rudyharrelson

I resolved to get back in shape last year after sitting on my ass for a good long while. Happy to say I've stuck to it and am in the best shape of my life at the moment (at least strength-wise; my cardio is still trash lol).

For anyone else looking to hit the weights, I started with a simple 5x5 workout. I didn't bother downloading any apps or anything; I just keep a simple .txt file on my PC tracking my progress. Personally I'm not a fan of how hard the Stronglifts website tries to sell users an app and spreadsheets and such, but their guides are useful.

And I love Dr. Mike's channel. He's been consistently helpful ever since I started hitting the weights again. Gives great advice in my experience; super knowledgeable guy.

My favorite is intentionally misunderstanding questions and giving literally correct answers.

An old favorite of mine:

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Yes."

😒

I don't wanna be a buzzkill, but if you've only been practicing for a month so far, I'm not sure there's gonna be any particular resource that's going to make you improve faster, short of taking formal lessons. It sounds like you're already making good progress, so just keep doing what you're doing! Read that book you downloaded, add new finger exercises to your daily routine, and drill the chords and scales and such into your muscle memory so you can do them in your sleep. But this all takes time.

The biggest factor, at least for me, was consistently practicing for years. I've been playing for about 17 years now and, by the end of the first year, I had spent hundreds of hours with the guitar in my hand (it was my primary hobby). I'm no rock star, but I got pretty decent by just practicing the stuff I wanted to play and learning the basic fundamental concepts like scales, arpeggios, chord structure, etc.

One good piece of advice my old man gave me: even when you're not actively practicing, just having the guitar in your lap when you're working on other stuff winds up making it extremely comfortable to handle. I'd sit with the guitar in my lap while doing homework, or using the computer, and would end up fiddling with it here and there, gradually getting better at navigating the neck, getting more familiar with the distances between the strings, etc.

And use. the. pinky. A lot of guitarists shy away from fretting with the pinky finger if they can avoid it, but they're doing themselves a disservice. Put in the effort to train your pinky to fret and it will pay dividends when you start tackling more advanced stuff. Even if you can easily hit a note with your ring finger, hit it with the pinky to give the pinky more practice so it becomes second nature.

Find some finger exercises that help teach finger independence. I learned a great one from a Chet Atkins VHS tape back in the day, but I can't find it anywhere online at the moment; I'm sure there's a million similar exercises on YouTube though.

If you're learning a song through a video on YouTube and it doesn't tell you the strumming pattern or the tuning or whatever, you can probably find that info on Ultimate Guitar. I'm not affiliated with them, just been using their site for basically the entire time I've been playing. Has an absolute mountain of chord charts, tabs, yada yada. Very useful.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. 🎸

You might enjoy this read: https://destevez.net/2021/09/decoding-voyager-1/

It talks about decoding the signals sent back by Voyager 1

Old school cheat codes like this were so fun. If it weren't such a licensing nightmare, it'd be fun if newer games had more easter eggs like this.

I assume you mean "analogy" instead of "apology".

The "THE_PACK" community is a parody of US biker (motorcycle) culture, where many men refer to their motorcycle as their "hog".

"Hog" is also a slang term for a man's penis.

"Cranking my hog" is slang for male masturbation. I think it's also used to refer to revving up one's motorcycle in the biker community, but I'm not 100% sure of that (my old man was a biker so I am loosely familiar with some of their slang).

They intentionally misspell "hog" as "hawg" for fun. So it's just a bunch of guys standing around jokingly referencing masturbation under the guise of talking about riding their motorcycles.

As someone who's eaten many sauces and spice blends that incorporate Carolina reaper peppers, spiciness isn't the same as temperature with regard to heat. Lava's heat is physically destructive and one's tongue would likely be immediately burned beyond recognition. One wouldn't have time to assess the "taste" or texture at all before writhing in agony from severe burns.

In contrast, I can eat a hot sauce made from super hot peppers and, while I'm in agony from the extremely potent capsaicin in the peppers, I haven't damaged my tongue in the process so I can actually taste the flavor and detect the texture of the food.

I didn't have an FPS counter turned on when I was playing around with it, but it seemed buttery smooth on my 60Hz monitor.

I think using Apple products involves paying money to a company who actively hurts you and limits your rights

Vendor lock-in and walled gardens aren't an Apple-specific problem, though. I'm not saying Apple doesn't have problems that they are particularly bad for, just that "paying money to a company who actively hurts you and limits your rights" isn't unique enough to Apple for me to consider someone not "walking the walk" for buying their products. Most mainstream phone brands have locked bootloaders that limit your rights to affect the hardware you purchased, but I'm not going to suggest someone isn't "walking the walk" with regard to their consumer rights for owning one.

I’m not much of an absolutist. One can only do so much. But Apple is putting unreasonable constraints on consumers, and it should not be tolerated.

I agree they're putting unreasonable constraints on consumers. I do not agree with labelling those who do tolerate it as not caring about their rights or not "walking the walk" when everyone has different, if arbitrary, desires, goals, and limitations that are unique to them.

Regulations virtually always lag years behind technology, don't they? In the interim period with absolutely no regulations, we must take it upon ourselves to protect ourselves and loved ones from being exploited.

Given just how wealthy the AI bubble is making some people, we may not see any common sense regulation for quite some time. Best to adapt to that reality imo. Gonna tell my friends and family to call me by my hacker alias, "X360N0_sc0peX" on the phone or I'll assume they're a bot.

This is the first I've heard of it, but it sounds pretty interesting. The new Avatar being born as one of a set of twins is a very neat idea that I wouldn't have considered. That can create some really compelling stories on its own.

But if you care enough not to be ignorant and you still tolerate it, you might have a problem walking the walk rather than just talking the talk.

I think it's disingenuous to suggest that people are only "walking the walk" if they take every single avenue possible to protect every single right they believe they have. I run Linux on every device I own, but the CPUs on those systems are still largely vulnerable to privacy violations from things like Intel Management Engine and other vectors caused by closed-source blobs in the firmware. Am I only "walking the walk" if I also go the extra mile to flash Coreboot or Libreboot to my devices?

If you believe in your right to privacy, you shouldn't own a cell phone at all, should you? Even a dumb flip phone allows governments and other private entities with enough power or resources to monitor your location at all times.