check out. Biggest reason I got into BEASTARS.
This might be a stretch but my mind dredged up memories of the first two American Tail movies recently. Are/were you a fan? It sounds up your alley based on your comment here.
My family had the second movie on VHS, so yes. I don’t have either on DVD, which I should, but my brother currently has a VHS copy. I don’t care if people say the second wasn’t as good as the first because I love them both for different reasons, but I do love them.
I’m also, to a lesser extent, a fan of the Land Before Time series, which you’d never get me to admit IRL, and Secret of NIHM. Classic Don Bluth Entertainment films are some of my favorite classic animated films in general.
I have Secret of NIHM on DVD and maybe a year or so ago on a whim picked up a box set of all LBT films mainly for the early films since at some point the later films drop the whole prehistoric talk thing they did in the early films. Using “sun” instead of “sky fire” and such, which takes away a little bit of the charm.
Filmmaking (specifically no/low budget filmmaking) with the premise being that regardless of tools, there are things that anyone can do to improve their product without a large budget. (ie. remembering to record tone for later editing. Planning your shoot for the proper time of day. Using reflectors even if you can’t afford lights. Blocking and Business, Shooting enough coverage for later editing, etc…) A large amount of quality in low budget films comes from taking the time to actually plan things out rather than just showing up with a camera and pointing it at volunteer actors.
Things like *proper blocking*, *shot planning*, etc… are free. With digital cameras, film isn’t a commodity and there’s nothing stopping you from filming enough angles to give the video editor something to work with rather than just constant two-shots. Editing software itself is free.
Point being, there is no excuse for lazy filmmaking, even if you don’t have access to expensive equipment. Planning trumps equipment 90% of the time.
Reefkeeping. Been into it for well over 25 years. Had several reef tanks over the years, with my largest being a 225 gallon that I had to break down last year (still pissed about that one).
My hyperfixations jump around a lot though mostly it tends to stay in the STEM arena of things.
Currently I’m trying to design a language framework for building as low-level a language for reality as possible. Strangely (or not) I’ve touched very little in the way of linguistics and I’m wayy out of my depth in the field of logic and of all things category theory as well as philosophy because holy shit it’s kind of amazing we can communicate anything at all lol
In addition to that (and somewhat tangentially related) I’ve also been diving into the science of spiking neural nets and neuroanatomy in an effort to create an extensible self-supervised net I could then copy train to do a variety of tasks for me. Like the previous fixation, I am also very out of my depth in this project (also there are a lot more knowledgeable and well funded people who will almost certainly beat me to the punch), but even if I fail it’s already been a fascinating journey. Oh and I greatly dislike python so I’m basically reinventing the wheel multiple times in rust so that likely doesnt help my progress lol
Ugh way too many. Water plants, machine vision municipal waste sorting, building waste recycling, air-glass thermal energy storage (no phase change, ambient pressure, air as the working fluid), seabed warfare, and the role of geography on political violence (ornery hillfolk through the ages)
I’ve got a bunch of instruments that I have no idea how to play, but that its fun to own. I have a guitar tuned to open E so my toddlers can bang on it. It’ll get destroyed someday but playable but crap sounding guitars are about $50 last time I looked (and a far sight better than literal toys).
Right now it’s biochem/microbiology. Found an entire lecture series on the bay and have almost completed it. Current lecture is on codons/anti-codons, all of them are 3 base pairs with Uracil/Thymine (resp.), Cytosine, Adenine or Guanine (TCAG which I like to remember as 3CAG; FREE PALESTINE)
Transport RNAs are specific to one of twenty amino acids by the anti-codon on it’s base. The tRNA attach to their amino acid and slot into the ribosome in accordance to the codons on the messenger RNA it’s translating. This creates a chain of amino acids that naturally fold as it’s created because some aminos are polar and attach to each other. This is what is known as protein folding.
Like anal beads and some beads are magnetic, so when you pull them out some attach to each other creating loops and bends.
Not in a morbid sense, but rather I like reading the NTSB reports about how the holes in the Swiss Cheese model line up. There are several Youtube channels that give detailed breakdowns on accidents that I like to watch as well.
