Mine is mapping. I am a big OpenStreetMap contributor and I have mapped many towns near me that were previously completely unmapped.
Mine is Free software. If I can avoid it, then I avoid nonfree software. This brings me a lot of problems but also a lot of joy.
so true bestie
I know more about the Doom engine than I do interpersonal relations. Did you know you can completely destroy collision physics via writing over memory addresses if you shoot a bullet weapon at a stack of corpses?
What does this even mean
It’s clearly some sort of combination of words but I can’t quite make out what they’re attempting to communicate…
Nevertheless, I am fascinated. And open to more!
I love reading about people’s passions, and I think it adds to it the less I know about the subject, as just sitting back and enjoying how excited and interested someone is in their thing, really is so nice.
Great deep lore of ancient games
Meaning then you just pass through objects rather than collide? Or is it unable to properly calculate the incident & resulting collision vectors, meaning the resulting trajectories are nonsensical?
Everything from projectiles to monsters pass through walls, can do no damage to one another, and can’t interact with stuff like switches. I edited my comment with a poor explanation from memory, alongside a great video explaining that I can’t watch to double check my comment as I’m at work currently.
Hedge laying. It’s a technique where you almost cut through the stems of the plants in a hedgerow in order to bend them down. This promotes the growth of new shoots and results in a very dense hedge, which historically was done to make sure animals didn’t escape or enter pastures and fields.
Wonderful! I’ve been hoping to learn to do this to replace my neighbor’s vinyl fence. What’s your preferred style? Do you recommend any resources for learning the skill?
I usually use the midland style because that’s the style I was originally taught by Nigel Adams and because it’s a beautiful style, if somewhat wasteful with the binders used on top. It makes for for a very dense and relatively strong hedge.
That being said there’s a lot of other styles each with their own histories and use cases.
If you want to learn there’s some books on the topic, though not all of them in English. For instance the Dutch stichting heg & landschap has a decent guide and overview of the most common styles and techniques in the Netherlands and Flanders (Heggenvlechten en haagleiden in Nederland en Vlaanderen). A very in depth one is “Europe’s field boundaries” by Georg Müller, but I suggest trying to find it in a library as it’s very expensive.
In order to actually learn the techniques the best way is to find a teacher or course near you. There’s a lot of videos on youtube and pictures in the aforementioned books, but those aren’t really a replacement for someone experienced showing you the ropes.
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Is a hedgerow more economically feasible than, say, a chain-link fence or any other kind of fence, really (fences are expensive)? About the same? More expensive? What about comparative difficulty? Is it the kind of thing that takes years to grow out?
I’m not exactly sure. A chain link fence is a one time expense as opposed to a hedge which is a living, growing thing and so needs continuing upkeep. And yes, it can take a couple of years before the hedge is ready to be laid… There’s also the used space to consider, as a hedge is a lot wider than a fence.
I guess it really depends on your specific situation.
Does raising and training ducks count? I’m really good at it. I have care down to a science and I’ve done quite a bit medically because there aren’t any vets that treat ducks around me. I’ve rehabilitated crazy injuries, performed minor surgery, treated severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
I have trained all of my birds to listen to basic commands and they know their names and respond to them.
I would name a mallard “M’Lord” just to mess with it.
Next mallard I get will be named that. Even if it’s a girl. Gotta do it for the meme
What got you into that? How long have you been doing it? What kind of ducks?
I got into chickens when my sister started 4H, and when our chickens died suddenly, my grandma got us 3 ducklings as a gift without consulting anyone. They imprinted on me immediately and I was like, “I guess this is my new obsession because I’m a mother now.”
That was 8 years ago. I started off with a Muscovy male, a muscovy female, and a mallard female. We rescued a second Muscovy female a couple years in. I moved to my own place in 2022 and brought the remaining birds with me, which were the Muscovy male and mallard female.
I ordered some more ducklings and rescued a couple birds over the course of 2022 and 2023. Right now I have:
2 female muscovies: Mama Duck and Lady. Mama Duck fights me over eggs, so I have to pull a Skyrim move and put a bucket on her head so I can take her eggs without her attacking me. Lady is very sweet and shows me her eggs and acts all happy when I compliment her best and thank her for the eggs.
