What are you passionate about at the moment?

This post caught my attention because recently I met a woman I really admire. She dropped out of her computer engineering class, took a vow of celibacy and poverty and became a missionary with a Catholic sect.

The reason I admire her isn't that. What caught my attention about her is that she has a sense of purpose. She has a purpose in life and has devoted her life to it.

I used to have one. My goal was to make the legal system cheaper and more accessible. And I devoted the last decade of my life to that. Now that's fallen apart and I'm a little lost and it hurts me alot.

I hope I'll find a purpose soon. That's what I'm passionate about right now, finding a new purpose or a new way to accomplish my past purpose.

There is a new show on HBO called Scavengers Reign, and it's become my favorite scifi story ever. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21056886/

It's kinda like watching Planet Earth about another ecosystem, with a strong focus on judgment-free ecology (ie there isn't good and evil, just different flora and fauna and otherwise interacting both with their normal food webs and with human outsiders).

It really tickles the environmental science geek in me. There's such a wonderful assortment of predators, prey, symbiotes, diseases, treatments, and thoughtful little touches everywhere. Beautiful art too.

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That aside, I can't stop thinking about how much fun it is to throw people off cliffs in Baldur's Gate 3. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561199138390397/recomm...

Simple pleasures, man.

Powerlifting.

Solitary and meditative if you want it to be; social and uplifting if you don't.

It's healthy in a variety of ways (including bone density; physical activity; higher BMR and glucose metabolism; improved cardiovascular function). Also being strong is useful surprisingly often.

Unlike many things in life, your progress is almost entirely dependent on your consistency and the effort invested, with the exception of (hopefully) temporary setbacks like injury. Hitting personal records and milestones feels particularly good because you know you've earned it. It's hard! But it's also not so hard that I'm liable to get discouraged.

Lots of people prefer bodybuilding style training, but there's something magic about the barbell for me. Olympic lifts are also a lot of fun, but they're more technical and you need more gear and space.

Also it's much easier to quantify your strength progress (I have a literal spreadsheet), and it feels less vain than focusing on looks (not that it isn't a significant bonus).

Dunno. Feels good. I'm gonna keep at it. Two thumbs up.

Mental health. I recently passed out in public and had to finally admit to myself that I’m severely burnt out. I had ignored the signs and mentally written off the concept of burnout as a bit of a wishy-washy mostly “emotional” concept and not as the very real psychological AND physiological condition that doesn’t just go away if you get a good nights sleep and a day off. It was emotional to actually read up on it and realize my disillusionment with work, deteriorating relationships and steady decline in my ability to carry out daily tasks weren’t signs of a personal lack of interest or effort, but an inevitability resulting from the position I had put myself in.

Learning about my own mind and how to tame it.

I've started realizing that I don't have much control over the external world, people or events, and only my perception of it can keep me sane or fix my mental issues.

This has effectively forced me to see my relationship with my devices with more scrutiny. I've repeatedly found that digital consumption, whether it is infotainment, knowledge, or mindless Reels or Shorts, has always led me to a more depressed and sad state.

A recent trip in the mountains without any cell reception even further confirmed this hypothesis for me personally.

I try to leave my devices and social media for longer durations, but the eventual FOMO and withdrawals that kick in always bring me back to square one of agony.

Events around a romantic interest recently also made me to rethink on how to effectively control emotions and feelings. The other person can do nothing wrong, but my mind can still feel tormented by their simple actions and events that unfold.

Unless I can achieve some sort of mental and emotional equanimity, I feel all my pursuits of learning and career would still not alleviate me from this joyless state of life.

Running.

I got the bug about 12 weeks ago. I had never ran longer than 1.5 miles continuously 12 weeks ago. Now I’m planning my next Sundays long run. 12.5ish miles.

Im a heavy guy. My heaviest was 270, but I’m down to 220 now. I hated running my entire life. But I finally figured out how to run pain free and now it’s the thing I look forward to everyday.

It’s also tremendously rewarding to see such rapid improvement. When I first started I ran a 38 minute 5k, and 10 weeks later I ran a 25:44. I’ve almost improved my 1mi time from 8:30 to 6:30. Signed up for a marathon a couple weeks ago and gave myself 6 months to train.

Sub 4:30, here we come

Small city council politics :( there's a lot of resistance against a new temporary housing project for Ukrainian refugees with many legit concerns, and some NIMBY, but also xenophobia and racism.

It's tough but we've been able to start a YIMBY group and encouraging people and organisations to make public comments or send letters of support. A good few didn't dare because they feared reactions, and rightfully so, because some who did (including me) ended up on the receiving end of some bullshit. All bark and no bite - for now - but not great for democracy.

Games. I've been forcing myself into productivity for too long because that is the thing to do. I recently built a gaming pc, picked some jrpgs, and I'm having a blast. There are entire franchises and worlds for the exploring. There are amazing rich stories and history and beautiful soundtracks that I'm living through right now. My wishlist grows by the day as I discover new tales.

Low-plastic living.

I read a book by the world's first zero-waste restaurant, Silo. The book got me thinking about how different our lives would be if oil were expensive. "Pretend oil is really expensive" is a good proxy for doing things that are "eco-friendly." Since reading the book, I've tried to eliminate single-use plastic from most of my life. It's incredibly hard. Everything from my socks to my vegetable packaging to my dog's toys to my floor is made of plastic.

I've slowly been adjusting my habits - such as checking whether clothing is natural or oil-based, buying food mostly at the farmers market, and eating in instead of takeaway. These little change have decreased my carbon footprint immensely.

I enjoy playing this game of "pretend oil is expensive" even though it's not because it's revealing problems we will need to tackle as a society. At some point we will run out of oil. When that happens, everything will be impacted. Travel, food delivery, and most of all healthcare.

The following open research problem. Given an undirected graph G with two vertices s and t, the task is to determine whether there is an undirected path connecting s and t which is simple (no repeated vertices) and has length divisible by 3.

It is not known whether this problem is NP-hard, or whether it can be solved in polynomial time; apparently the question is open since the early 90s.

(The problem is also open for paths of length p mod q for any fixed p and q (fixed means they are constants, and are not given as input), whenever q>2. The problem is known to be in PTIME for 0 mod 2 and 1 mod 2, and to be NP-hard when the graph is directed. Pointers to related work here: https://gitlab.com/a3nm/modpath)

Not drinking. I only drank at weekends. But pretty much every weekend for 25 + years, this is totally normal from where I'm from.

I read the book alcohol explained https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alcohol-Explained-William-Porter-eb...

Listened to the Huberman podcast about alcohol.

And realised I don't want to drink anymore.

It's really strange, I used to struggle having a single weekend with no booze. Now I actively just don't want to. I look around me and see people boozing and I think it's insane.

I'm 8 weeks in. I doubt I'll drink again. I really regret not realising much earlier in life how shit drinking actually is

Math as prep for 3d game programming. I've been out of school a long time, and when I was there I didn't even get to the pre-calculus level.

This year I've churned through all the introductory level texts from Art Of Problem Solving. Yes, they're written for high schoolers and you need to have some humility to admit you might be missing or have forgotten some fundamentals, but the lesson strucutre really appeals to me. It's the only series I've found that respects the learner and really builds up knowledge one piece at a time.

Before I start the intermediate texts and the calculus book, I've taken a detour to "Linear Algebra: Theory, Intuition, Code" and it's sticking a lot better now than previous attempts on the subject. So that gives me some confidence.

Print media -- seriously. There are vanishingly few types of paper-based products left besides mass-market paperbacks and a handful of soulless conglomerate-owned magazines that may disappear tomorrow.

Just like there are small farming collectives out there, I'd love for there to be micro-magazines and short stories on paper, made cheaply and distributed to small mailing lists with a single stamp (not an email newsletter!). PDF versions available for long-distance readers.

Something, anything to counter the overwhelm of ad and email popup-ridden "content blogs" and walled garden platforms sucking everything into their in-house LLMs.

Moving golf simulation into the cloud [0].

Golf is one of the only sports that can be realistically simulated indoors.

Golf is also one of the only sports where even severe lag has no effect on the accuracy of the play - just the viewing experience. Unlike FPS games in the cloud which become unplayable with even modest lag.

The golf simulation technology landscape today is pre-cloud. People running their own gaming computers with complex lash ups of open source software to connect their launch monitors. All pretty prohibitive to the stereotypical older tech-averse golf player.

[0] https://golfsimcloud.com

I'm obsessed with interfaces at the moment.

How do humans interface with computers and data, from control to visual feedback.

How humans interface with music, perform it, read it, store it. How do birds interface with tones and rhythm?

How software interfaces with other software and hardware.

How humans interface with the world via symbols. I've been reading about Semiotics a bit, and find the field fascinating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics?wprov=sfla1

Birdsong as code: https://youtu.be/OCYU0LtqRH0?si=4DwOKC3oZ6vE-w-y

Text rendering / UI on minimal hardware and finding more time for ML-family languages.

