11
votes
What did you learn in 2021?
I really want to keep the question as broad and open-ended as possible and don't have much to add. Title.
I really want to keep the question as broad and open-ended as possible and don't have much to add. Title.
The basics of Doom mapping. I haven't gotten past exploring, but am trying to be familiar with the tools before I do a project, and level design is always hard to get right. I'm working on a prison themed map right now for fun, as it provides a fun way to play with interiors, exteriors and windows.
Proper 3-ball juggling. I can do a Cascade, over-the-top (throw a ball over the other two), juggler's tennis (throw the same ball over the other two, back and forth). I'm working on 4 ball as well, but haven't gotten past one-handed two-ball flashes (as many throws as balls), as it's basically juggling two sets of two balls at once.
I learned that using a 3D printer to make watertight objects is really hard. But along the way, I learned about printing with flexible materials, and it did give me quite a bit of practice designing and printing things.
I got a chromatic button accordion and started to learn to play it, but had to put it aside for a while. I also transcribed maybe a dozen new songs and learned to play them on melodica.
I also learned some good exercises from physical therapy.
I spent a lot of time looking at screens but I'm not sure I learned anything useful from it? Random facts, I suppose.
I like to think of myself as a life-long learner so I can maybe fill this out a bit:
Professional skills: Advanced Excel functions such as Power Query and Power Pivot. I actually created a handful of tools with a mix of Excel VBA and Power Query that I can pass onto other team members who are less adept with the technology. I also ventured into the world of Microsoft's Power Automate before my company's IT team found out and closed that loop. I administrate my department's instance of ServiceNow and I learned quite a bit about it through various requests for enhancements.
Flying lessons: I went pretty overboard and into learning a lot about aviation when I was taking flying lessons. I learned basics about meteorology, how airplanes work, rules and regulations, and how to fly a single engine plane (for the most part).
Piano lessons: I didn't get to far into this. Just learned basic chords, scales, and music theory. In a previous life, I played the trumpet so I could already read treble clef. Bass clef still kind of alludes me. I'm hoping to pick this up later in the year or trade my keyboard for an acoustic guitar.
Neuropsychology: I had a phase earlier this year about learning neuropsychology. I read Robert Sapolsky's Behave and also finished up his lecture series, Biology and Human Behavior on The Great Courses. Overall, a fascinating subject and probably worth re-listening to his book again.
Health and fitness: I desperately needed to learn how to better diet and exercise and took it upon myself to learn some fundamentals for a holistic fitness and diet regiment. This was also driven via a couple of lecture series from The Great Courses.
Motorcycle: I bought a motorcycle and despite riding dirtbikes as a kid and teenager, there was quite a bit more I needed to learn to be an effective and safe rider for motorcycles. I took a safety course and also read /u/HotPants recommendation for Proficient Motorcycling.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something else, but when I remember I will be sure to update this list!
Did you fly solo? Do you plan to take more lessons?
Sadly, I never flew solo. My instructor and I didn't really mesh well and I ended up dropping the lessons as the cost to enjoyment ratio was waning. I do plan on taking more lessons later on down the line. I was going for a sport license due to an expected medical disqualification for PPL so maybe when I jump back into it, the rules and regulations for sport planes will be expanded. I have thought about doing some glider lessons this year though.
About the same here, though it was a decade ago and my excuse is that I met my now-wife and didn't have time after that.
I don't think I will take it up again because I've decided I'm too absent minded to do things like that. Despite the checklists, I think I might forget something important.
I should probably sell the headset.
Yeah, I was really paranoid over doing something absent-minded and forgetting to do something critical. Checklists are helpful but I really felt I needed an understanding of why an item on the checklist is important rather than doing it just because I was told to do so. That's part of why I had a falling out with my instructor, lots of telling me to do things (or screaming them) and then no reason given on importance.
With that said, there are a lot of people flying that really shouldn't be flying and I have no idea how they managed to get and maintain a PPL. Those are the types that freaked me out the most and made me really think of the importance of trust in a high-stakes environment.
Funny story about my headset, I sold mine online and the guy must have been an employee of an airline or something. Dude flew all the way out from Colorado to pick it up rather than have me ship it to him. I was pretty impressed with the determination to get it before his weekend flying lessons.
I did a deep dive on coastal foraging, particularly with kelp. I was pretty annoyed to find most western recipes for seaweed focus on it as a flavor additive (like Umami salt or kelp bread) or a garnish. It was surprisingly difficult to find dishes with a seaweed main course. My favorite discoveries were Dashi stock using Wakame, Bull Kelp pickles (which took forever to get the brine right because they are so naturally salty), seaweed salad with rehydrated Pull Kelp blades cut into the size of fetticini, and a wild recipe for a KLT (Kelp, lettuce, tomato) that uses fried and sugared giant kelp blades as a bacon replacement. I also made what I am hesitantly calling a discovery, because I'm sure it's done in Japan or Korea but I couldn't find it anywhere. I've been rehydrating the dried kelp in different sauces (ie. soy sauce, hot sauce, citrus based marinades...). Some of them give the seaweed a really interesting zing and pair great with their natural "ocean" flavors. Otherwise, lots of mussels, scallops, and coastal fish.
I've been casually dipping my toes in voice training (mtf) and holy hell is it complicated! You know how flying a helicopter is hard because all of the inputs mix together, you cant just control one aspect without compensating for the others changing. I cant remember if helicopters have 3 or 4 inputs but the voice is absolutely crazy.
Looking back on my notes there's 8 individual levers to pull, maybe more depending on what actually counts. In order of how far into my progress I started caring about them: pitch, resonance, vocal weight, mouth space, nasality, tone clarity, false fold constriction/retraction, intonation, and then a few like vocal fry/strain/adduction
Honestly it's been quite fun but really overwhelming. Luckily I found a discord server full of voice nerds so I wasnt forced to learn the terminology before actually learning the subject. I could just shadow a few community lessons/ear training sessions to pick up the core stuff, and if I was having trouble figuring something out I could just post a voice clip and ask why it sounds buzzy or harsh (vocal weight usually)
I'm at the point now where I can get to a passable voice configuration without a drill/prompt, but still need to work on a few things here and there. Very happy with the progress considering I've only been to a handful of community lessons and had no 1:1 sessions, that said, the confidence aspect is turning out to be the hardest part about anything transition related and I haven't been able to hit my 'personal best' configuration with other people that often. On the discord server they call it the nervous noodle which is strangely validating. You can record the best voice clips when practicing by yourself, but the second you're put on the spot or don't feel comfortable totally commiting to the voice - it all falls apart and you wind up in the equivalent of the uncanny valley
Sidenote, it's kind of cool to learn the variables and then try to notice them in shows/movies. Especially the whole "pitch is irrelevant for gender perception, it's all about the resonance" thing because you'll be watching a tv show like New Girl and be like "oh wow I never noticed zooey deschanel's pitch being so low before" and then realise how silly it is that you keep fixating on that variable with your voice. With a more extreme example being Shohreh Aghdashloo (from the expanse)