A tiny male mallard and his mate who is a female mallard that looks like a male but has laid eggs. Little guy is Sonic (because he runs SO FAST) and his mate is Amy. Amy went through duck menopause about 6 months after I got her, so that’s why she looks like a male in terms of feathers. Without her ovaries producing female hormones, her feathers defaulted back to mostly male. She and Sonic were rescued from a local family who couldn’t care for them anymore.
A male Pekin that doesn’t have male traits but I’ve seen his dick a few times. His name is Salt. He is a lil chonky.
A male khaki Campbell named Pepper. He was purchased with Salt as a baby. They were on sale for 25% off and were 100000% an impulse buy. They’re besties and don’t leave each other’s sides.
A female khaki Campbell named Capri-Sun who yells a lot
A female Pekin named Judy. She’s named after judge Judy because she’s always squinting at me in a judgmental way and interrupts me with sassy quacks any time I talk to her. She’s done this since she was literally only a day old. She has a distinct quack that has a squeak to it.
A female golden layer named Cayenne who is hella chill.
A female Cayuga named Fashionista who is slowly turning from black to white with each molt of her feathers (that’s normal)
Where can we sign up for duck tales?
Wow! That is so awesome and I’m super jealous! I discovered a park semi-close to me last spring that has a bit of a Mallard population, and apparently seasonal Gadwalls. As you might imagine, they’re not super interested in most humans, but still super fun to watch.
i upload photos i take of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, fungi, and bugs. The observations (photos + location + annotation) are uploaded to a public database accessible to researchers and universities.
I’ve been involved in multiple species range expansions, and i’ve documented both endangered and invasive species. Pretty fun!
The Android app is very good. The iOS app is good for uploads, but lacks a lot of browsing features like search filters and phylogenetic trees. If you are on iOS i suggest using it in a browser except for observation uploads
You can also upload audio recordings for bird and bug sounds. It’s amazing what you can learn about your local ecosystem!
Nice! I hadn’t heard of iNaturalist. Over where I live most people use observation.org
iNaturalist
Thx a lot, I did not know about tis website.
I love iNaturalist. I lived out in the woods for several years and would see so many different bugs that I didn’t recognize. So when I discovered it about 2 years ago, I started taking pictures of every bug I saw and uploading them to the app to learn what they were. And then in August last year there was an unusual explosion of mushroom varieties in our yard. That’s the one area where iNaturalist is a little weak as it really struggled to give me good ID’s for a lot of them. But it should only get better with time.
I’ll see if I can find some mushroom photos to share here.With mushrooms i often rely on other citizen scientists rather than the ID robot. There are some very friendly and active mycologists who can be a big help figuring out an ID or telling you what to photograph next time to get better data
Game preservation. I got into it last fall when I learned about OpenGOAL for the Jak and Daxter games. I grew up with those games and were some of my favorites from that generation.
I then learned how easy it was to rip PS1 through 3 games and how simple it is to set up the emulators for each console. I have a sizable collection of games for those generations, so I started ripping.I then remembered watching LTT’s video about how to jailbreak the Switch. I bought a used Switch from a friend pre-pandemic, but never played the games because I never cared for playing on the Switch itself. So I checked if mine was old enough to jailbreak (Nintendo patched the exploit out of the Switch about a year after it released) and, lo and behold, it was.
It wasn’t easy jailbreaking it. It took several hours over 3 days to do it; I would make some progress, then hit a roadblock I couldn’t figure out, so I’d stop and come back the next day. I’d get a little further, hit another roadblock, and repeat. Once I managed that, I ripped my (small) collection of Switch games and played them on Ryujinx. Now that I could finally play them on my laptop whenever I wanted, I actually had a desire to play them and managed to get through BotW in January.Then I figured out how to jailbreak my Wii (which is pretty easy, I recommend everyone do it to theirs), so I could rip those games. It can also rip GC games, so I didn’t need to find and jailbreak one of those to do it.
When I learned of shadPS4 this summer and the progress it was making toward playing Bloodborne, I spent $400 on ebay to get a gold PS4 with firmware 9.0 so I could jailbreak it and start dumping PS4 games.
