Could be a painting, a story, a movie, woodworking, absolutely anything. Also why?
Sobriety
If you need a random mf to talk to hmu. Do it. You don’t gotta be a square just because you clean yourself up. You just may fuck up a few times, so may as well try sooner than later.
You’re a good one and thank you but no
What’s your poison?
I just constantly have ideas that need a lot of setup and never have any time.
contact microphones on a canvas run through distortion making noise art is probably the most likely thing to happen next, but again I never seem to find the time.
user name checks out
Your mangled brain would like you to know that there is a boxer called Contact Mike.
Methadone for F2P Skinner-box games. An endless treadmill of dungeon-crawling, basically knocking off Path Of Exile or similar - but aggressively free. No mechanism whatsoever for taking your actual money. It’d use all the tricks that make spending bullshit currencies feel good, but you’d actually find those currencies, like it’s a video game or something.
A key conceit of the modern-fantasy setting is that credit cards are naturally occurring. Magic understands that plastic is money now, so they just kinda spring forth, as loot. Maybe less than loot. They’d grow on trees. Have as many as you like - you’ll enjoy it less than playing. The game’s incentive against spraying cash at every problem is that you still have to examine the in-game model and type in some long sequence of numbers to get a random quantity of dollars. It’s amusing but not really fun. You’ll enjoy the game more if you just play it.
What you’d spend that fake money on is a trickle of procedurally-generated variations for every form of content I can think of. Swords, guns, hats, capes, hairpins, familiars, particle effects, et very cetera. A maximized possibility space of stuff to look at and go “want.” None of it’s ever exactly what you had in mind, because each thingamajig is a random sixty-four-bit number. That entropy translates to a bajillion trim and shape combinations and then several materials and colors on top of that. There’d only need to be a few dozen models for each thing, and a few dozen textures for each layer, and their distributions would drift over time to create a sense of changing fashions.
A lot of this was a reaction to every live-service money-pit having “seasons.” That cyclical change would be textual and central. Summer’s ending, and it’ll come around again, but it won’t be the same summer. So - gear has affinity for its period in time. A summer sword is especially good against summer enemies. It’ll struggle against any lingering spring enemies, and eventually, against emerging autumn enemies. By winter’s end it’s just a prop. You can keep it as a display piece if you really like its randomized appearance, but all of its stats are gone.
Loadouts are visible as a partial halo over someone’s head. Their offensive and defensive capabilities are represented as shapes along that crescent, sliding from the near future into the oncoming past. Someone optimized to hell for right now will have one great spike at the center. And you can probably tickle through their armor with half-faded sword from last season, or any mediocre early drop for next season. All these things have their place and time. There’s never a reason to spend real money on them. They don’t last. They’re not real.
I love everything about that. Even a small tech demo with like one kind of item and a single quest would be really cool.
It might happen if I can stop fixating on machines from the 1980s.
I want to get into a little machining and welding.
Unfortunately I have a smallish townhome that doesn’t leave me much room for a workshop, and even if I had the space, I’d probably have to go in to the tune of a few hundred if not thousands of dollars worth of machines, tooling, equipment, and materials pretty quickly, and I have other things to blow my money on.
I generally just like working with my hands, making things, figuring out problems, etc. and having some machining projects to figure out seems like a good way to fill in the gaps left by a pretty shitty math curriculum in my high school (I’ve probably learned more trig from watching some machining videos and only half paying attention than I did taking an actual trig class)
Why not 3d print? I’ve taught myself a ton of CAD and sm now learning surface modeling. When I’m ready for a CNC, I’ll be ready.
I also want to get into 3d printing, and probably will before I find space for a lathe and mill
But that kind of scratches two different itches for me. I know there’s a bit more to it, but pressing a button and letting the machine do most of the work doesn’t really appeal to me, I want to do it manually.