A few months ago, an iced-rs maintainer[1] recommended I try Elm. So far, this has lead to:

1. A an MVP[2] of a curses[3]-like library for CHIP-8 derivatives (https://github.com/pushfoo/octo-termlib)

2. A growing interest in language design

3. An ongoing re-evaluation of my software development worldview

[1] 13r0ck / Brock on GitHub (https://github.com/13r0ck). Hire him if you get the chance. He has a rare blend of know-how, mentorship, and community management skills.

[2] Unsolved issues with octo-termlib:

1. Finding a license friendly toward beginners editing pre-made template assembly files (Maybe zlib + acknowledgement?)

2. Elegant & efficient syntax for ending screen X / Y parsing before all digits are used

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)

I am passionate about AI in education.

Economies die because of underutilized or wasted resources.

Our educations system is horrible at wasting everyone's time right now. Source: I've been teaching since the 1990's and learning in school since the late 1970's or 1980.

AI can fix most of that.

Example: It has been many years since I looked a C code and I never really understood much about the Linux Kernel, even back when I tried to contribute to it in the 1990's. Yesterday I started chatting with ChatGPT on how I could understand the code in the Linux Kernel. I made some progress towards a previously inscrutable goal.

I am teaching my students how to use AI to learn anything they need to know.

Quit my job earlier this year to start an indie game studio and a little bit of contributions to misc open-source projects.

A fair balance of relax time but also enjoying the time off. There is so much I want to do and get excited for, but I still suffer a lot of procrastination related problems or else I feel like I could have done a tremendous amount more.

I feel like there is lifetimes of things I get excited about and want to do, but spend so little time doing them. :( It sucks

Love, life, people and planet.

When I was young I spent a lot of time blinded by rappers with their spinning wheels and crowds of hangers-on which drastically lead me astray — being from a single parented poverty stricken family in the London it wasn’t exactly hard.

Since then I have been through so many different stages to get to the point of contentment with whatever life throws my way.

Within this contentment I have found that the things I truly care about are (as cliché as it sounds) not the things which can be bought but the things which connect me to other beings.

The realisation and acceptance of the inevitable end of life has made me realise that we will all cease to exist within a generation, our memory will cease within two, our entire footprint within three.

From this I found my passion was not buying things to distract me nor was my desire to be remembered long after I pass. It is to enjoy the now, make others feel the love I never felt until I reached my mid 30s, lift people out of bad places where possible and do my utmost to appreciate this breathtakingly beautiful planet we call home.

Cheesy, I know

I've been collecting data from my phone and some different "sensors" (food delivery orders, bank payments, Activity Watch statistics, I'm adding a video camera soon. For phone about every sensor I have in my phone like ambient light, wifi APs, GPS, rotation, steps, when it was last unlocked, what app is in use, what app / artist is playing media etc.) and I'm using ML to predict activities I'm currently doing. I guess the end goal is to automate my diary writing to GPT as a joke..

Started as a small project on wanting to learn C# better and being interested about how much sensors collect information about us and how we could analyze that, but it really got out of hand. I've been working on it for a ~month (with some breaks), sometimes all day, built a lot of tooling (like webassembly & android app to tag current activities for ML training data) and analysis things for it and am nearing a burnout point :P but been fun and I've definitely learned a lot about C# and ML.

Making an album.

It’s been a journey. For about a year I was trying to do it all by myself.

Then one former band mate moved back, another reached out and we reunited to make new music.

This is gonna sound corny, but after that first time we got back together to jam, later that night I was in tears because it playing with them again was such a large emotional release for me.

Now we’re in a great place, we all want the same thing. We’re all in on making new music, no one is trying to make this a career or go on tour. It has to be fun, that’s number one.

Currently have some free time between jobs to explore what actually makes me passionate, so threads like this are really useful to get inspired!

Been starting various projects to quickly figure out what I like and don’t like. Realized that I miss working on highly technical projects after working on consumer apps for a couple of years. So as a result been revamping my resume and planning my next steps in my software engineering career. There are some really cool companies out there in the space of databases and distributed systems.

As part of scouting for jobs built some little tools with help of LLMs to tailor my resume to job positions.

Also, rediscovered that I enjoy solving little algorithm problems after practicing with LeetCode. ChatGPT makes as if I have my own tutor to explain and hint when necessary, reminded me of university and study groups.

Solving men's issues, particularly friendship for middle aged men, developing hobbies outside the purview of providership, infrastructure and tools for fighting addiction of all kinds and mental fitness. I think a lot about what a modern day men's magazine would look like, and what sort of platforms or tools could exist in service of men's emotional well being.

Learning to use Vim! I've tried three times before in the past 10 years. This is the first time it actually clicked. It's the first time I've tried Neovim. It's awesome and I feel like I'm playing a game with myself while working. I thought it would take much longer to get to the speed I'm at now. I've been using Vim exclusively for a month.

Board game design, but specifically solo and 2-player co-op games that have a small footprint, small board states, and are easy to play.

I've been looking for offline hobbies and recently got into solo board gaming, on top of playing games with my wife a couple of times a month. I work in gamesdev and I want to retain a creative outlet in the direction of gaming, because I just really enjoy it, but I also want to stop spending my entire life in front of a screen. So far it's been a lot of fun, I'm going to be printing play test cards later this week to start dialing in my first game.

If it goes well I plan to release it as a cheap print and play (PnP), and if it turns out to be boring I'll release it as a free PnP.

Preserving family moments with a 35mm film camera and the attachment an analog photograph engenders vs. digital.

After seeing a friend with young kids post candid photos of his family for the last few years, I decided to give it a try. Purchased a Retina IIIc rangefinder camera (from the 1950s, preceded SLRs) and it's one of the most amazing purely mechanical, consumer-focused engineered products I've held in my hands. Got a scanner, successfully booted the Nikon Scan abandonware on a virtualized Windows XP environment, and saw my first roll of photos appear last weekend. Wife and extended family absolutely loved it. I've reviewed those 36 photos (standard roll length) more in the past week than the 1,000 family photos of the past 2 years on my cell phone. Excited for more.

I’ve been reading up on diy speakers, with the eventual goal to make an excellent sounding pair myself.

Ever heard a pair of speakers that didn’t sound like hearing a recording of an instrument, but rather hearing the instrument itself? Me neither, but it’s apparently possible.

The DIY speaker/audio hobby is highly specific but also fortunately has a lot of informative available online. I’d recommend diyaudio.com and partsexpressforums for anyone interested, I have more resources if curious.

Being a dad - Preparing for the Google Cloud Associate exam (5 YEO front-end developer trying to get out of my bubble) - Fixing my posture using a daily routine - Really fine-tuning our budget, researching the stores that have better prices for items we frequently buy, having a better grip on upcoming expenses, figuring out what things we need that we can buy used, and most importantly, getting the most out of the amount we can spend monthly!

There are several topics that I recently got more into:

- The utility of randomness: returning from a machine learning conference in Italy where I had a pretty random (if you do not believe in fate) conversation with a stranger, where suddenly more people stood around and joined in. It basically started with me commenting on one poster "Isn't it amazing how useful randomness is, given there is no pattern/structure in a random sequence, and it costs me nothing to make up?" What I meant is how can something as arbitrary still be useful. Suddenly we started collecting examples: randomized algorthms like the random walker model behind PageRank, Random Forests in machine learning, random numbers for perfect encryption (one time pad), Pentti Kanerva's "Hyperdimensional Computing: An Introduction to Computing in Distributed Representation with High-Dimensional Random Vectors" (thanks to an anonymous Finnish bystander, for I could not recall Kanerva's name at the time) etc. Today, I found a book that studies how random people's travel decisions are: Ennio Cascetta (2009) Random Utility Theory, Heidelberg: Springer.

- hypergraphs: graphs have been very useful representations for so many things in work and life, but they are only for expressing dyadic relations between nodes, whereas their generalizations, hypergraphs can express n-ary relations between nodes.

- how to bring people back to a culture of books & libraries: I collect books and I read a lot. As I teach/lecture also, I often ask my students about their reading habits, and find it shocking that many have never been to a library, and most do not read books. I would like to contribute to changing that (seems harder than finding out whether P = NP?).

I just downloaded Ableton Live and it’s been a blast playing with it. Similarly, I finally understand how modular synths work and it’s basically just functional programming with sound. I haven’t bought any modulars yet but I’m really looking forward to getting into it in the new year. Music production is very cool and I can’t wait to learn more.

Parenting. I’m spending a lot of time thinking about how to prepare my kid to grow up around the internet, smartphones, and AI. Our technology often takes an indifferent or even cynical view of children, and I can’t understand why there aren’t better tools available (e.g. smartphone designs) that put their developmental needs ahead of the need to exploit them for immediate profit.

Learning Korean to better communicate with my GFs family and take advantage of _finally_ having real motivation to learn another language.

