this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2026
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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 26 minutes ago

That my knees were going to go to shit, and carrying a backpack through the mountains needs good knees. Fuck, I miss those trips.

[–] JargonWagon@lemmy.world 1 points 39 minutes ago

Typewriters - mostly just buying/using them, haven't delved too much into the actual restoration/cleaning part just yet:

  • There's a Discord that has a lot of information and a nice, welcoming community.
  • Typewriter Database is a very handy tool to help you identify your typewriter model and year based on the serial number.
  • The case can get messed up depending what you clean with, so do your research well so that you don't accidentally strip the paint.
  • Estate/garage sales are great for finding typewriters.
  • When buying a typewriter, bring a piece of paper with you and test it out: type with every key, use the shift and caps lock, try the red and black inks, backspace, tab, set a few tabs and then tab through each one, reach the end of the line and see if the bell rings, etc. Don't let social anxiety get in the way of you testing a product before buying, especially if it's costing a pretty penny.
  • Speaking of price, I'm not sure how it is everywhere, but where I am you can get a good typewriter for under $100, even under $50, fairly consistently. I just went on OfferUp and I was able to find a few at around $50 that I would purchase myself tonight if I wasn't already strapped for cash.
  • The few typewriters I would spend over $100 on if I had the money (all in working condition, even better if it has a case): Royal Model 10 with the glass side, Olivetti Lettera 33, and the Hermes Baby.
[–] Drusas@fedia.io 1 points 1 hour ago

About me when it comes to all of my hobbies: I like to collect things.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 hours ago

It eats too much time (and money).

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 9 hours ago (4 children)

Don't get into woodworking if you have a compulsion to achieve accurate, precise results because wood is fiddly as fuck.

OR

DO get into woodworking if you have a compulsion to achieve accurate, precise results because it will burn that shit right out of you If you don't die from an aneurysm first. It'll teach you to build all sorts of wiggle room into everything in life, not just furniture.

People will think what you made was amazing, that it took so much skill.

Nope.

Only you know how you put everything together loosely, then tightened screws incrementally while adjusting clamps and smacking it with a rubber mallet until it looked right. There are pilot holes they can't see that don't go anywhere. You definitely missed gluing something important. You might have weighted a piece with epoxy and cat litter because you forgot to buy weights, it was 3 am, and you were unintentionally high as balls on stain fumes, but you really wanted to finish in time to surprise your partner for their birthday.

They don't know, they'll never know, and they don't need to know.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

That's my dream, except I want to complicate it by building guitars. So it actually has to work, not just look like it might.

[–] fiendishplan@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Don't forget the thousands of dollars in tools you'll be compelled to buy and never being able to throw out even the small piece of wood because "you might need it someday".

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago

"It's made outta offcuts."

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Tell me about it, and there's always something better than what you have. How to be smart about buying tools deserves its own entire comment chain.

I didn't know about these until recently, but I now recommend folks check out local tool libraries to get started and see what they want or need for low to no cost.

We have a one car garage full of maintenance and fabrication tools I've acquired over my life. They've paid for themselves multiple times over in even just the last decade, but the cost and space requirements are prohibitive for a lot of folks. It's one of those "having money saves money" situations, but tool libraries can help a lot.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

My partner complimented my new shelf recently. Then she looked closer and realised it was a few boards stacked up on the cheapest engineering bricks I could find but rotated so the holes are not visible.

Only got a folding hand saw which I suspect isn't the best for making straight cuts, I had considered cutting up a railway sleeper for blocks instead of the bricks. Bricks worked out cheaper. Wooden blocks could look nice though.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago

Just cut pieces of wood big enough to cover the front of the bricks, and glue them on. Wood on the front, and brick on the side, will look like a cool design choice.

[–] zakobjoa@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

shia_labeouf_slowclap.gif

[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 14 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

For coding, I wish I had known that I will need to basically relearn the entire thing every 2-4 years due to frameworks and language design changes.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

This is why I only use languages and libraries that are "finished." C, Pascal, Euphoria to name a few.

[–] yoyoyopo5@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

Yep. Redesign the entire library every few weeks because you discovered a better architecture.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 4 points 7 hours ago

Absolutely isn't true though, unless you only learned JavaScript for some reason and god help you if that is what you call programming

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 29 points 10 hours ago

Eating all the food you cook will make you fat

[–] Zier@fedia.io 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I want to know why I have to be naked all the time. I didn't sign up for this.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

We tried it clothed, but the baby oil kept getting absorbed and it's impossible to find the right place to clamp.

[–] cattywampas@lemmy.world 27 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

The correct number of guitars to own is n+1, with n being the number of currently owned guitars.

[–] DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works 10 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Same for cameras, axes and chainsaws...