At that point I saw how much space all of the games I ripped took up on my laptop, so I bought a NAS from a friend who was upgrading theirs and set it up with two 8TB hard drives in RAID 1 and stored all my games on there. It’s currently about 60%+ full.
Over Halloween I went to a used game store and saw they were selling a Wii U for $160. I bought it and jailbroke that as well and started ripping those games.
I bought an OG Xbox to jailbreak, but I need to open it up to replace the clock capacitor first. Otherwise it could leak and my effort would be for nothing. I just haven’t got around to it yet.
I realized this was a passion of mine when I accidentally borked my PS4 and it would only boot into safe mode. I was 100% willing to completely wipe it and start the jailbreak from scratch so I could keep doing it.
All told, I’ve ripped about 400+ games in the past 15 months, spent dozens of hours ripping them, and have zero intention of stopping. I only think about how I can keep expanding my collection. Right now my next consoles will be the 360, PSP, and Vita.
Edit: rephrasing and adding a little more info
I wish my switch’s screws weren’t stripped to hell so I could do this too
Do you have any kind of backups in place? I ask becuase raid 0 means if either of your disks fail you lose everything. Just wanted to make sure you’re aware!
Woops, I meant RAID 1. I’ll go fix that in my post. But I do have an external 4TB SSD with all my games except for the PS4 games since they’re so large. It has about 750 GB of space remaining on it.
I also backed up my games on a friend’s NAS in a separate location.
I also purchased a small rack server that can hold 4 hard drives. I want to buy a few 8 TB drives and set up Gamevault on it to better manage my few hundred games in my collection.Excellent setup! You’re doing God’s work
Primary: Disc Golf ❤️
Secondary: As many useful docker containers as I can pack onto my home server
Yay disc golf! What’s the best course you’ve played?
Probably Hillcrest Farm in PEI Canada. Amazing course.
Damn, number two in the world?? Best I’ve played is nineteenth!
There are some areas in the US with unbelievable course density that I’m quite jealous of. But here in Canada there is certainly less course density where I live, but I have access to a few pretty great courses less than an hour away, and that course in PEI is only about 90 minutes away.
It seems much more popular in the states but seems to be getting some good traction in Canada now. I went on a little disc golf road trip in BC and there are actually some pretty good guerilla courses out there that people have clearly put a lot of work into.
Love me some watercolour.
Very cool! I think watercolor is neat because you can make really ethereal, abstract pieces, or you can make more realistic (which seems like your style, having peeped a few of your posts in that comm).
I really had to think just to come up with nothing lol
I get REALLY into something for 2 weeks then I drop it and never look back. I was into minerals/mineralogy for a few years I guess, but I’m not all that knowledgeable. I just really like copper bearing minerals like dioptase and azurite.
I joke that my real hobby is shopping for my new hobby but it’s not really a joke is it
God, this is so me. If I had to pick one, I’d say writing/story telling, but I’ll never be able to finish writing a book or a script because 2 months is basically my max
Hobby collecting!
I’m not really into mineralogy, but damn is it fascinating. I just think all of the minerals and gems look so cool.
My dad and I went to the Smithsonian Natural History museum recently and by far our favorite part was the gems and minerals. I could spend hours in that one part of the museum.
I just think all of the minerals and gems look so cool.
That’s where I’m at too. I said mineralogy, but really just because I didn’t know a concise way of putting “I just like how minerals look” in terms of an interest. Lol
Definitely agree on the Smithsonian, such a cool section!
For those who jump around too much like I do, remember:
That has some truth for career/professional skills, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a lot of hobbies. Most people won’t achieve “true greatness” (whatever that means) in their hobbies whether they have one or hundreds, so why not just focus on doing what you enjoy?
"Jack of all trades,
Master of none,
But still better than
A master of one."
Levitation Wand!
I think it is pretty niché as most people that see it have no idea what is going on to begin with and if drugs are involved I love blowing peoples minds with it.
Ooh this is new to me! Very cool.
Okay, that was cooler than I expected going in. Now I want one. They’re so pricey!
My main one is vegan food. Before I had access to a kitchen to make my own food, it used to involve collecting, curating and creating recipes, but has since moved onto creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain flavour and texture profiles.
The current big one I’ve been very obsessed with making and eating for the last few years, is variations on hoisin mock duck wraps.