I'm really enjoying having a different type of challenge than I'm used to. Mostly approaching it with Duolingo and Anki vocab cards with moderate success so far. We both have our own careers, kids, various responsibilities...so I don't get much time to practice with her. And practicing memorization at the end of a long day is tough, so I'd love to hear any tips you all may have to improve my memorization techniques and mnemonics.

Bicycles. They are so radically inexpensive to acquire & service. Why did I ever stop riding at 18?

Obsessed with quite a few things right now:

• diving into plant law; writing a series on plants and property

• research clamping mechanisms and jigs for woodworking with handtools

• sadly smitten with all the genai advancements

• plotting multiple "chaos for social good" projects

• trying to figure out therapists can be so attuned to feelings while staying neutral

• promoting tiny blogs and the "small web": https://blogs.hn

This is a great thread! So many interesting topics. Awesome to see.

For me, at the moment, it is internet governance. Kinda like getting involved in local city council politics, but at internet scale. There are so many ways to get involved it is confusing... and it often seems so abstract for an everyday dev, especially if you are just a frontender like me. I have been interested in governance for a while, but had my first participation opportunity at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto last month, and have been slowly blogging some of my learnings:

https://micro.chadkohalyk.com/2023/10/30/attending-the-inter...

It has motivated me to interact more with the IETF and W3Cs. Like local politics, this stuff actually is important... even if the entire community does not participate.

Guitar, and as a subset of that, music theory and composition. It started as a something to get me through the first pandemic winter in Minnesota in 2020, never having held a guitar before, and it turned out to be something I've been completely obsessed with for more than three years now. I have played guitar literally almost every day since I started. I play for about a half hour every day before I head out to catch the bus, and very often play for another hour or two in the evening.

My main focus for the past two years has been solo fingerstyle guitar, especially classical. The two full pieces I've learned so far are "The Water Is Wide" arranged by Yenne Lee[1] and "Home" by Andrew York[2]. I've almost finished memorizing "Tango Azul" by Nemanja Bogunovic[3], and I'm working on learning "Autumn Leaves" also arranged by Yenne Lee[4], and "Blackwood Lullaby" by Justin Johnson[5]. And I've learned a bunch of short studies and pieces, a recent favorite being "Vals Frances" by Francis Kleynjans[6].

In addition to playing, I also attend classical concerts put on by the Minnesota Guitar Society[7] and do a little bit of volunteering for them, primarily editing full concert videos for their YouTube channel (which, sadly, are mostly taken down after a brief viewing due to contractual stuff).

[1] "The Water Is Wide" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bufc2HY9F2U

[2] "Home" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ajTcwJBbw4

[3] "Tango Azul" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDZgTsKrluE

[4] "Autumn Leaves" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxGT5z6d-GA

[5] "Blackwood Lullaby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC58eXL-MJY

[6] "Vals Frances" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSNmwn54vEI

[7] https://mnguitar.org/

Compiling and editing together my travel footage for my YouTube vlog. I've had the fortune to have traveled to 96 countries in my life so far, and have been posting a vlog for every country that I've visited (I'm making an attempt to go to every country)

I got hung up around country 55, feeling that I hadn't found my "editing voice" and have had difficulty finding the motivation over the last year to edit and post my most recent 41 countries worth of content. I want to say that part of it is because I'm overwhelmed with how much there is to go through? I also get in my head and have to consistently reassure myself that I'm ultimately editing this for my future self/family to watch, and that I shouldn't necessarily be optimizing for viewership (though passive income through travel vlogs would be nice.)

There's a definitive, "what's up brand gang, immranderson here!" blueprint that could be followed, but I have no interest in ever doing something like that.

The Brompton folding bicycle[1]. I have been obsessing over it to the point where I contacted the manufacturer because one of the product pictures had the wrong number of cables on it. The folding mechanism is an amazing piece of design, it not only collapses small but it also keeps the grubby tyres off the ground, keeps the chain and cogs inside the fold, can be left with the seat up to wheel around, or the handlebars up to wheel around - and bags mounted on the handlebars stay upright and usable. The the changes over the decades (it was lengthened and the fold joints thickened around 2004), the options (the telescopic seatpost goes higher than the extended seatpost and collapses smaller than it), the colours (the raw laquer editions have problems with rusting), the tweaks people do (leather strap to make the luggage release switch easier to get to, aftermarket 3D printed widgets to make the unfolding lock stay in place[2]), a table of all the available gear ratios... etc.

How they have kept the same frame shape and size and design, but vary the colour scheme in special editions making it more of a consumer product than a cyclist product - like Swatch watches used to be, and with the stylised logos. I could argue why it's a great product and why it's a bad product.

I have no idea why; I have no commute. I don't use much public transport. I already have a bike. I wouldn't fit well on one. I have no need of one. I've never ridden one, never seen one except in passing, but I'm obsessing over them recently for a couple of months. (Likely some avoidance / dream that $product will improve my life involved).

The Kwiggle[3] is a more interesting design, a standup bike that's even more portable.

[1] e.g. Everyday Cycling's video "What makes it SO SPECIAL" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6bmuJ98Zc8

[2] https://ezclamp.co.uk/

[3] https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/

Dating.

No, seriously.

As a life long loner/introvert with high anxiety, I kinda discovered recently (after a long marriage/divorce/several years of not dating) that dating is actually kind of amazing.

I never even knew this side of myself. I actually enjoy talking to random people about random stuff. Even if it doesn’t lead to a relationship, making any kind of connection with someone is deeply satisfying.

I kind of wonder why I didn’t do this for the last 40 years.

Anyways, if you’re like me, I really recommend pushing through your awkwardness and anxiety and just try to make connections with people. It’s one of the best things I’ve experienced.

I feel like I spent the prior 40 years denying myself of a basic human experience. I’m glad that’s over.

Learning about Information Theory.

It’s pushing me out of my comfort zone. For example, leading me to improve my math skills in order to understand some of the concepts and notations that are used in research papers. Also gives me some context into learning C, a language which I consider low-level as a web developer, and it’s been fun to have to think about things like memory management, along with other things I don’t generally need to consider. It gives me an appreciation for when I’m writing high level code like Elixir or JS, etc.

Compression, which I’d say is an application of information theory is just really interesting to learn about for some reason.

Violin for me! Been going at it for a bit more than 3 years and have just started learning one of the Bach Sonatas.

It feels great to have a direct output from effort put in. The combination of physical and concentrated mental effort leaves me feeling refreshed after a good practice.

Working through "Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms": https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/comput...

Finally found the trifecta of an engaging lecturer with recorded lectures, an excellent textbook, and a solid set of exercises.

I couldn't imagine applying the word passion to anything business or computer related, it's not now—nor has it ever been—the right word, but I'm definitely passionate about being in nature, among the mountains and birds, skateboarding, and doing challenging hikes with fun people.

Poverty abolition.

I just finished Poverty, By America. It's really moving and seemingly well-researched and honest.

I don't know if I'll stick with it. I don't have a good track record of sticking with social activism stuff. Deep-down in my bones I know however that poverty is wrong and really doesn't need to exist at the levels we have collectively accepted as "natural".

Waterfowl hunting and training my Labrador to hunt with me and retrieve my harvested game. The bond my pup and I have created in the past ~9mo training multiple times a day is incredible. I used to absolutely despise winters and now I can't wait for it to get cold, windy, and wet.

I have been captivated by all aspects of waterfowl, dog training, being in nature, finding public lands accessible to me and preparing the game for consumption - and it keeps me intrigued in some capacity throughout the year.

A Primer on Pontryagin's Principle in Optimal Control: Second Edition by I.M. Ross.

https://www.amazon.com/Primer-Pontryagins-Principle-Optimal-...

Explains optimal control theory and the pontryagin minimum principle from a geometrical perspective rather than the confusing derivation from calculus of variations that is more typical. Also explains it at an "Engineering" or applied math level rather than at a mathematical foundations level so the results are more usable.

[ I'd describe this book as the "Div, Grad Curl and All That" of Optimal Control Theory if that makes sense to you ]

Getting Ohio House Bill 14 passed and fathers rights in general.

Right now in the state of Ohio a father has 0 default rights to his own children, even AFTER paternity. Ohio is a "mothers rights" state meaning that be default the mother has 100% custody so it is always an uphill batter to get time with your kids if the mother doesnt want you to.

[1] https://www.sharedparenting.org/

Practicing bass guitar. I never played music as a child which makes learning as an adult ten times harder, but that won’t stop me, I see it more as a fun challenge hah. I started with piano during the pandemic, which I enjoyed, then that morphed into generally learning the full gamut of production with DAWs and whatnot. Bought a bass guitar in the summer and have been having a blast learning, I have practiced nearly every day that I am at home, and actually notice how much better I am getting. Also identifying areas to improve upon, and focus on getting my hands to do what my brain wants is a really good exercise, and a really good break from the ol’ enterprise software grind :)

I started skateboarding two years ago in my backyard and this year I started skating at my local skatepark. I'm all padded up for safety and even use hip pads. It's a very fun and cheap hobby. Seeing a lot of progression so it's very fun.