Why?
It started when I was 19 when I saw the aftermath of United 232. My parents and I were driving through Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. Fortunately, the highway was far enough away that only the larger parts of the plane could be seen. Bodies were not visible or had already been removed. That was 37 years ago and I still remember it like it was still happening.
I launched into learning everything I could about what happened to that airplane.
I had done the same thing with other accidents as well. Like many my age, I watch the Challenger accident live and Chernobyl happened that same year as well.
Add to that, in the 90’s I started skydiving. My home DZ flew two Beech 18’s. In one aircraft I experienced engine problems twice that elicited a bail out of all the jumpers. On both occasions the plane landed safely and put back into service after the engine was repaired, or replaced. The other Beech 18 I actually experienced a crash. It was fuel starvation on climb out and the pilot, who was the Drop Zone Owner, was flying. He put the plane down in a corn field off the end of the runway. All the jumpers except one got into the other Beech and jumped.
That just fed my curiosity. And yes, I still jumped after all of those occurrences. The crash actually happened first. I just tell it chronologically backward as it was the most serious of the incidents.
I also think that my studying of aviation accidents made me a better and safer skydiver. I was always thinking in terms in how things were lining up to allow bad things to happen. Not that I didn’t have close calls, I even wrote about one of them in a previous post, but I never experienced any major injuries in my 4500 jumps.
I have 4, one for each decade of life
1. Stargate SG1
2. Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology, and Sociology of Sex
3. Violence prevention, deescalation, and management in inpatient psychiatry (which became my career)
4. Western Esoteric spiritual practices including Tarot, Astrology, Tasseography, Palmistry, and the myriad religious beliefs that they syncretistically evolved from
Ive always kinda been obsessed with truth. Its not a good obsession. outside of that I can be a bit of dilettante sometimes delving deeply but for a period and you can’t really stay at depth if you keep moving around as in any field things change a lot. There were times I was into scifi/fantasy/reading and technology and its not like Im not anymore but its more like its not that unusual anymore compared to when I was young.
Man I have so many interests. Playing basketball, lifting weights, learning Linux, learning how to self host, doing stand up comedy. Learning how to code a video game.
Currently it’s buying stupid but vaguely useful things.
I spent $50 on a SDR radio that can listen to a very wide spectrum of stuff. Also got a cheap pair of GMRS radios and got hooked onto the local repeater tower for about a 50 mile radius of communication.
A friend had a gas coming from their oven on occasion so I got a sensor for about $70 to try to fix it (and did so successfully)
I have more flashlights than any one man needs, but they do come in useful.
I just got a lock pick set and a practice lock. Probably never use any vague skill I’d develop, but if it saves me calling one locksmith, one time, it’ll have paid for itself.
A good pair of binoculars is just nice to have.
Tools of any sort.
Non-stupid prepper stuff should some crazy shit go down. Water purification, solar systems, weapons.
I’d like to try one of the mesh networks, but have more pressing hobby-crap to pursue.
The concept of change, i think? I was shamed for my special interests as a child so I’ve tricked myself into thinking I dont have one. I am surrounded by plants, I keep little brass figurines of butterflies, am constantly distro hopping, system swapping in tabletop games (and relentlessly trying to meaningfully maim and heal my characters). Hell, I’m getting a degree and working a job in two fields that I had no familiarity with as of last year.
It feels a little generic, but video games. I’ve been playing them since my dad got a Gamecube around launch, and I’ve been reading about them since ~2011 when I discovered Steam and graphics cards. I learned within a year of watching the store that sales on Steam generally update Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ve checked what goes on sale for at least 90% of the Tuesdays and Thursdays since then.
I used to read a lot of IGN, then Kotaku, then r/games to keep up on everything. Now I mostly listen to a couple gaming podcasts (Minnmaxx and Triple Click) and that covers enough big and small games for me.
I like to say that I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of gaming from about 2007 onward, meaning for a given game I can give you a general idea of the genre, reception, notable influence on or from the industry, and I can usually recall at least 5 seconds of gameplay. The most exciting thing for me in conversation is when someone brings up a game I haven’t heard of or know nothing about.