The latest iteration is a salad wrap, with leaves of nappa cabbage as the wrap, a layer of vegan garlic mayo with chilli crisp, mock duck, green onion, cucumber, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, hoisin sauce, corriander leaves, and another cabbage leaf to cover/ close the wrap. This probably has the best textures so far and tastes really good!
Making/eating kimchi is a similarly intense interest/obsession. So is hotpot. I fucking love hotpot.
My secondary major interest fluctuates between several different things, but is currently perfume.
I’m very into creating (and endlessly recreating, adapting and morphing) certain scent profiles, and collecting perfumes.
I like to do this through layering different perfumes on my skin and clothes, so I can highlight certain notes/sensory aspects for myself (that may not be apparent on other people’s skin chemistry, so this, like with my other interest, is a very subjective fascination!).
Over the span of three days (between showers) I like to start in one place with my layering combinations and go on scent journeys as the notes morph and fade, and I add to them with other complimentary scents and see how far I can go. Notes linger on clothing longer and differently to how they do on skin, so as I’m layering over several days it builds up in fascinating ways. It’s very interesting to me too finding which layering combinations work one way but not the other.
Lately I’ve enjoyed starting with a base combo of Mauboussin Mauboussin (resinous yet juicy plums and lots of ylang ylang) and Musamam White Intense by Lattafa (juicy spiced oranges and too much ambroxan)- and then taking that in interesting directions as it fades over the day, like layering on more spices and wood notes, and then when that fades, onto various ouds and roses.
Or adding a Stronger With You flanker (sweet and aromatic with chestnuts + individual flanker variations), then when that starts to fade leading it with fragrances full of ginger, vanilla, lactonic nutty notes and patchouli.
Being enveloped in layers of beautiful fragrances is such big sensory good times for me and discovering new combinations is so pleasing.
Also before anyone comes at me for this, I live alone and don’t wear any fragrance when I go outside, so I’m really not hurting anyone with this hobby!
What do you use for the fake duck meat?
I’ve gotten pretty obsessed with making good seitan, but there’s just so many variables. I’m mostly a texture person, and I find that the place where lots of vegan recipes fail is in the texture department. So that’s where my passion for vegan cooking leads me.
The Linda McCartney Vegetarian Shredded Hoisin Duck have been my go to for a while as they’re in most of the big supermarkets here and I can get them delivered to my house.
I like to defrost them and use them ‘raw’ (they’re already fully cooked) because I find the texture gets weird when they’re prepared according to the package instructions.
Any Asian superstore will likely have many varieties of better, and probably cheaper, mock duck though. If I lived near one I would be so fat!
I had a seitan phase a few years back, I got really into finding good spice mixes to include in the dough for maximum ‘meatiness’.
I made and tried to like the ‘lunch meat’ style seitan a few times, but memories of being a kid having to eat actual lunch meat (and how slimy and sometimes gritty from gristle it was) really put me off it.
Texture wise with seitan, I liked gently beating the kneaded dough flat with the end of a rolling pin, and then tightly rolling and coiling it up, wrapping it tightly to steam, and then shredding it and adding bite sized bits to hotpot.
What’s your current favourite seitan recipe? What texture do you like your seitan?
Dang, there’s a couple of Asian grocery stores near me, but I’ve never thought to look for mock duck. Usually I’m just loading up on gochujang.
For seitan, I am pretty much stuck making loaves of the deli meat style “ham” or “Turkey” although I find they both taste about the same. The recipe I based them on is from 86 meats(or something like that), and it uses extra form tofu as the moisture. I’ve tried with just VWG and water/broth, but I never liked the texture when I do that. I’m really wanting to try using beans/lentils instead of tofu, but I’ve been risk adverse now that I’ve got a recipe I like.
In my pre-vegan life I was pretty into making pizza, so I obsessed over hydration levels, proofing time, baking temp, and all those other minor details of making good bread. I see seitan as bread-adjacent, so I think there’s a lot of overlap in cooking bread and seitan. My plan in the coming year is to start tweaking the hydration level, and switching up the additives to see if I can’t find a method that really resonates.