I’ve been teaching myself abstract algebra, which has been really great! I’ve also now gotten to the point in the book where I’d like to discuss with other people.

Passionate? Nothing, anymore. The last bunch of years has been a long, never-ending series of setbacks and knock-backs that have drained my emotional, professional, and financial resources in a relentless manner. Along the way I appear to have completely lost my passion and drive for everything. Some people are completely dependent on me, and if it wasn’t for them, I’d check out already - this ride is not fun anymore.

Archery. I got my first bow in 2019 to try bow hunting, but now I am mostly interested in it for target archery. In state competitions, I was on the podium in 3 of the 6 events last year. It’s not a huge field but it feels pretty good.

The other big thing this year is walking, it’s simple exercise that has helped me lose 30 pounds since July 1st.

Mead.

On my 5th batch and it's an awesome hobby. Very easy and inexpensive to get started, the process is slow-paced, but not glacial, not hard to follow, but with a depth to it if it's your thing ... and then you get to drink the result!

Computing.

I have been passionate about programming for a long while, figured it out at 14, slowly kept going upwards doing online courses, ended up doing CS in Uni at 19, did an industrial placement where I felt like I grew tremendously. At 22 it felt like my fuel has ran out, I had a terrible final year in Uni, Covid hit, I was terribly burnt out and I have not felt as passionate at my job since.

I'm just now slowly getting back into actually loving computing and delving deep into the things that I didn't have a chance to so far, like IoT projects, functional programming, compilers etc. I'm also really lucky to be working for a company and in a team where it's understood and accepted that we don't run at full capacity all the time, and given freedom to put as much as I want on my plate for a while.

Being Calm and Content with whatever I have.

I think, I feel, I am out of this rat race of fighting for that next promotion, learning that new language, earning more money, wanting that ${THING}. No, I am not a monk, nor do I want to become one, but I am passionate about how to be content and grateful for whatever I have; I am relatively at peace for a good while since I started to train & reinforce my brain to behave this way. Thanks to Almighty.

Elixir. The community is nice and welcoming.

Everyone is passionate about the project, you can feel the care that’s being poured into the ecosystem.

I'm reading a book about electricity markets. Modeling electricity prices using a mean-reverting model with "jumps", exotic derivatives, etc. Pretty exciting stuff. Though you need a million dollars in liquid net worth to trade with any ISO so it's a bit out of my league. Really interesting author too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Mack

Am working on some large scale authorship attribution stuff on the side and have an Arty A7 that I want to make do something besides flash purple LEDs but I have some health bullshit that's killing my motivation. But I'm working on it.

Crossword puzzles! They make very interesting combinatorial problems (both for solving and creating grids). I recently had a ton of fun writing a constraint programming model that generates grids, including the automatic placement of black squares (this was the main modeling challenge). This model is useful for creating grids using short word lists (which is the case for e.g. thematic grids).

A pair of Visual Pinball cabinets.

Even with an initial sloppy mockup I found the wife loved playing pinball. So I went all in and built a new gaming PC, bought a 120 Hz TV just for a stand-alone pinball cab build.

(Oh, and found that using the previous gaming PC and a few other things lying around I could also build a mini-pinball-cab — so I have that one coming together as well.)

a topic often seen on Hacker News - the Julia language

I find Python to be useful but excruciatingly verbose, particularly when you get to using NumPy and Pandas. I like the syntax of Fortran/MATLAB/GNU Octave so here's to hoping that Julia can take over some of this workload. I also use R extensively (and love it) for data analysis; glad to see Julia's capability in this space also.

I recently bought myself a copy of Ashley's Book of Knots, and been teaching myself... well... knotting.

In my ignorance, I used to see knowledge of knots as this complex, hard to learn thing, but one thing I've been learning is that the more common, practical, knots tend to be fairly easy to tie. There's just different knots for different purposes.

The decorative ones can get very complex, though.

2D and 3D animation. I've started with 3D and Blender and Unreal Engine, and following along with Youtube tutorials on the same. Still very much a hobbyist, haven't produced much that is worth showing, but am passionate about this space.

Embedded systems and electrical engineering. I knew close to nothing in either field and it is refreshing to learn a new field starting at the basics. Creating a practical, physical product is also very rewarding.

Building lo-fi synthesizers with Teensy or Arduino. They are becoming more like interactive sculptures than instruments now. The sound is important, but the visual aesthetic is just as interesting to me.

Home automation. I always had an Alexa and a couple of WiFi switches, but I just discovered the rabbit hole of Home Assistant, Zigbee devices, flashing devices to get rid of cloud capabilities and install your own firmware, and the whole ordeal. Haven't had this fun with tech in a while.

I've been competing in ultra-distance bike races since 2020. In April this year, I decided to take a break from work and see how well I could do if I dedicated one year to training. I chose the Race around the Netherlands in 2024, the race that started it all for me, as my goal race. Training takes up to 30 hours a week, so at time it's like a full time job, but I haven't felt so fulfilled in a long, long time. I definitely recommend it to anybody that has the opportunity.

My current passion is to maintain and fix cars. No modification because very little is allowed in my country and I keep the budget super tight.

I started about a year ago. Prior to starting I had never owned a car or done any sort of mechanic task. My first oil change was on a friend's car before I actually owned a car (getting to his place with a jack, jackstands and other tools in a rental mechanic bike was an experience in itself).

Getting into that hobby was a key factor in my battle with depression. While I've not recovered my pre-covid energy, I'm in a much better place.

Since then, I've done minor operations on 5 cars, and lots of things, including non-trivial operations (suspension overhaul, gearbox replacement) on the car I bought to be my "test dummy" (though it's by no means a beater, I bought it running and driving, it's just 20 years old with a fair mileage).

I would definitely recommend that hobby, especially if you already own a car and have a space to do it (living in an appartment, I had neither and still figured it out)

I also started a Youtube channel of filming myself doing those operations, but I'm not that passionate about it. I'm still on the fence of whether to stop or continue it. While I'm proud of it, it's a time sink and the few bad comments (it's the internet after all) leave a bitter taste.

Extremely passionate about classical guitar.

I played electric in high school and developed some chops in jazz band. Loved it, but like many others, dropped it completely in college. Years later, I moved to SF for a FAANG and had an impossible time developing a new friend group; I wanted to reignite my old love in a new style, so I filled the time with weekly lessons with a well-known teacher in the area.

Fast forward 8 years later, that hobby’s turned into an obsession, and I’m now playing at a fairly high level. Am studying privately with a conservatory professor (not SF), who’s trying to get me to join for a Master’s degree. I’m performing regularly at public events & retirement homes, streaming most of my practice sessions on Twitch/YouTube, posting progress clips to other socials, and even built my own metronome/practice journal app to track time & organize notes (mujoapp.com). I love it all dearly as a lifelong and infinitely-deep hobby.

All socials:

http://linktr.ee/jcpractices

Capricho Arabe by Francisco Tarrega:

https://youtu.be/l3203CvetCs?si=Zf4BmjsvWo3BGi15

Sales pitch for Mujo:

https://youtu.be/3zh-RehOuDg

I created a booktube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@NevsBookChannel

I'd been writing reviews on Goodreads for years so it was kind of a logical next step. Also have found it interesting to learn how to edit videos and improve my confidence in speaking.

PS there is a review of Gerald Weinberg's "Are Your Lights On?" in there, so it's tangentially related to coding. Currently reading Code Complete.

Drawing at least 30min every day using Line of Action[1]. It’s relaxing and fun to see improvements over time.

I’m also writing my own tools in Elixir for playing around with LLMs. Currently exploring ways to efficiently chunk documents/code/webpages so that I can create embeddings for them.

[1] https://line-of-action.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing

Woodworking and designing furniture. Just this weekend I finally set up my home workshop after almost a decade of dreaming about it (and collecting things I thought I might need). Just spent two hours drawing basic layouts for some wardrobes, and looking at beautiful midcentury, Scandinavian, and Japanese items online. Any good resources (for technical or aesthetics) are very much welcome - I’m looking to invest in my knowledge now I can put it to use.

I'm gonna start myself with something I got into again recently. I got back into game development as a hobby a couple of weeks ago (sadly just after Ludum Dare ended) and have since been learning Godot to make the switch away from Unity permanently. So far its ease of use has been a real game changer for me, although I miss having my IDE on a different screen. The goal is to know Godot well enough to take part in the next Ludum Dare next year.

Learning about Christianity, after being an atheist my whole life thus far.