Coding. Why did it have to be coding? I’m not good at it. Everything I’ve read about it makes little sense. The tiny bit of coding I do get needs to be reinforced 1000 times over. So far I’ve made some triangles and my terminal spout some shit out. Nothing fancy. Yet in the back of my mind I’m gonna make a fucking video game one day and all this confusion and struggling will pay off.
Are you wanting to code to make a game, or is it about coding itself?
In the former case, there’s a number of good game engines that will let you bypass a lot of the low-level complexity. A lot of studios use these, so it’s not like you’re “cheating” to use these. Game modding might also be an option, if you just feel a need to make something.
In the latter case, find a language you enjoy, and start small, find good guides, etc - sounds like you might be already doing some of this! But if a voice is whispering that a game is in order… might be worth grabbing Godot or something to play with anyway!
More coding itself. I like figuring out the minutia of it. I settled on C for now. Maybe a switch to Zig once that settles down it’s development. I grabbed a few textbooks and read through them. I picked up linked lists and trees and the neat stuff you can to with that. The game is an end goal but building up the tool box is more of a skill I want to nourish now. The idea of writing my own engine is very intriguing too.
Lots of stuff. History in general; DIY stuff, mainly with recycling; uncommon programming languages (the stuff that tends to get less than 5% usage on SO developer surveys, such as Nim, Zig, Elixir, LISP, Vlang, FORTH); 3d modelling; astronomy; understanding different cultures (which is kinda an offshoot from history, I guess); drawing; games (video and board); writing fiction
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During the pandemic I decided to get a barbell and start lifting at home. Fast forward a few years and I have a full on powerlifting rack and weights and completely changed my physique from “skinny runner” to “quite stout”. I’ve never felt or looked better in my entire life, and will yap uncontrollably if anyone mentions lifting within earshot
Rock and stone.
For Karl!
My special interest is everything. Well, everything except getting my ADHD treated.
Same. Systems dynamics, mathematics, physics and metaphysics, etc. If people have tried to devise a system to explain everything, I’m interested in looking it over. I gotta know at least the basics of basically everything.
I have a system dynamics question! Maybe you could point me in the right direction? If I have the system response to a step input, what is the simplist way to derive the transfer function? I’ve only ever learned how to use a system to do modeling, not how to reverse engineer the model.
In a broad solution, you need to reverse the convolution of your system’s output.
Assuming it’s a linear continuous system, and it’s Single Input and Single Output (SISO), you do the Laplace transform of the signal L{y(t)}=Y(s), obtain the Laplace transform of the input L{x(t)}=X(s), and then obtain the transfer function of the system: H(s)=Y(s)/X(s), you must be aware the transfer function of the step is 1/s, therefore: H(s)=Y(s)/(1/s) => H(s)=sY(s), then you do the inverse Laplace transform: L-¹{H(s)}=L-¹{sY(s)}, which, depending on your system, may require partial fraction expansion. By the end you have h(t) (got a bit lazy here since y(t) is not known, but the step function is very well known).
Of course I made a bunch of assumptions about your system, if your system has discrete steps, the Z transform is of interest, with its own caveats mind you. Then there are filters and other numerical approximations for a reverse convolution.
Excellent write up. Appreciate your time!
Thanks, I haven’t touched DiffEqs properly for a while
Fucking mood lmao
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I would like to know more!
I finally have some land, and I’m trying to figure out how much I want to do, how soon, and in what order. (I’m working on my first vegetable garden here currently)
Tell the chickens I said hello!
I’m not sure why no hellos for the others.
Tell them all hello!
For many years now, unions. It started when I became a union organizer in 2021. I love the rich history of the labor movement, the unending struggle against capitalist forces, the drama, the conferences, all of it. I’m going to Labor Notes this year as a rep for my local!
I tend to have distinct phases of special interests, and I still find the topics interesting after they fade. The earliest I can remember is tractors, then space, then castles and knights, then guns, then ww1, then ww2, then computers and programming. Now it’s unions
I am one of the developers for Project Rubi-Ka, a server emulator/private server for the classic sci-fi MMORPG, Anarchy Online.