I also think there’s some room for exploring the cook method. Lots of recipes say “simmer DO NOT BOIL”, so you know they’re looking for a specific temp. I’m wondering if it would be easier to achieve with a Sous vide? But other recipes swear by the steam method. Steam is going to be WAY hotter than simmering, so that’s a huge difference in method right away. I tend to favor the oven bake to get a nicer looking “crust”. But I bake at 350F, which is hotter than steam? But less intense heat transfer. I also ALWAYS temp the loaf before taking it out. 190f internal temp (just like a good loaf of bread). The shape and size of the loaf really can mess with your cook time, so I’ve found it best to just temp it with a “meat” thermometer.
Anyway, shame there’s not a c/seitan community on Lemmy yet. I don’t have enough content to run such a place, but I’d be happy to contribute to the discussion.
Oh man I’ve recently started getting into fragrances… I’d never realized how complex (and expensive) they can be! I discovered Kayali’s Yum Pistachio Gelato from a makeup youtuber I follow and it’s all been downhill from there. Lately I’ve been layering Ellis Brooklyn’s Super Amber with Phlur’s Heavy Cream, and I keep sneaking little sniffs of myself throughout the day… and sniffing my bra when I take it off for the night… send help!
What are some of your favorite unexpected notes to combine?
Ugh, I know right?! All my spare coin is going towards perfumes!
Yum Pistachio is gorgeous! I love all the dupes of it too, all the Arabic houses are on top form lately.
Your combination of Super Amber and Heavy Cream sounds hella sexy!
Ok, so here’s a REALLY strange but beautiful scent combination I’ve found, let me try and set the scene it makes for you first:
You’re in an coastal pine forest during a lightening storm. It’s night. You can smell the wet earth underfoot and the forest behind you. Just before the rain starts up again, you’re looking out over the sea as it crashes against the cliffside, sea water mists the air and sheets of lightening illuminate the world.
This was from about 5 spritzes of Vanilla Vibes by JHAG (salty non-gourmand vanilla) with a modest spritz of Quorum by Antonio Puig (beast mode aromatic oakmoss) over it. Encre Noir by Lalique could probably be substituted for the Quorum for a similar affect, but you’ll need to spray a lot more of it as Quorum is very, very strong.
The way the sea salty solar notes of Vanila Vibes play against the dank mossy woods and grapefruit of Quorum, it’s so visual for me. And there’s this ozoneic smell they form together that isn’t constant but is electric and kinda how I imagine lightening smells.
Do you have any unexpectedly beautiful scent combinations? Please share if so!
Oh man, you hooked me from
You’re in an coastal pine forest during a lightening storm
and it just got better from there. I’ll have to try this!
I’m still building up my collection, so so far the most interesting I’ve come up with is Super Amber / Heavy Cream. I’ve been ordering a bunch of sample vials of things that sound interesting, trying to pin down what notes I like best and which I don’t. So hopefully soon I can come up with creative combos like yours!
Don’t be afraid of just amassing a bunch of ‘cheapies’ to start with, there are so many fantastic fragrances made by renowned perfumers/houses, that you can buy for under £50 (€/$/etc) to train your nose on and figure out what you like.
That’s actually how I have Vanilla Vibes and Quorum, I literally just blind bought a load of cheaper perfumes going by what looked interesting on Fragrantica or was recommended on youtube, and I would likely never have bought or learnt to pick out and enjoy their notes had I gotten tiny testers first.
Also many cheap Arabic perfumes (originals and dupes) are surprisingly good, don’t be too afraid of exploring that side of this world either! Al Rehab is a great place to start if you’re unsure/skint, Choco Musk is quite possibly the best milk chocolate perfume in the world and you can get a 50ml bottle for like £6. The rest of their scents are similarly priced and pretty damn good too from what I’ve tried do far.
Ha if I keep buying perfumes I really will be skint! I’ll have to check out the Arabic fragrances, make my money stretch a bit further!
I like making homemade bongs and water pipes specifically from reclaimed materials. I’m not strident about things, but it’s fair to say in a general sense that I need them to have $0.00 of material costs. I make “the best” in terms of performance, and people freak out when they use or see them. They are always a huge conversation piece, always creative, and I just give them away. People ask me all the time to make custom ones but I won’t. It’s free or nuthin’
I know people that still use water pipes I made for them 15 years ago! Sometimes they look a bit “trashy” but they’re crafted! And that’s the way I like em!