Citizen science! It's great when people realize they can answer their own questions with observation and data, and for activism because data is a powerful story. One friend of mine started https://publiclab.org to feed this, and another is doing data journalism to highlight holes in the government's environmental data. https://www.muckrock.com/project/ A rules-configurable sensor tool I made a long time ago was used by a non-profit to provide a service that logged NYC landlords' violations of thermostat settings.

These combined with the experience of exploring the natural world in my kids' school's makerspace, has made me come back to making sensor tools for the people - would love to hear from others how they use sensor data for change: https://supermechanical.com/pickup

I started taking salsa lessons a few months ago, and it’s been incredibly fun. Before that, I really got into Magic: The Gathering for a while.

Most of my passion is around cycling, if I didn't have to work for a living, I think I'd spend most of my time doing long bike rides.

Getting back into society. I've been taking a sabbatical and building a passion project for a few years. It's been great and not so great. The project is reaching a point where I can build a web page and move it to the sales/marketing phase, and spend time with people other than my wife and close friends.

It's really time to get out of the introversion bubble again.

Ultra HDR - I predict it will cause a revolution in photography. This isn't the old HDR that was all about capturing a wider range of brightness; it refers to display of a wider range of brightness. It's built into Android 14 and you can now capture Ultra HDR images with the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Ultra HDR is really just jpg, uses the standard jpg extension and works the same as a regular jpg, unless your display software knows about the "HDR mask" that's embedded in the metadata, AND your display supports extra brightness. Chrome supports the format, and you can view images that look SO REALISTIC on most recent phones and desktops/laptops that support HDR display, both macs and PCs. The look just like reality. BUT - now I need a way to convert my big camera's HDR images into the Ultra HDR format, and I haven't found a way. Really just need to create and embed a brightness mask. Looks like Adobe is adding support to lightroom...

Encouraging everyone to try going vegan - it can greatly reduce the amount of animal abuse and environmental damage in our world - plus these days it's easier than ever with loads of high-quality information on nutrition and recipes.

I recently made this webapp: https://foodchoices.app

Secondhand shopping and stores

Trying to build something for businesses like thrift stores, vintage stores, secondhand stores, used furniture, consignment, etc. I started working at a vintage shop a few months ago after leaving my SWE job, and it's a pretty analog industry. No updated inventory, digital presence, business intelligence, etc. (not for lack of usefulness or lack of trying, just because digitizing hundreds or thousands of unique one-off items is really labor intensive and not ergonomic on existing tools). Hoping to build something purpose built for the use case that can also make shopping secondhand more accessible to end consumers.

Feel like the social stigma against "used goods" is dissipating, and shopping secondhand/vintage is seen as a viable or even preferable option b/c of cost, uniqueness, cyclical nature of trends, or sustainability efforts.

If anyone has any thoughts or tips, I'd love to hear them!

My current special interest is guns.

Noise cancelling headphones, breathing exercises, generally no social interactions. So wonderful.

About to goto the range with my 22lr for some group therapy. 2inch groups at 50yards.

I'm passionate about the game I'm making. Completing 2 years this december. Doing progress one step at a time.

Piano. I am doing Czerny op 599.

DIY!

I built a bad fence, a less bad gate, and a little shed. A lot was learned, they have issues but damn I’m proud of my creations.

Volleyball. I played sports my whole life but picked up volleyball for the first time when I took a class my senior year of college with the main goal being to meet women. Fast forward seven years and now I play 5 times a week, travel 4-5 times per year to play in tournaments, and am married to a wonderful woman who loves playing as much as I do.

Although I've played sports my whole life, this is the first sport where I have really dedicated myself to training my skills and studying how to get better (as opposed to just playing pick up games all the time as I did with basketball). The volleyball community is exceptional. My wife and I moved to Arizona a few years ago, and we now have an extensive network of friends, all of whom we met through the sport.

About a year ago, my friend who played at a very high level in Iran decided to try out for the semi-pro team here in Phoenix. I was going to watch the tryout, but he encouraged me to try out as a libero (defensive specialist). I was originally a hitter, but it is exceptionally difficult to play in the front row at at the professional level when you are 5'7".

To my surprise, I made the team. The starting and backup liberos are significantly better than I am, but in the past year I have improved tremendously from being able to practice regularly at a high level.

Although it is growing fast in the US, there isn't nearly the same interest in volleyball as there is in mainstream sports like basketball or football. This means that very, very few people in the US make a living playing volleyball, but it also means that someone like me who never played in college has access to volleyball at a very competitive level.

I've also been able to help grow the sport by using my skills as a software developer. I threw together a little website for the team using a bootstrap template and it looks significantly better than our old website. Check us out at http://www.ascensionvolley.com and take a look at our YouTube channel!

Energy efficiency and optimization through out of the box technology, hardware and software solutions.

This is the focus of my latest venture. Market is global. Our first installation went online earlier this year. All self-funded so far. Working on raising a round to scale.

Fully deployed, in the US alone, we can free-up enough energy to support over 30 million electric vehicles without having to build a single new power plant of any kind.

Yes, applied to YC multiple times as we were developing the technology. Rejected every time. My guess is that the combination of an older solo founder and a complex hardware/software model just didn't pass the filters. I get it. Hardware is hard. We are past the YC level of startup funding at this stage (need ~$5MM), so that's no longer an option.

Still in stealth.

Reading research from the past.

There are several papers/books in math, economics, logic, philosophy, etc. from the past 200 years that I've been interested in reading but have never had a structured plan to go about it. I've occasionally just read random stuff.

This year I started a project where I write some thoughts on a handful of papers/books from 100, 150, and 200 years ago. Here's the result from 1923 [1], and I'm nearly finished with 1873.

Organizing the reading like this has kept the scope manageable and the project fun. Hopefully, it's something I'll continue into the future.

[1] https://bcmullins.github.io/research-from-1923/

CUE(lang), generally, current efforts are because devops & yaml engineering has gotten out of hand

I maintain https://cuetorials.com and am heading up the CUE sig-infra group for the time being

Building my Tyranid army in Warhammer 40k

A good buddy of mine had been itching to get back into the hobby that he played as a teen but I wasn't interested in it. Until I got the Ultimate Starter Box from my game store as it was basically calling out to me.

It's been an incredibly fun (and yes, expensive) hobby.

The people are great, especially in my local area they're suuuper friendly and welcoming to new people. They want cool people to play with and enjoy the hobby with so there's little gatekeeping that I've actually run into.

Learning new skills (assembly, priming, painting) and learning the rules has been really fun as well.

My passion for coding has been at an all time low, so it's good to have something to channel my passion into.

Sailing -trying to raise $30m+ to build a boat to break over 20 records.

Surfing -Finding remote point breaks and surfing northern latitudes with nobody around.

I just built myself a sim racing rig with triple screen setup. Will be signing up for iRacing soon.

I'm tired of being productive and "on".

Photography. It's a good excuse to go outdoors and get some fresh air, and it's fun to get a good shot every once in a while.

I’ve never been a car guy, but somehow came across a kit car that I think is so gorgeous I have to build it. But I have few mechanical skills. I took a (tig) welding class at the local community college and have signed up for an intro to auto mechanics class for the coming semester, with plans to take more after that. I built a nice work bench in the garage and am getting it cleaned up. Suddenly tools are interesting and exciting to me. Would never have predicted this :) I figure it will take two years to gain skills, and five years to actually build. We’ll see if the passion/lust for that car endures long enough to get there.

Brining the meat rabbits I just slaughtered. Should have some great roast rabbit on Thursday. Easiest meat animal to raise, delicious.

Being finally able to work in US, after 15 months of spending savings to survive. Ouch.

Helping my cleaner get more customers. I'm helping him put together a letterbox flyer which I'm interested to do some a/b testing on response rates. I'll also systematically track which houses I've covered and when.

In Melbourne I see a lot of cleaning websites that use stock photos of people that don't racially reflect the cleaners working for the agency. I want to flip that upside down and have encouraged my cleaner to put a photo of himself on the flyer (he's Sri Lankan). I think this will show any potential customers that he stands out from other cleaners and is proud of his work and who he is.

Getting out of my current flat / apartment as I'm getting serious noise pollution from above and to the left of me, and it's really affecting my mental health. Not had a proper night's sleep since the new upstairs neighbour moved in, around June/July, and this extra sensory overload has removed my ability to ignore the sub-bass coming from the left of me.

Last week there was a guy in social housing who killed himself after similar, and since then my social housing manager has been in touch to look at doing something - sad that it takes a death before someone investigates.

I'm currently passionate about trying to understand the importance of young's modulus in machine design, and whether it can be "worked around" with different materials that are easier to work with.

Photography.

On the weekends I now wake up at 5:30 and drive to remote places to take photos during sunrise. I spend a lot of spare time researching lenses and watching videos with tips on things like composition.

I was never a morning person before.

Biology and bioinformatics. I've been reading about medicine and biology for a while now and want to get more serious. It's just such a huge fascinating field with a lot we don't know.