There’s also the issue of materials, I don’t often find myself needing/wanting a plastic part, but I do find myself wishing I could get some custom made metal pieces
Nothing about 3D printing is set-and-forget when you’re designing from the ground up…
The designing is involved to be sure, but it’s the actual hands-on experience of making a physical object that’s the fun part to me and with 3d printing and CNC that’s pretty hands-off by design. There’s some fine tuning, tinkering, and adjusting to do to the machines to be sure, but once the design is set and you have the machine dialed in, you’re mostly just letting the machine run and keeping an eye on it in case it starts making spaghetti.
I’d rather be the reason its accidentally making spaghetti.
Cloud native desktop Or Cluster desktop computing
I want to get the Linux desktop experience but capable as highly available set of services and jobs that can run on the machines around my house.
I used to be a big reader of books and comics so I have a lot of story ideas and then sometimes I wish I lived in some start trek utopia and could just work on opensource things or do my initial thing which is molecular biology.
Does anyone know those tony boxes for kids? It’s a box with a speaker, and if you put a little figure (a bit like a playmobile character) on it, it plays an audio book as long as the little figure stands on it.
I really want to build it myself, but I have done 0 research yet. But every now and then a thought plopps up, like ‘I could use NFC tags to trigger the box start playing’, ‘I have an old raspberryPi somewhere’, ‘is it even possible to build a good sounding speaker in this size?’,…
But no time to follow up on those thoughts.
That’s beautiful, thanks!
Webdev. Wanted to do this to increase my tech skills and insulate myself from several degrees of idiocy at work. Just haven’t had the wherewithal.
If you have the time, I’d recommend trying it out. Creating a basic webpage isn’t too hard, and you probably have the tools to get started on your computer already (you can do it with just Notepad and view it in any web browser! Although I would recommend downloading a free proper code editor such as VS Code).
Bruh, I’m talking about a crud app. Possibly running on the shiny framework. It’s not going to be trivial.
Imma be blunt. Maybe your attitude is contributing to the ‘Several degrees of idiocy at work’
Dudes tryin to be helpful with beginner tips and you jump down his throat. The irony of you saying crud isn’t trivial 😂
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Oh, okay. Still more doable than you might think, but of course not trivial. Good luck!
Let me ask, maybe you know: say I want to build a finance app that basically crunches a lot of data accessed from a DB, does some pretty intricate subsetting of the data, and produces Excel reports (XML). I currently do this with about 1300 lines of R code and a SQLite DB. Pretty lean and easy to use (was a bitch to write, tho, really stretched my understanding of lexical scoping and functional programming). If I wanted to webify this, the main challenge that I think I face is finding a framework that allows me to do all that nitty gritty data subsetting and summarizing - this is where R is really excellent, more flexible and expressive than SQL. What framework, if any, might you recommend? What kind of stack would be good for a beginner?
Apologies for the wait!
Most good libraries for interacting with DBs and Excel documents are written for the backend, so you’ll probably want to use Node with a simple web server like Express to serve pages, and do your heavy calculations, report generation, and DB stuff on the Node server. Making a server seems complex but Express is quite easy-- you can get a functional web server in like 10 lines of code.
As for what framework would be good to use for the actual calculations, unfortunately I don’t have any recommendations. Generally I find that JS has enough by default to do decently complex grouping, summarizing, subsetting, calculating, etc. operations. You’ll probably want to use the “new” (now pretty old) array methods Map and Reduce, and new stuff like groupBy could be helpful. If you have any specific questions I should be able to answer them.
Have you tried discussing this with ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity? I’ve found it extremely helpful for getting started, and exploring different options.
I think that’s a nice hot goal to have, but you’re shooting yourself in the foot by aiming so high (pardon the tortured metaphor). Start with the basics of webdev and work your way up.
Like I’m a senior dev, and for years I thought I understood frontend. Finally, I had to reckon that I did not, and took a course on how to build a web app using React on Typescript + various popular libraries (YMMV).
Yeah a lot of it was boring or stuff I mostly knew anyway, but actually sitting down and going to school on it, like with pencil and paper, was a big help. So now I can actually contribute to FE/web dev. And all those little things I feel I should know are either known, or knowable because now I understand what to search for.
