Digital painting and drawing. I'm already not bad at that, but I want my skills to be semi-professional at least. I have a very vivid imagination, and I want to be able to recreate the concept I see in my mind.
Computer science foundation. Right now, I'm at the stage that I know enough to explain them in layman terms, but not enough to actually participate in an active discussion or projects that rely heavily on academic knowledge. Stuff like compilers and interpreters, computer architecture, database systems, distributed systems, and OS architecture.
Another item on my list is reflecting more about philosophical and psychological matters (I read more fiction books than non-fiction ones at a ratio of 25:1, the only bibliography I've read was about George Lucas).
I want to get some basic woodworking skills together. I can do simple household plumbing, and I'm not going anywhere near electricity or roofing, but I would love to be able to patch up that corner of the staircase and have it look decent.
It sounds like you are trying to filter out unsafe hobbies?
Electricity can be done carefully and safely - just know your limits. I'd recommend at least getting comfy replacing outlets and switches. If you want to go one step further, light fixtures are also not too bad. Basically, anything where you just disconnect one widget from between two wires, and replace it with a different widget is fair game for most people. I call someone if I need new wires run or need to touch the main panels, though.
Likewise, woodworking is not as safe as most people think. Saws can bite you, as can drills, routers, etc... even rough edges on wood, or flying chunks of wood when you are teaching your 14 year old son to build a workbench and he just stands up a piece of wood next to your head and starts up a hand-held belt sander on it without clamping it.
The point being that tools that use electricity can be just as dangerous as the wires that carry the current, so plan accordingly.
I had my hand sucked into a router over the summer. I was really lucky, and now I understand what went wrong (it was a conventional cut, but I relaxed my hold and the bit pulled it into a climb cut. The wood got wedged between the bit and a fence and exploded, pulling my left middle finger in in the process). I'm as healed as I'll ever be and my finger looks normal, but I have no feeling in it, and effectively no fingerprint. That was a fun ER visit.
You might want to look up carpentry, instead of woodworking. They're actually pretty different in skills and approach.
It's like, with woodworking, step one is often "make everything perfectly square". In carpentry, nothing will ever be square. So you just have pretty different problems to solve
Man I would love to really get into either, but I have a 9-6 in the Bay Area and the one "workshop" weekend class I took was about tool use. It's really difficult to get into anything in a serious way, but any tips about somewhere in the Bay that really gets you into "carpentry" or into "woodworking" on weekends would be excellent!
In construction contracting, an 1/8-1/4" tolerance is sufficient depending on the scale involved. With fine joinery, I typically find myself in the 1/32-1/16" range.
How to use a Mac. I've always been on Windows and used Linux VMs or WSL. I think it's time to take the plunge though.
Just got one recently. The difference between keyboard combos for text selection and navigation, and window switching is annoying so far, but I'm confident I'll get used to it.
Tell me about it, man… guess where the „@„ sign on the German keyboard is? On „q“. Guess how often I’m closing applications when I want to type an „@„ haha. Outside of that I think it got a lot better though.
Classical double bass bowing technique - I'm looking to diversify from primarily being a jazz player due to scarcity of jazz gigs. I'm now actively looking for a teacher to start asap in the New Year.
I want to learn some low-level programming and hardware stuff, however, I don't really know where to start - sure, I can order an arduino with some kit, but I don't know much about electrical engineering, so making anything harder when a blinking LED will be a challenge.
I’ll finally dig into frontend frameworks like react. I’m an old fart (started as C dev) and assumed it was a fad years ago - even thought no JavaScript was the future.
Manually spin up and manage a meaningful local Spark cluster (say at least 1 master node with 8+GB and 3 worker nodes with 4+GB memory), build a data pipeline (don't care to much about the analytic things, I'm more into parsing tons of JSONs) and parse a meaningful number of JSONs (say 10GB at least) and optimize the parsing algorithm.
Low level computing. I purchased a kit and prepared to register a coursera embedded class. I also want to learn Windows system programming especially those related to Malware analysis (How does VM in OS work? What does a process contain? How to hijack a process? How to write shellcodes? These kinds of things).
Cold war politics and military-intelligence history. I got attracted to this field years ago after watching Godfather 3 and searched a bit about the background story. I know a few buzzwords but don't really have the $$, language capacity and time to drill deeper.
Mainframe. I didn't manage to register the IBM event this year, so it has to wait until 2022.
It's fun but very difficult. I never managed to do anything very useful but I would recommend it. Dealing with user interfaces in VR/AR makes web development feel a lot easier.
I'm taking classes to be an EMT. I've taken BLS, but twice I've been in situations where I've felt completely helpless while someone is injured, and I want a set of skills where I can do something while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
I want to get better at playing music with other people. I've played a little guitar with friends, and want to be better at accompanying them. Also, I got a harmonica, for times I'm not able to carry a guitar.
My iPad Mini got me to draw again. I want to get good at it. It's a relaxing hobby that forces you to pay attention to your subject.
I want to improve my German. I made a lot of progress in 2020. It emboldened me to be more extroverted, and to try things that were once out of reach due to the language barrier. I'll keep going.
I want to become more handy. I realised now that volunteering for a halfway house might be an excellent way to do it. I don't want to just be good with computers.
Not sure if it counts as a skill but I want to be able to run a half marathon. To word it towards the question, I want to pick up the skill of distance running
I did it early this year, finished on April 15th. I was not an avid runner by any means, onlyed picked up running around Sept 2020, started from daily walking only. You can absolutely do that, and it will feel awesome after you achieved it
You need a two pronged attack: Make more, spend less. Check out Dave Ramsey if you haven't already.
Rome wasn't built in a day, start very small, and tell yourself your doing GREAT every time you make or save a few extra dollars, even if it's just a few cents.
Write down your "WHY". Remind yourself multiple times throughout the day why you want more money.
Remember: Money can be made or spent, Time can only be spent.
You only get to ask once a year, and they can deny it to you for any number of reasons. Bad economy, hiring freeze yada yada.
In the end you often work really hard for a disproportionately small payoff. I've seen many people waste precious time chasing unsatisfying promotions.
C++. I've dabbled in C and old C++ since I've started programming, but I've never really felt like I learnt the language. I'm thinking of going though Meyers' most recent ed. of Effective Modern C++.
The internet is always there to sidetrack you once you pick a direction. Learn Java. Build something. Kotlin will always be there and you will have a greater appreciation for it.
uh, I love Rails, and I get even paid to code with it :) :)
and so many says it's even better then Rails.
I do really wish to write code that is used by millions (super fast and easily scalable) and not just a small teams of engineers (I write mainly backends for my clients/contracts)
Then it is something new: I am so glad I moved to Rails many years ago (10), and now it's the first time I'm tented .... :)
Digital painting and drawing. I'm already not bad at that, but I want my skills to be semi-professional at least. I have a very vivid imagination, and I want to be able to recreate the concept I see in my mind.
Computer science foundation. Right now, I'm at the stage that I know enough to explain them in layman terms, but not enough to actually participate in an active discussion or projects that rely heavily on academic knowledge. Stuff like compilers and interpreters, computer architecture, database systems, distributed systems, and OS architecture.
Another item on my list is reflecting more about philosophical and psychological matters (I read more fiction books than non-fiction ones at a ratio of 25:1, the only bibliography I've read was about George Lucas).