AO is now nearly 25 years old and no longer has any developers at the company that released it, but it is still running.
I have written over 2,000,000 lines of server emulator code for AO. I am now probably one of the world’s foremost experts in how the game works.
Huh.. I have definitely played Anarchy Online at some point in my life but only just remembering now after checking YouTube to find out what it actually is. I think I didn’t get very far at all..
The UI and aesthetic is so nostalgic. I miss games like this, except for the unnecessary complexity that got in the way of the game.
With all the extra processing power we have now, I wish we could see more games like this but polished.
I’d really like to play D&D.
I used to play all the time with on again off again groups. Even when I wasn’t playing I was still immersed in the culture and constantly thinking of fun quest or character ideas. But, adulting gets in the way and I haven’t had a group to play with since COVID.
I know it’s not for everyone, but I play online weekly-biweekly and it’s great.
Very excited that the Draw Steel VTT just dropped
That last one I mentioned during COVID was online, I didn’t have any problems meeting up that way. (Although it was a little tricky being 3 hours ahead of everyone on the West Coast.)
Maybe I’ll put some real effort into finding groups who are willing to take in a poor stranger.
For another 2¢ from me, there are a lot of paid DMs out there if you can swing the bill.
After turning in my own DM cloak, I decided to jump into a beginner friendly PF2e game and met a ton of friends. Also became good friends with the GM there and they don’t have our group pay any longer. It’s just friends playing for fun now.
Not to say that will surely happen, but it’s a great way to at least expand the social circle if you want to work your way toward free games some day ahha
Relevant: !dnd@lemmy.world
I’m between sprcial interests rn
Got tired of sharks?
HISTORY AND HUMAN EXPERIENCE!!
And with history i mean EVERYTHING Music, philosophy, archetecture, theologie, society, musical theory, design, aso!!
EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE JUST IS SO BEAUTIFUL!!
Currently on developing a mod (well development is on a hold because so many things happening that keep me buissy so there was no update since last august sob crying) for europa universalis 4 that expands on religions! So many interesting proto-protestant groups! The evolution of christianity really is interesting!
You sound a lot like me friend
For the past several years I’ve been slowly teaching myself audio production and engineering. I worked as a professional musician for decades but never bothered to learn that side of the craft. So once in a while I’ll go down YouTube rabbit holes, watching tutorials on, say, creative uses of EQ and/or compression, or an analysis of the mix of a well-known song, or bouncing ideas and feedback off a small group of friends. Then I try to apply that to the songs that I’m working on.
The results I’ve gotten from my learning approach are decent, but I’m always comparing my own work to that of other established recording artists, and I have a lot yet to learn.
It’s a shitload of fun too.
You appear to already be there, but for anyone else: !musicproduction@sh.itjust.works
Aztec History and Culture
Super cool.
Pls hit me with some non-stereotypical facts.
Sounds cool, could you give us a fact about them ?
Mapping!
Presently I’m using aerial photography to produce a map of local cycle ways and walkways.
This is really cool. Are you taking the photographs yourself? Are you using a GIS program? Running Q or something?
Its a lot more complex than it sounds. I have a post grad in geo spatial intelligence, even though its not something I do professionally.
These maps are stylised, meaning that the location of some things in some cases is moved slightly to improve readability. For example, I want the map to cover the entirety of my small city so the scale has to accommodate that. However, in some areas like beach fronts and tourist precincts there’s a lot of important features to include, which the scale just doesn’t really allow for. So you take some editors license to move things in a way that fits everything, but no one reading your map would think “Hey that path is supposed to be 30m to the west according to this map.”
For this reason the whole thing is more of an exercise in graphic design than it is one of geo spatial manipulations. Im using inkscape to create the map but i have qgis open alongside for things like street names and suburb boundaries.
The photography im using as a background on which to draw streets and paths is published by our state government. Its a tiled view of the entire state compiled from aerial surveys by plane. The resolution and quality available is truly beautiful.
The thing about this process which is truly captivating is that despite living her for 40 years, and growing up here as a curious and nosy scallywag, I’ve discovered so many little things in my area I didnt know existed. For example, there’s a network of paths that runners use behind a lake that I always thought was just a swamp.