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 6 points 9 hours ago (4 children)
[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)
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[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 32 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

Cocaine can become addictive really quickly

[–] Saapas@piefed.zip 11 points 10 hours ago

Skill issue

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[–] Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 8 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

That those forensics chaps can find the tiniest spatters of blood on your clothes, on your skin, and inyour hair. And people make a lot of spatter.

[–] lando55@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 hours ago

Ah, a fellow taxidermist! Pleased to meet you

[–] saltnotsugar@lemmy.world 23 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Warhammer 40K is what some may call…MEGA EXPENSIVE.

[–] Scuzzm0nkey@lemmy.world 16 points 11 hours ago

To piggy back on this, don't chase the fucking meta. By the time you get your Exaction Squad and paint it, GW will balance it into being a total waste of your time/money/points.

I remember in college, when someone would get into MTG, we'd jokingly say coke's cheaper.

Now, when someone I know gets into 40k, I much less jokingly say "MTG's cheaper"

Then again, if you're just playing for fun against friends, a $200 3d printer is cheaper than any army I've seen. Still costs more than a $45 booster draft, but at least the printer's a one-time cost

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[–] gnomesaiyan@lemmy.world 17 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

Losing Joann's has made it really difficult to find fabric locally. Michael's needs to step their game up.

Yeah, there really hasn’t been a good alternative for fabric. Lots of people were quick to jump on the “lol join the 21st century and just buy it online” side of the argument, but buying fabric is an extremely tactile experience. You need to feel it to know that it will have the correct texture, weight, see it will hang, which direction(s) it will stretch, how much it will stretch, how easy is is to stretch, etc for what you’re trying to make, because all of those qualities will heavily impact the end product. Those things are difficult to quantify, and nearly impossible to judge purely from photos on an online listing. Two fabrics that look identical online can have vastly different weights, stretch, textures, etc…

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago

It's miserable. It was such a good store, Michael's doesn't compare for fabric yet. Hoping they get as much fabric as they've been sending me emails, might get a lot then lol

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[–] Magister@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago

I did astronomy like 25 years ago, yes a good telescope is kind of $$$, eyepieces, etc. I wanted to do some astro-photo but back in the days it was top$. But anyway the biggest problem, being in eastern Canada, is that you can only use it at night (hé), and in winter it is so freaking cold it's almost unusable, so you only have summer where night starts at like 10PM... When you have a life, job, house, partner, house, kids, name it, you don't have time or energy for this.

So I went to RC cars, cheaper!!! can be used during the day, even for 10 minutes, not requiring a setup, just take the remote and the car, make sure the battery is charged, that's it. Buy one for the kid too, bash them, take a brand like Traxxas and you can find cheap parts everywhere for 20 years.

[–] LeapSecond@lemmy.zip 11 points 10 hours ago

Climbing is fun but climbing outdoors requires mountains. Getting to mountains requires a car, or at least people willing to drive you.

[–] Tiger@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

For cycling, more expensive parts don’t really help much. Mid range everything is fine. I don’t need clip on pedals, regular ones are great. For kayaking, anything inflatable is really slower than hard sides and it matters for the enjoyment.

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[–] Rooskie91@discuss.online 19 points 12 hours ago

In cheaper and more fun to get parts from the junk yard.

[–] couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 hours ago

The legality

[–] compostgoblin@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Photosensitive polymer resin is nasty stuff, and stereolithography 3D printing requires a lot more safety considerations than FDM printing does! No regrets though, it’s still a lot of fun

[–] officermike@lemmy.world 14 points 10 hours ago

My boss pushed us to research and acquire a resin printer a couple years ago. My coworker pushed the high-budget Form Labs direction due to his poor experience with resin printing in college. I had zero experience with resin (mostly only used Prusa FDM at that time) and pushed toward the relatively low budget Anycubic Photon direction, from the standpoint of "this is really not what we need to be doing with our budget, and this doesn't make sense for our use case, so I'll try to waste less money."

Now that my coworker's been gone for over a year, my boss thinks no one uses it because we don't know how. I know how, but FDM is just so much more approachable. I can swap filaments, click print, and walk away in about two minutes and trust that I'll come back to a usable part.

Changing out resin is its own special hell, and good luck if you have a print fail and have to clean off the bottom of the tray. I didn't get to a point of trusting prints to finish. Even when it does finish, you still have to wash and cure, and every part I ever made in resin seemed to be dimensionally unstable. Even the sample parts a Form Labs rep sent us were badly warped in shipping. The Photon hasn't been used in well over a year. CEO wants us to get rid of it, and I agree. Boss isn't letting go.

Meanwhile we just got two P2S printers that are cranking out parts like a champ. I would rather take a leisurely stroll across Eastern Ukraine than print with resin ever again.

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