Remember when Homer Simpson made that misbegotten lump of shit called VunderBaat or something? I feel him man
As a long time, daily bong smoker you have my attention, got any pictures of your creations?
I have made a few in my time with varying degrees of success but I’m intrigued as to what variables you consider and what “best performance” looks like to you?
I can only show you the two I have left, because I give them away constantly. That’s part of the whole “must be recycled” thing… after this comment I’ll come back with some pictures just give me a moment…
In 20+ years of stoner engineering, I feel the most important thing is to keep the cloud chamber much, much, much, much smaller than you’d think.
We often see these huge “frat boy bongs” as I call them with huge bases and like 40cm tall throats. That’s an absolutely insane amount of wind to have to suck before you can even get the hit. Our lung capacity is limited, even moreso when we abuse them regularly with smoking. A hit from a bong is totally “broken” if the user has to stop, exhale to open lung space and keep going. That’s a fail.
The more time smoke has to sit around in or pass-through parts of a vessel that are colder than the smoke itself, you’re going to get a shitload of condensation. All that resin you see caked allll over your bong is evidence of excess condensation and reveals product being wasted. And that makes the hit wayyyy harsher too.
So the number one thing which runs counter to what people expect, is that “bong power” comes from keeping the vessel small, limiting the filtration, and ensuring the path from the smoke chamber to your lungs is a short as possible. When I say limit the filtration, passing the smoke bubbles through a few inches of water is sufficient, more than that just robs the smoke of its THC and defeats the point.
My homemade ones hit so hard people are blown away. It’s kinda crazy when you learn how to make them hit harder… the best one I ever made was made in a 250ml mason jar - it was tiny but hit like a TANK. Plus once you master the art, you discover you now need half the weed… not because it becomes “stronger” but now you find you’re smoking it at double the efficiency.
The other thing is NOT to select a vessel that is narrow on the bottom and widens as it gets to the top. There are some “fancy” bottles like from Crown Royal and such that just don’t work properly. There is something about fluid dynamics and how turbulence flows at boundaries… I don’t fully understand the hows/whys but I know the vessel needs to taper smaller. (The part with the water needs to be the big part of the vessel)
edit: Here are pics of the 2 I’ve still got. The one in the Crown Royal bottle is neat and it delivers good hits but my neighbor fucked up the bowl (and my cutting bit!) when I was teaching him how to cut glass. Also I’m going to throw this one away (keep the components just chuck the bottle) as it’s incorrect shape. I just wanted to play on this one because I found some discarded paint markers. The skull jar was given to me by the same alcoholic neighbor that wrecked the bowl and my cutting bit, and I’m just carving a nice custom tiny glass bowl for it now. The pieces on it were actually repurposed from the Mason Jar one I mentioned earlier.
Pics all out of order because I’m feeling lazy RN
Cheers for the detailed reply.
Although I haven’t probably made as many as you have in my life I couldn’t agree more with a lot of what you are saying particularly the size thing. So many people get these massive bongs that are just unwieldly to smoke and require such a huge amount of lung capacity to try and smoke.
I have found for me personally something around 30cm tall is my perfect size with a reasonable size chamber. I want to be able to comfortably rip the enitre hit without running out of capacity but to be getting close to my limit by the end of the rip so that it is a proper full lung full.
There is definitely a sweet spot for water too as too little makes it disgusting, hot and harsh to smoke too.
Ive never tried making or smoking something wider at the top however so that is good to know xD
Cheers for sharing your thoughts man.
Will look forward to some pictures, have a good one!
Thanks man! Pics are up and I’m game to share and compare! I love learning what other peeople do
my hobby is collecting hobbies
if I could have a special interest for more than a week at a time I bet I’d be good at it …
I’m not sure about that, I have a lot of hobbies which I have for years like brewing beer, drying meat, making sausages, playing bass in a band, programming, and I’m not really good at any of them.
I think what defines a special interest over a hobby is that you’re good at it.
Been really looking at playing bass again …
I want to say selfhosting but that seems not so special on Lemmy. If I can host it myself and it’s FOSS I do it.
Special to you even if not to others.