There are also features I suspect may be similar to “crop lines” - vegetation growing in a different way due to man made features beneath the surface. In this case, fish traps constructed by first Australians perhaps hundreds of years ago. Or maybe its not that at all.
That’s really cool! What a neat project!
Certainly not to this degree at all, but I do love having a satellite or aerial view to just look around my area. I recently found there’s sprint boat races on a small man made course nearby and I’m excited to go check it out!
Good luck on your future endeavors and I hope you find some more neat stuff :)
That sounds awesome. Come do my area lol. Maps are great.
Most things animated. If I’m watching any type of television or movies, there’s a very high chance it’s animated with a higher likelihood of being a cartoon. I don’t watch as much yt storytime animators, but at one point I did watch at least Dan Plan ( I think that was their name ).
But I also have a special interest that really leans into that: anthropomorphic animals. A ton of the cartoons I watched growing up contained anthro animals and now I am known to occasionally search specifically for anthro animal/furry content for new games to look at or shows/movies to check out. Biggest reason I got into BEASTARS.
This might be a stretch but my mind dredged up memories of the first two American Tail movies recently. Are/were you a fan? It sounds up your alley based on your comment here.
My family had the second movie on VHS, so yes. I don’t have either on DVD, which I should, but my brother currently has a VHS copy. I don’t care if people say the second wasn’t as good as the first because I love them both for different reasons, but I do love them.
I’m also, to a lesser extent, a fan of the Land Before Time series, which you’d never get me to admit IRL, and Secret of NIHM. Classic Don Bluth Entertainment films are some of my favorite classic animated films in general.
I have Secret of NIHM on DVD and maybe a year or so ago on a whim picked up a box set of all LBT films mainly for the early films since at some point the later films drop the whole prehistoric talk thing they did in the early films. Using “sun” instead of “sky fire” and such, which takes away a little bit of the charm.
My family learned thirty years ago never to utter the words ‘Doctor Who’ in my presence.
Too many. I collect special interests.
The one that’s lasted the longest are:
Filmmaking (specifically no/low budget filmmaking) with the premise being that regardless of tools, there are things that anyone can do to improve their product without a large budget. (ie. remembering to record tone for later editing. Planning your shoot for the proper time of day. Using reflectors even if you can’t afford lights. Blocking and Business, Shooting enough coverage for later editing, etc…) A large amount of quality in low budget films comes from taking the time to actually plan things out rather than just showing up with a camera and pointing it at volunteer actors.
Things like *proper blocking*, *shot planning*, etc… are free. With digital cameras, film isn’t a commodity and there’s nothing stopping you from filming enough angles to give the video editor something to work with rather than just constant two-shots. Editing software itself is free.
Point being, there is no excuse for lazy filmmaking, even if you don’t have access to expensive equipment. Planning trumps equipment 90% of the time.
Okay…rant over.
Most things in this world are 90% prep, 10% execution.
Clouds!
And other weather phenomena, of course.
I just think they’re fantastic and they change so often and tell us so much
Reefkeeping. Been into it for well over 25 years. Had several reef tanks over the years, with my largest being a 225 gallon that I had to break down last year (still pissed about that one).
My hyperfixations jump around a lot though mostly it tends to stay in the STEM arena of things.
Currently I’m trying to design a language framework for building as low-level a language for reality as possible. Strangely (or not) I’ve touched very little in the way of linguistics and I’m wayy out of my depth in the field of logic and of all things category theory as well as philosophy because holy shit it’s kind of amazing we can communicate anything at all lol
In addition to that (and somewhat tangentially related) I’ve also been diving into the science of spiking neural nets and neuroanatomy in an effort to create an extensible self-supervised net I could then copy train to do a variety of tasks for me. Like the previous fixation, I am also very out of my depth in this project (also there are a lot more knowledgeable and well funded people who will almost certainly beat me to the punch), but even if I fail it’s already been a fascinating journey. Oh and I greatly dislike python so I’m basically reinventing the wheel multiple times in rust so that likely doesnt help my progress lol
Everything.