For now I completed one course on Coursera and am planning on finishing the specialization with 6-7 courses. Also trying to learn some statistics going through ISLR on the side.

I considered grad school as well but I don't have much of a shot. So I've been applying to software roles at biotech companies to break in that way. I'll make my own grad school with free online resources:)

I push capability based security relentlessly, because I see its absence as the root cause of a bunch of waste, and the cause of the loss of the war on general purpose computing. The world could be so much better if we could trust our computers.

I'm scratching an itch, hoping to get a chip made to implement the biggest waste of transistors ever, per George Gilder's call. (A cartesian grid of LUTs, clocked as to avoid race conditions, a Turing complete system) It might be a way to make a cheap PetaFlop computer.

Amateur Radio!

I got a bachelor's degree in geophysical engineering about 10 years ago and never really used it besides programming, GIS, and data visualization.

Ham radio lets me do a lot of the things I loved about geophysics. Wave propagation, being outside, electronics, talking to satellites, remote sensing. Driving around being cool with a radio lol.

I'm just getting started but I'm really glad I got licensed. Especially in case of emergencies. I hope to practice and get to a point where I can help with public events or during emergency situations.

Im currently passionate in improving the life of my young nephew. His father left him devoid of a father figure while his mother is a mess who takes her frustrations out on him. Ive only just turned 19 but I’m trying my best to work on myself so I could be a good male role model for him. Myself and my mom (his grandma) are the only ones who care about him, his education, and his growth. I really just want to make sure this lil fella grows up to be a good man and not mimic the paths of his parents.

Learning Lua and (re)learning C. After 20+ years of Java and Python the minimalism is deeply satisfying

Elden Ring. Need to finish this mofo to be able to focus on anything else. It truly is a masterpiece.

Building infrastructure to make SQLite databases more useful.

- https://airsequel.com - SQLite hosting platform

- https://github.com/Airsequel/SQLiteDAV - WebDAV server for SQLite databases

- https://github.com/Airsequel/SQLiteGPT - Call ChatGPT directly in SQL queries

Building an open source sync backend for Logseq: https://github.com/bcspragu/logseq-sync

I'm a big fan of Logseq for keeping track of useful information and tasks and stuff, but the file-based (or Git-based) syncing has sharp edges, and the actual Logseq Sync feature has a proprietary backend, so I've been enjoying figuring out how the protocol works and building an OSS implementation.

I'm building a computer around a DEC J-11 CPU, from first principles, that is, only parts datasheets, not "just" recreating a PDP-11 compatible machine. I'm hyper-focused on it, so much I'm starting to think in octal and gate logic. It's great fun, even if nothing comes out of it in the end (except much wasted time and money).

Actually, my machine WILL NOT run unmodified unix, nor do I plan on porting it, I want to write my own, single-user system for it.

I've been meaning to up my Mexican cooking game. For years I've been making the standard easy Tex-Mex stuff (tacos, burritos, etc). But my wife recently bought me "Mi Cocina"[1], which is a level up in both challenge and authenticity.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mi-Cocina-Recipes-Rapture-Cookbook/dp...

Dependent types and type theory. I’ve only been understand small pieces at the fringes so far but each thing I am able to get is like a little mind blowing.

Also moon phases (?)

So many foundational bioinformatics tools are broken and I just want to rewrite them all.

Studying the relation between just how volatile SPY 0-day-to-expiration options are in regards to the underlying. A 1% directional move in SPY can yield a 1600%+ in most cases if you can time it right in regards to direction + strike.

I would never actually trade or anything like that. It's just fun to scrape data. Historical option chain data isn't really publicly free/available so I wrote a scraper + analytics on top of it.

Tabla. These are drums from the South Asian region, which are probably the "most" harmonious drums you can construct. I am learning to play, but also slowly working out the physics of them. There is some work in the area, including foundational work by Ramen, the Nobel prize winning physicist.

But there is quite a lot still to be done. I would like to turn some of the art of making Tabla into the science of making Tabla.

Writing as a method of processing my feelings on the tension between using my time for cheap entertainment to enjoy life and my desire to balance out dopamine hits resulting in the erosion of things I enjoy. I am channeling these things into a Paladin class, because for some reason that speaks to me. I have promised myself that at no point will this see the light of day. That makes me write more fearlessly.

I know it's a bit weird...but I'm really getting into creating my own religious style structure around modern AI programs.

Originally I was interested as a concept for a story, but as an atheist who was a very devout Christian for a long time I really wondered if there is some modern twist on the structure of organised religion and replacing a traditional meta-physical source of knowledge for a real world one (or group of them).

It has essentially turned into a framework of ritualism based around core concepts of various religious structure...with the ability to 'hot swap' your 'god' or 'AI' or 'book' or whatever source of wisdom you seek to lead your decisions.

It is much more complicated than I thought, but it is super interesting to me and while I have nothing that yet really helps me any better than normal reason based skepticism...I do like the ability to engage in tribal style ritualism in a modern context.

I've been trying to name it but so far all I have come up with is Algoruspicy (Haurspicy using algorithms) or Nexialism (Connection based philosophy)

Thinking about consciousness and how weird the human-constructed world is and other big deep stuff like that. If that sounds interesting to you I'd love to exchange thoughts with people. Especially if you're in the south bay area, I'm trying to meet more weirdos around here.

And biotech/biohacking! (not the supplements flavor that calls itself those things but actually isn't at all)

Futsal.

Just started playing pick up futsal at the local YMCA. I’m pretty unfit right now but really enjoying it. I’d played football (soccer) as a youth and wanted to get back into it. Found the futsal pick ups and jumped in. A lot of fun and really good work out. I’d never heard of futsal until now. Similar to indoor 5 a side. Would recommend it to anyone wanting to play some competitive sports.

Home Assistant: between cheap ESP-based controllers and ESPHome, I'm aiming to get my whole house under local, cloud-free control.

Finding ways to do something useful despite health challenges. Learning to have the right attitudes and have peace & happiness, & stay pointed in the right direction, despite whatever. It's a good learning process, and my beliefs are making all the difference, motivating me to be patient, have hope, keep trying, use it to grow in quiet ways.

Reduce the massive amount of dysfunction in heavy civil construction project delivery. If you only knew how bad things really are.

I'm passionate about being thankful, and making sure that those I appreciate know the degree to which they matter to me.

Home video creation (recording, editing,…)

This summer I finally bought a GoPro to capture our motorcycle tour with my girlfriend – have been thinking about getting one for years but never did. Well, since then we have been on three city trips and I enjoyed recording those. Since then I edited and finished one of them, and it is such a joy.

I’m working on a silly website called Late Night Bomb Defusal. It’s just a microwave that you have to open/stop as close to 0:00 as possible. But it doesn’t show you milliseconds, just seconds.

Edit: by random chance if anyone wants to help with a title card graphic/logo, that’s the one gap I have in capability for this toy.

Context: Father of two girls, Husband, Dev for 20 years.

- Breathing: fuel yourself with fresh energy out of thin air. The Wim Hof Method (WHM) really just changed my entire life. I found finally a method to stabilise my bio-rythm aka constant up-and-downs.

- Cold Showers: In combination with WHM it's one of my biggest physical improvements. I was always the guy who complains a cold climate. Now it just doesn't matter anymore, I don't get sick as easy and my body feels great!

- mindfulness: value the moment, keep it clean from other topics that doesn'tfit in right now. Matches perfectly with breathing/yoga exercises.

- build up my second career as life- and social counselor to help others getting their life sorted: https://gedankenfrei.at

Just hit me if you want to talk, I love people and social interaction!

Not “passionate” per se but I’ve been taking the stairs to my penthouse for around a year now, and sometimes as a challenge (against firefighters who obviously do that for living) I take the stairs and go down by the elevator to take the stairs again four of five times in a row! Good cardio.

X4 Foundations

If you've never heard of it X4 is a space sandbox game with an emphasis on trade. I can't remember the last time I was this captivated by a game. It combines a lot of things I love - simulation, automation, optimization, statistics, space combat, slow but quantifiable progression.

The political thought of Louis Brandeis and George Kennan. These two men are very different, but between them they seem to have comprehended and sometimes even developed solutions to nearly all the large issues facing our country and world today.

That and cellular communication. The g-protein coupled receptor[0] is basically an all-purpose biological switch. Combined with other messaging pathways it is used to build complex logic into cell message/response networks.

[0] https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gpcr-14047471/

Modelling natural gas consumption. I don’t think it’ll be actually useful and certainly not as nuanced as professional models for trading, but adding the necessary data to my data warehouse and then working on it has been a fun experience.

AI induced reactive Observability. What if we could (ok we can just haven't) create a system that based on past solutions looks for a specific condition and then, when that condition is met, takes specific actions immediately and then reports to the human rather than reporting to the human and waiting for them to take a known set of actions. Beyond just "container died restart" but getting into "Container 2 is exhibiting performance that indicates it is suffering a very slow memory leak. Capture logs and readings to prove this, restart the container and report findings to a human"

Drawing with pencil on rough paper every morning.