Yeah. I’m like 46 now, and this just feeds into my “fuck it” mentality. Thanks for the input, seriously, that is not sarcasm.
I want to buy an old police cruiser (crown Vic) and chop it up into a rally car, and do the gambler 500.
I have a factorio comic/vid idea I’ve been kicking around in my brain forever. Kinda made a story board of it but realized idk how to make story boards. Or how to tell stories, or how to make comics or animate things lol So if it’s ever gonna get finished it’s probably gonna be some shitty napkin comic 😂
I keep telling myself I’m going to draw monsters. But I never do.
What about starting with a really really small monster. Like a tiny little itty bitty marginalia monster
Small monsters outfitted in cast off household junk that has been repurposed is a longer term goal.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
I’m quite literally in no position to criticise, but I’d like to brainstorm some ideas with you. I struggle with this too, but have managed to make some progress over the years.
Do you take notes for work or something where you could scratch out a concept or two in between tasks? Would an app/phone timer like Lock Me Out help get your phone time down to a level you’re happier with?
This kind of stuff has worked for me anyway. Not to say it isn’t still a challenge
I jot down notes in SimpleNote on occasion. I need to gather my supplies.
Like your drawing tools? That’s a good idea. What’s keeping you from that now?
A complete lack of organization and an air conditioner that hasn’t worked in three years. It’s frequently been 87 to 89 in my house for over a month now. It kills motivation to move. But I did just go outside and remove all the 4 foot tall grass from my brick patio. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.
I need to draw monsters that do yardwork. They work outside. Elves make shoes inside. Goblins prune and edge.
Would you start with big scarry teeth and draw the rest of the monster around that? Or start with the shape and worry about details later?
Body type. Reptile, humanoid, insect, vacuum cleaner, etc.
Welding. I’m currently putting my woodworking on hold because of other project, so i really can’t start another until i finish the current one and finish whatever i’m trying to finish with my woodworking
There are games I want to make. I caught long COVID and barely had energy for my job. I decided now that I got laid off for having an invisible disability, I can learn how to make games while I can’t get a new one, but I’m having issues thinking long enough to learn… I’ve almost started my game and that’s where I’m stuck.
I’m also in the learning how to make games path. So far I’ve learned you want to:
- Write idea down on paper. There’s something magic that happens with physical paper. Can move to digital later. What’s the game loop? How do you win/lose? This becomes the start of your game document
- Prototype in game engine of choice. Speed above all else. Don’t make it pretty make it functional. Make it feel good to play.
- Vet the idea. Playtest the game with friends, family, randos. Watch them play, only explain what they need to know to test what you’re interested in. Sit back, watch and take notes. Do they find it fun? What do they think is cool about it? What’s frustrating them? Focus on the fun parts. Maybe the idea is a dud. Don’t be afraid to scrap it and move on to another. Some bad ideas can be salvaged. If people find some part of the game really cool take that an run with it. This process will likely take many iterations to find a good idea.
- Once you have your idea nailed down that’s when real development starts. Plan plan plan. Write everything down on paper first. Analyze your prototype and plan out all the systems the game will need and how it’ll be architect. Then scrap the prototype and build a vertical slice polished game demo.
- This is getting really long but from there you can get funding or just throw that up on steam to start generating wishlists while you build the full game.
A lot easier said than done! But thanks for coming to my Ted talk
- Done. Rewritten a few times. Fleshed out a bit.
- Learning the game engine real fast, as I haven’t used Godot before. But yes, that’s the plan. I have a minimal game loop I want to hit as the first target. And it’s not too much farther than the tutorial result I’m looking at + the main hook gameplay element of the game.
- Bounced the idea at least off people and they sound willing to jump into this.
And of course that’s where the trail ends until it’s vetted enough to move forward.
Nice to see it kind of laid out. Still don’t know how to get past the hurtle of my brain no longer working, but maybe I can still do it… Just slowly.
Pottery and learning blender and creating characters which I then can animate
Learning any instrument and creating music