But especially game development.
May I recommend you growing fungi home as hobby in these interesting times?
Would be difficult atm. I am pressed for time, kept so far away from what I desire most.
Modernist literature between end of WW2 and the start of postmodernism, especially British, Irish, French and Italian
Ugh way too many. Water plants, machine vision municipal waste sorting, building waste recycling, air-glass thermal energy storage (no phase change, ambient pressure, air as the working fluid), seabed warfare, and the role of geography on political violence (ornery hillfolk through the ages)
Making music. I play several instruments, some in perhaps an unconventional way.
I’ve got a bunch of instruments that I have no idea how to play, but that its fun to own. I have a guitar tuned to open E so my toddlers can bang on it. It’ll get destroyed someday but playable but crap sounding guitars are about $50 last time I looked (and a far sight better than literal toys).
Right now it’s biochem/microbiology. Found an entire lecture series on the bay and have almost completed it. Current lecture is on codons/anti-codons, all of them are 3 base pairs with Uracil/Thymine (resp.), Cytosine, Adenine or Guanine (TCAG which I like to remember as 3CAG; FREE PALESTINE)
Transport RNAs are specific to one of twenty amino acids by the anti-codon on it’s base. The tRNA attach to their amino acid and slot into the ribosome in accordance to the codons on the messenger RNA it’s translating. This creates a chain of amino acids that naturally fold as it’s created because some aminos are polar and attach to each other. This is what is known as protein folding.
Like anal beads and some beads are magnetic, so when you pull them out some attach to each other creating loops and bends.
Plane crashes.
Not in a morbid sense, but rather I like reading the NTSB reports about how the holes in the Swiss Cheese model line up. There are several Youtube channels that give detailed breakdowns on accidents that I like to watch as well.
Why?
It started when I was 19 when I saw the aftermath of United 232. My parents and I were driving through Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. Fortunately, the highway was far enough away that only the larger parts of the plane could be seen. Bodies were not visible or had already been removed. That was 37 years ago and I still remember it like it was still happening.
I launched into learning everything I could about what happened to that airplane.
I had done the same thing with other accidents as well. Like many my age, I watch the Challenger accident live and Chernobyl happened that same year as well.
Add to that, in the 90’s I started skydiving. My home DZ flew two Beech 18’s. In one aircraft I experienced engine problems twice that elicited a bail out of all the jumpers. On both occasions the plane landed safely and put back into service after the engine was repaired, or replaced. The other Beech 18 I actually experienced a crash. It was fuel starvation on climb out and the pilot, who was the Drop Zone Owner, was flying. He put the plane down in a corn field off the end of the runway. All the jumpers except one got into the other Beech and jumped.
That just fed my curiosity. And yes, I still jumped after all of those occurrences. The crash actually happened first. I just tell it chronologically backward as it was the most serious of the incidents.
I also think that my studying of aviation accidents made me a better and safer skydiver. I was always thinking in terms in how things were lining up to allow bad things to happen. Not that I didn’t have close calls, I even wrote about one of them in a previous post, but I never experienced any major injuries in my 4500 jumps.
They aren’t making new ones anymore, but you might enjoy the back catalog of the “Black Box Down” podcast. I think it had about 12 seasons.
I have 4, one for each decade of life 1. Stargate SG1 2. Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology, and Sociology of Sex 3. Violence prevention, deescalation, and management in inpatient psychiatry (which became my career) 4. Western Esoteric spiritual practices including Tarot, Astrology, Tasseography, Palmistry, and the myriad religious beliefs that they syncretistically evolved from
It seems to change by the week, but lately it’s gone from linux to radios to electronic components/circuits
Growing cannabis. I’m a noob, but it’s just so fun! Got 320 grams from my last plant.
I miss growing cannabis. I might start again. It’s the only plants that ever survived and thrived in my household
Ive always kinda been obsessed with truth. Its not a good obsession. outside of that I can be a bit of dilettante sometimes delving deeply but for a period and you can’t really stay at depth if you keep moving around as in any field things change a lot. There were times I was into scifi/fantasy/reading and technology and its not like Im not anymore but its more like its not that unusual anymore compared to when I was young.