Finding and listening to good music while working on my own first EP.

Writing about video games and whatever comes to mind on my website, as well as playing old classics, indies, and AAA giganto-games.

Writing to friends regularly.

Groundwater. The issues, the proposed policy solutions, the technologies to support study and engineering, and potentially overlooked avenues to get a lot of freshwater otherwise destined for the ocean into the ground instead.

I love these threads:

- Learning to use Emacs better

- Common Lisp

- Clojure

- Getting better at chess

- Rubiks cubes and solving them faster

- Indie gaming and fighting games at the moment

Sound localizing. I was intensely passionate about it when I saw the possibility to do it well on a Raspberry Pi. There were quite a few more problems than so expected which is why it took five months (of weekends) to complete it well.

But I’m super happy with the result and have a bunch of geeks with recording nodes setup a long distance apart. Localizing large explosions show that it’s possible to localize to a carpets even when some of the nodes are almost 5 away.

For those interested, here is the project:

https://github.com/hcfman/sbts-aru

As a tech engineer who ended up in marketing, I've spent the last decade building an agency business and working with tech companies.

When ChatGPT/LLMs became accessible, I started playing around with OpenAI's API with the goal of "encoding" some of my expertise into the AI so it does the work for me (specifically how to write founder stories for my customers).

The result is https://storypitch.ai and it's already generating revenue.

But I have to say it's both worrying and fascinating to see AI do my work for me.

Building out the web ecosystem for Go over at: https://github.com/livebud

Go is a surprisingly pleasant language for building websites, especially for indie hackers, yet the tooling is not quite there. I'm trying to get the developer productivity for building websites in Go to be on par with building web applications in Node.

With ESBuild and Goja maturing, we're pretty close. Go is still just missing a few important connections needed to the frontend ecosystems (e.g. React, Tailwind, etc.)

Let me know if you're also interested in this space!

BattleBots. 250 pound robots with 70 pound steel blades spinning at 250mph fighting each other? Yes please.

Besides for the absolute mayhem, the planning, driving, and engineering that goes into these competitions are insane.

Some fights to give you an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORDg67i70IU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx2aJMISaP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaTIreDG45M

I am crazy about bare metal kubernetes clusters and gitops.

I'm trying to document the process of setting one up in such a way that I can do a teach in for my friends at my local hackerspace.

In the process I've determined I would like to write my own k8s enabled application (likely a daemonset for checking for a specific hardware device and configuration on each bare metal node, and storing that data in a way for k8s to use and reference later).

I've been working on this any free time I get, since September, each weekend sees a flurry of activity then I spend the week daydreaming about it.

I am utterly fascinated by Japanese joinery

Getting back into the "maker"/"tinker" groove.

Modifying and calibrating my 3d printer(s), chasing speed while maintaining print quality.

Using CAD more seriously, trying to challenge myself with more complex projects and models. Current project is to make a CoreXY Plotter from an old 3d printer I just disassembled.

Wanting to get/make a CNC Mill/Router to finally have the ability to work on some bigger "cooler" projects. ex. I have a custom PC case model that I've been working on, and can't wait to build for the upcoming rig upgrade.

Virtual Pinball.

In particular the open source Visual Pinball engine and the amazing content made for it and community around it. https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball. Also vintage pre-Windows computers and retro video gaming. Home computers in the 80s and early 90s were so unique, diverse and interesting. Each had strong opinions about what the future of personal computing could be, expressed in their own hardware, software library and community of enthusiasts.

My newborn son. Stakeholders come and go.

I'm recently passionate about motivation. I'm on the lookout for ways to keep me motivated. I always thought burnout is not my problem, until it hit me and now I'm looking for cure.

I write code that makes live music and/or controls hardware instruments. Latest recording https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/album/antarctica-sixteen-ninety... Styles are quite varied (imho) within the experimental and ambient genres. Managed to get some of these pieces in a few short films, they tend to be horror/thriller type. Slow listening.

Recently discovered an arcade in my city with a ton of Asian rhythm game cabinets, mainly Dancerush Stardom where you have to dance to the song. Kinda like DDR but a lot more flexible. I've always been a very stiff person so I hoped that learning to dance can help with that and what better way to learn to dance than with a video game with very exact goals.

Plus, there's an awesome community around the game and the arcade so it's been nice to meet new people that way.

Whitewater kayaking! I got into it late (26), been doing it for 2 years now. It’s a multi faceted passtime, of course at the core it’s a physically demanding sport, which helps keep in shape. But it’s also a social accelerator, meeting people with the same niche passion is amazing. I personally love the travel aspect, you get to seek out and find new wonderful places on earth that can’t be accessed otherwise (some rivers don’t have footpaths following the banks).

Currently, I'm excited about making music again. Before, I wasn't completely happy with my compositions. My creative process seemed to be driven by the sounds from software and hardware instruments. Now, I started dividing my work into two distinct sessions. One is exclusively for sound crafting and tool preparation, which clears away any technical distractions for the other type of session, where I can dive into composing music with more concentration.

I would love to dedicate significant portion of 2024 contributing back to the old web (creating open source web 1.0 apps) and linux desktop apps (most probably on KDE).

Surfing. Never been so addicted to a form of exercise before.

Table tennis! The sport has so much depth, that you can keep learning/improving for a life-time. Whenever you think you now everything about it, there is something new to learn (spin, tactics, focus, psychology, bluffing, etc.). It's like a combination of fast-paced chess, poker and reaction testing.

That, also combined with other hobbies such as VR (Eleven VR), 3d printing (printing/designing table-tennis adapters for the VR controllers).

Learning to play a musical instrument

I've started with the Vangoa EWI-100, which is an affordable, silent, and good enough MIDI EWI (electronic wind instrument) device. I have also been learning some of the technical details of MIDI. I sometimes use it alone, and sometimes with a Cocos Reaper with free VSTs. I have only been doing this for 4 days, but I am already enjoying it a lot.

If I continue to play it, most probably I will upgrade to a better EWI.

Listening an choral music and conducting choir that sing sacred music during a liturgy as well. Mainly orthodox, byzantine, latin. Old, classical and modern.

Tabletop Role-playing Games (ttrpg), specifically being the Game Master (gm). I'm actually pretty new to ttrpgs was always more of a card and board gamer. I have a friend who recently Kickstarted a diceless system he designed. I helped with some proofreading and it seemed really interesting. He invited me to do an Actual Play and I was hooked. Decided to dive into the deep end and immediately started gm'ing.

Space Race Two. China versus the USA.

Which country will achieve the first crewed lunar landing of this millennium?

Which country will set up the first permanent moonbase?

Which country will achieve the first crewed martian landing?

Which county will set up the first permanent base on Mars?

etc.

I was surprised by how much progress in space China has made. They have a permanently inhabited space station. They are planning to achieve a crewed lunar landing by 2030. They are planning to complete a permanent moonbase by 2035.

Blogging in multiple languages.

I’ve launched many blogs over the years, but they were mostly a hobby and consistency was lacking. My goal is to change that now, by writing every day about some things that interest me while improving my skills in multiple languages.

It’s been roughly two months since I began and this is something that truly inspires me at the moment. Everyone can benefit from writing down and sharing one’s knowledge from time to time.

Mushroom cultivation. Aside from the medicinal motivations, it is an extremely testing endeavor that requires patience and skill, so there is much to learn and get better at. Sterile technique is one skill to refine. It is also fascinating to observe and better understand the life of mycelium.

Has been over two months since I started to germinate spores on agar plates and am about ready to move to a fruiting chamber.

I am most passionate about death today. Seeing my father, and shortly after my partner after 22 years of marriage die was a shock. I am trying to prepare myself for the moment when I close my eyes for the last time. Thinking about those who are going through it now and those who are going to go through it between now and when my time is up. What can I do better, how can I make this world better.

"Learning games", games that teach you something as you play. The best kind of learning games nudge you towards an answer so that you can win without ever having heard of the answer, and without Googling it. One example: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1635132575

SQLite Archive Files: https://sqlite.org/sqlar.html

I'm writing a Go package to read them: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/dolmen-go/sqlar/sqlarfs

Public speaking. I started an internal diversity group based on (what I thought would be) a less popular diversity strand and wanted to get better at public speaking and presenting to do the topic justice.

So, I joined Toastmasters. Went along for a few taster sessions and signed up. Quite apart from improving my speaking skills it's actually a lot of fun. I'd recommend it.

Writing some libraries in a new language I've gotten excited about, and training to bench press 300+ pounds by the end of the year.

Snowboarding -- it's been a joint passion with my Wife.

We always intended to do it, but life and Covid got in the way, now the restrictions are gone we are spending as much time as we can on the slopes, we are fortunate enough to live "near" a large indoor ski slope with actual snow on it and there's a real online and offline community vibe around the venue.

