Whatever you want. Find something that brings you joy and try to do more of that. If it’s important to you to leave a legacy, try to connect to others and be in their lives. Try to make good, meaningful changes to the world, even if they’re small. Our existences are only so long, and worth enjoying.

I’ve been extremely impressed with the longevity and all around toughness of my Dell Precision. I think it’s gotta be 12 years old now, it weighs a ton, been dropped multiple times, and while I replaced its disk and memory at some point it has never suffered a hardware failure. The thing is a tank, I love it.

I’m excited to see the progress of 3d printers becoming more user friendly, reliable and inexpensive. I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of consumer printing and there are so many types of materials to print with at higher and higher details with less troubleshooting needed. I’m thinking I’ll finally jump in this year but I’ve had very little time for hobbies lately.

I can’t remember which was first but it would have been Number Munchers on PC or Asteroids on the Vectrex, an obscure console from the 80s.

Ranch dressing, or a mix of half ranch dressing and half ketchup I call “krantchup”. Specifically Marie’s ranch mixed with Primitive Kitchen ketchup is so good on fries.

When dealing with upholstery, the materials are much thicker than your average entry point sewing machine will be able to handle. The feet might not be able to feed the heavy material through, and some machines will be physically unable to feed your material under the needle where seams meet. In most sewing projects there may be four or even six layers of material at some points where seams meet or need to be rolled over, which would require more space between the foot and plate than most machines could handle. So if your principle interest in sewing is upholstery, you will probably have to find a machine explicitly made for that task and it won’t be cheap.

My two year old has rotating favorite colors. He knows our favorite colors and he will bring us objects that are those colors, and then we ask what his favorite color is. He’ll pick out a marker or point to something or say a color. It changes every few days. Today was “lello”, a few days ago it was “bu”. He’s probably been interested in colorful objects (favoring something in primary colors vs pastels or neutrals) since about 5 months. So at least this kid has been interested in color almost from the beginning.

How about The Romans in Their Decadence? (Thomas Couture)

I’ve been getting into having a pdf of the various manuals for things around the house on my phone. I recently consulted the manuals for my fridge, a new dehumidifier and the lawn mower and it was pretty awesome not having to find and dig out a paper booklet each time. My phone is on me all the time plus I can get rid of the paper copies.

Yes, the first one is goofy but it did the whole “what would an actually average person do with superhero powers” shtick before it was cool, and managed to make it funny and pretty sweet too.

Maybe I should give buckwheat a try, or shredded latex. I’m probably due for a change but lately I haven’t been able to afford any sleep disruption.

Most of mine came from a vendor called Pure Beech that was exclusive to Bed, Bath and Beyond. They are the 100% modal sateen that seems to have been a consumer favorite that doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. I have another set from Bedsure in their 100% bamboo that has a similar feel though.

I use down feather pillows, they are easily customizable but they can go “flat” and hard in the middle of the night. Putting your head down on a freshly fluffed one is utterly sublime, though.

I have fallen in love with bamboo rayon pillowcases, (aka modal, aka tencel, aka lyocell). They can be extremely soft and smooth like silk but are much hardier, so you can wash them like normal laundry.

I’ll give you that it’s been longer than I realized since the base game came out, however, Beyond Earth came out 10 years ago (2014) and Alpha Centauri was 25 years ago.

They need me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That’s ok. I like to play music but guitar just isn’t that fun for me either. I have trouble remembering fingering and chords and it’s hard on my squishy delicate nerd fingers. The musical instruments I’ve been able to keep with and practice I did so because I just liked messing with them and making nice sounds. Did you make this post hoping people would encourage you to keep at it? You don’t have to keep at it if it’s not fun, you can sell the guitars to some local aspiring musician. What I would recommend is trying out some other instruments, maybe at a music store. Something drove you to try out guitar, maybe that creative spark just needs a piano, or a glockenspiel, or a zither or something else instead. Just… try before you buy next time.

You can achieve the same thing with a metal spoon dipped in hot water, like after stirring a fresh cup of tea. It should be hot enough to hurt but not to burn/damage your skin. I’ve been doing this trick for ages and it works every time :)

I went grocery shopping and realized the music was all stuff I liked and recognized. I even knew the words 😭

The last few times I’ve found music I like via a method that was repeatable was searching through tags on Bandcamp. If I was listening to something I liked, I could look at the tags (electro, downtempo, big band etc) and click a few of those to find similar music. As far as a filter for quality, the number of followers for a page might be a decent metric because the genres are extremely precise and niche, and most of the biggest artists don’t self publish. There’s some amazing stuff on there to be found.

Janelle Monae is fantastic, an all around great creative person. She’s been getting recognition for her acting at least.