Man I have so many interests. Playing basketball, lifting weights, learning Linux, learning how to self host, doing stand up comedy. Learning how to code a video game.
Currently it’s buying stupid but vaguely useful things.
I spent $50 on a SDR radio that can listen to a very wide spectrum of stuff. Also got a cheap pair of GMRS radios and got hooked onto the local repeater tower for about a 50 mile radius of communication.
A friend had a gas coming from their oven on occasion so I got a sensor for about $70 to try to fix it (and did so successfully)
I have more flashlights than any one man needs, but they do come in useful.
I just got a lock pick set and a practice lock. Probably never use any vague skill I’d develop, but if it saves me calling one locksmith, one time, it’ll have paid for itself.
A good pair of binoculars is just nice to have.
Tools of any sort.
Non-stupid prepper stuff should some crazy shit go down. Water purification, solar systems, weapons.
I’d like to try one of the mesh networks, but have more pressing hobby-crap to pursue.
License plates.
The concept of change, i think? I was shamed for my special interests as a child so I’ve tricked myself into thinking I dont have one. I am surrounded by plants, I keep little brass figurines of butterflies, am constantly distro hopping, system swapping in tabletop games (and relentlessly trying to meaningfully maim and heal my characters). Hell, I’m getting a degree and working a job in two fields that I had no familiarity with as of last year.
Harpsichord music of early XVIIIth century.
Here is the last piece i study https://youtu.be/cBpRWE87lzc?is=zw5Pn0FJAR2ndeGK
It feels a little generic, but video games. I’ve been playing them since my dad got a Gamecube around launch, and I’ve been reading about them since ~2011 when I discovered Steam and graphics cards. I learned within a year of watching the store that sales on Steam generally update Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ve checked what goes on sale for at least 90% of the Tuesdays and Thursdays since then.
I used to read a lot of IGN, then Kotaku, then r/games to keep up on everything. Now I mostly listen to a couple gaming podcasts (Minnmaxx and Triple Click) and that covers enough big and small games for me.
I like to say that I have a near encyclopedic knowledge of gaming from about 2007 onward, meaning for a given game I can give you a general idea of the genre, reception, notable influence on or from the industry, and I can usually recall at least 5 seconds of gameplay. The most exciting thing for me in conversation is when someone brings up a game I haven’t heard of or know nothing about.
Coding. Why did it have to be coding? I’m not good at it. Everything I’ve read about it makes little sense. The tiny bit of coding I do get needs to be reinforced 1000 times over. So far I’ve made some triangles and my terminal spout some shit out. Nothing fancy. Yet in the back of my mind I’m gonna make a fucking video game one day and all this confusion and struggling will pay off.
Are you wanting to code to make a game, or is it about coding itself?
In the former case, there’s a number of good game engines that will let you bypass a lot of the low-level complexity. A lot of studios use these, so it’s not like you’re “cheating” to use these. Game modding might also be an option, if you just feel a need to make something.
In the latter case, find a language you enjoy, and start small, find good guides, etc - sounds like you might be already doing some of this! But if a voice is whispering that a game is in order… might be worth grabbing Godot or something to play with anyway!
More coding itself. I like figuring out the minutia of it. I settled on C for now. Maybe a switch to Zig once that settles down it’s development. I grabbed a few textbooks and read through them. I picked up linked lists and trees and the neat stuff you can to with that. The game is an end goal but building up the tool box is more of a skill I want to nourish now. The idea of writing my own engine is very intriguing too.
Lots of stuff. History in general; DIY stuff, mainly with recycling; uncommon programming languages (the stuff that tends to get less than 5% usage on SO developer surveys, such as Nim, Zig, Elixir, LISP, Vlang, FORTH); 3d modelling; astronomy; understanding different cultures (which is kinda an offshoot from history, I guess); drawing; games (video and board); writing fiction
Art and science in all forms, which covers a lot. Daily it’s mostly gaming, music, movies/shows and science videos and articles.
3d printing and fermentation. I’m fascinated by making my own variants of things.
You share 2 interests with my guts