Motorcycling. Didn’t expect to love it so much getting into it later in life.

Love the speed, the acceleration, braking, leaning, the sound and the smell of it and getting over that second-guessed fear of death every time I get the bike out.

Also love the dynamics, physics, maths of it and the skill and absolute attention it takes to control.

Actually my job is just a means to support my motorcycle addiction now.

Target shooting, specifically pistols and rifles. I recently acquired a 1973 Anschutz made in West Germany that I'm smitten with.

I started climbing and bouldering a few weeks ago. I'm doing a top rope climbing course and will maybe follow it up with lead climbing. Having been running for several years now it's really fun doing something completely different. Every weekend now I drive to a different climbing gym to mingle with the weekend crowd and tryharding on easy routes.

Memorization techniques, basically what's in _Moonwalking with Einstein_ by Josh Foer. Here's a podcast on the topic https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_how_to_re...

Family, especially our kids. Still have career goals which im working hard towards but its all in service to building a family.

Product and marketing. How do you find out if you're building something really relevant, and how do you find your market?

Acrylic painting!

I’m recovering from a knee injury so I’ve had a rough time keeping my mind occupied without being online all of my waking hours. It’s been a ton of fun painting based off of famous impressionist works, pictures I’ve taken over the years, and from my imagination, and it’s definitely given me a fun new way of looking at the world!

Tennis - as a life long racquetball player, I transitioned to tennis. Joined a club, taking lessons, it's amazing.

Pong! In WebAssembly. Gotta start somewhere.

Not distributing the equity early on via a notary, relying instead on an agreement. Later on the equity separation was only legally possible via a heavily-taxed mechanism, meaning I could never afford my stake. They kept the equity and I basically had to leave. (Be careful about Belgian laws around equity.)

Recording music.

I have recently started recording Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2 using some DAW and orchestral instruments from my digital piano. It is not easy to make sound good, and a major undertaking since even the first part is 10 minutes long. But it is a fascinating process to me. I hope it turns out ok.

I recently got into DMing a DnD campaign. It‘s so much fun to play my ideas and concepts together with friends.

I've been on and off trying to implement automated template matching OCR for DVD subtitles. Picking it up once again.

There are a few solutions which use tesseract type OCR and a few which are human assisted template based, but I figure with some linguistic clues it should be possible to automatically solve.

Three things at the moment:

1. Improving my health / fitness.

2. Learning Korean.

3. Financial freedom through my business (currently growth has flattened...).

Building an off-grid home on a piece of land me and my wife bought. We are documenting our progress on YT.

I’m fascinated by the possibilities of trading as a video game instead of a way to make money. I’m building a stock exchange to prove this idea. https://github.com/sneilan/stock-exchange

I'm passionate about my guitar playing again and I've been teaching guitar to a couple of people, which is very rewarding. Also I do Jiu Jitsu and I'm halfway to my purple belt, and I've had some opportunities to help coach kids, which is fantastic.

Working on a programming language competency scale for myself. The idea is to give one's self confidence at using a specific language. Everyone learns programming differently obviously, but as someone who's self-taught, it might be useful for others.

Very passionate about helping orphans in war-torn region get education and building water pumps

Observability! Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, OpenTelemetry, you name it.

I'm digging deeper into the architecture of those open source tools—how they work under-the-hood—and not only at the superficial surface (deploying the stack and tune some parameters).

Streaming flight data from the FAA. I'm building a system to ingest data from the FAA SWIM system to build a real-time flight board for airports in the United States. I'm learning how to manage high traffic data via a JMS program.

Started following Rugby during the world cup - got a bit obsessed, went to a couple of matches, joined a club, started following the national championship (Top 14)...

It's been great so far! It has a lot of complexity and physicality, which I enjoy.

The band Cloud Rat.

Some of the sickest, gnarliest grind metal music ever. Super creative, relentless drums, awesome production. Just so nasty. Trying to learn the album Pollinator on guitar at the moment. Guitar player has tabs posted on his instagram

democratizing traffic data and monitoring for high-risk corridors and neighborhoods

Modeling!! Military tanks and airplanes, Gundam and now Warhammer. Learning a lot painting techniques.

Also building "drones". I create a glider and slap some propellors on it, then race it once a month in a local club.

Number theory and spacetime! I have a proof for an old number theory problem

Folk music. Digging up weird old ballads and learning about how they've changed over centuries. I'm putting together a version of Captain Kidd (Roud 1900) for my repertoire right now.

Wine. It’s fascinating, tastes good and a fun conversation with people.

It's currently the election year in my country, so I now have access to a huge amount of open data: voters, politicians, etc.

I'm still wondering if I can process this data into something useful.

I have been sick with colds and fatigue for 1.5 months. I have another two weeks and then I can get back to normal programming. I hope.

At this moment, I am feeling passionate about seeing my wife.

Horsemanship, as a philosophical pursuit and an AI-proof retirement business. Learning Bach arrangements for guitar to play around a campfire. My oddly perfect job.

I've been exploring new opportunities made possible by advances in deep learning. That which was nearly impossible to do before is now within reach.

Foreign languages. I'm a native English speaker and I've been studying Spanish for almost 18 months and I just started dabbling in French.

Getting out of debt somehow

After that it would be robotics, navigation, space, underwater exploration, random stuff, I'd be a tinkerer, have a ranch somewhere

Cool to see that you kept the idea alive, thanks! :D

I'd have totally forgotten to post again, even though I also considered doing it at some point.

Right now, really focused to improve my diet and physical health with mental well being, But also passionate on philosophy reading

playing high performance multiplayer games. building high performance multiplayer games. exercising. hanging out in the backyard.

Rediscovering the pleasure of reading after I (feel like I) lost my ability to focus on a text for longer than a few seconds.

My AI startup: https://aiconstrux.com

Making music inside, learning to grow my own weed outside :) Also, I'm fixated on Muriel Spark books right now.

Finally launched our crowdfunding campaign for everyone who wishes great desk work jobs didn't come at the expense of the harm of sitting for extended periods. (here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/movably-pro-the-freedom-o...)

A better HackerNews.

Leave contact info to beta test and explain why you'd be a great initial user. Limit 20 people.

Soldering stuff. Think esp32 and iot

Inline skating for the last N years, and it is still the best few hours of my life every weekend.

Re-capping and restoring an RCA SRT-301 reel-to-reel tape machine.

Building a modular synth from scratch.

Tabletop RPG games, with friends and food. Good music, food and friendship is the key.

The same thing I’ve been passionate about since I was five: computers and software.

I've really been playing with the idea of getting into trying to mod Valheim.

Right now I’m very interested in Creativity Software and Machine Learning.

Philosophy helped me a lot during the pandemic and helps me everyday

- Playing with my kids

- Health & Fitness (lose your health and you have nothing)

- Electric scooters (so fun!)

- Hiking

- Reading more books

- Playing more Chess

- Keyboard layouts

- Baking

- Penny whistle

nature sounds! they help me focus and relax :)

earth.fm is now at 700+ recordings

With the latest crypto rally, yield farm rates have skyrocketed. Getting 10 to 30% APY on stablecoins (i.e. no risk of loss in value as they are USD-matching coins). Making money hand over fist for clicking buttons.

Tinkering with brass astronomical gizmos.

Made this orrery a week ago: https://youtu.be/FGdjk5fY87s?si=t9nwZI8YXxy4Bi7D

And presently working on a world clock inspired by the xkcd 1335 commic.

Likely, provably correct software ++ Rapid iterations

Medicinal value of fig leaf extract, a la fig tea.

Probably join a monastery. I give up on tech

medicine as code and the “left adjoint to the disease functor” could present a generic computational process to cure all diseases derived from Sidis’ concept of the “time image” and “reverse universe” from [1]

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0a0fsV9Ektf3GVnP0Nqqn-Trw https://share.icloud.com/photos/029ulUc8TnmvZwqfb2OI5xgIw https://share.icloud.com/photos/052VuJUFynystXHS-qHBO3dJg

TLDR: Rewind the disease movie to see the inverse pathology; then create a forward universe implementation of the reverse universe inverse pathology. If this takes a patient to some H’ with distance(H0, H’) strictly less than the limit of detection, they are cured.

(for example, continued taking pills is detectable, so you have to actually fix the underlying issues so patients don’t need pills or ongoing treatment)

Thus, I propose the definition of “cure” vs “treatment” is a matter of *functional purity*

1. https://www.sidis.net/animate.pdf

turning my workspace into an ADHD-proof cockpit.

learning to design and build mechanical joints and stuff.

will need to learn welding asap.

Nix Flakes.

I like to keep things nice and declarative.

Putting food in my teams mouth.

Teaching.

Learning to kiteboard!

Making money

1. Astronomy

2. Chess

3. Programming

Gaza

Truth

Cannabis genetic biodiversity.

creating content