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Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

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Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m no longer building a house. My family did when I was younger. One day my Dad took us to a random plot of land and went “we’re building a house here”. I figured he meant contractors, did not realize that for the next 5 years, every weekend was going to be building a home from scratch. My parents are retired and live there permanently now. It was a wild ride, learned a lot.

Are there resources online on how to do this? I've always wanted to learn more about construction work, at least to the level where I can do some minor repairs.

Construction has to be something like one the most common and universal of human occupations, you can surely find heaps of documentation.

That being said, the actual techniques used tend to be localized and adapted to specific local conditions, available materials, geography and climate, labor cost etc. There isn't one standard way of going about it, you always learn the local Community of practice [1].

If you are looking to build the stereotypical noth-american stick frame house, the work of Larry Haun comes to mind [2]. The other major tradition is the European brick/concrete/AAC house, again, extensively documented; but you would start with a well engineered project designed by a professional, since failures tend to be sudden and catastrophic.

As for "repairs" the number of trades is almost endless, from the core like roofing, drywalling & paint, plumbing, gas & HVAC, electrical - which today includes house automation and data - concrete work, landscaping etc. to the uncommon like specialist thermal & insect treatment, stonework, chimneys etc.

Each trade has its own community language used by tradesmen in a certain geography, so you need to sink at least some hours to watch Youtube videos etc. pertaining to your specific problem. The number, complexity and local specificity of these trades is so vast that's inconceivable to learn them in bulk, you would always deal with the problem at hand, and if you continue this for a suficient number of years you become knowledgeable in the construction field.

[1] https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/building-complexi...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQmt27qN6AI

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#262
Hi! What a fantastic post, a good day to you too.

I recently found out my bone density isn’t great. Never broke a bone in my life but the doctor advises to start an activity that impacts bones.

I’m not a sports person but last Thursday I went to a boulder gym. I was already coming up with excuses not to go, but decided to hop in the car and just do it, which felt like quite the power move.

I’ve never been “in shape” so it was though. But it was also challenging and it felt great to finish a route. It felt like something I could grow passionate about.

I’m telling as many people as possible in an effort to create some pressure to keep it up, do the work, exercise, and to get better at it.

Hoping in a few years my bone density has increased just a little bit.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#263
post #34

Hola from San Francisco. My niece just turned 13 and really wants a model of the demogorgon from Stranger Things. I've been 3D printing for a few years and found a pretty nice little diorama I hope she'll like. I started working on the stl files and will be organizing and editing them to be printable. Then I'm hoping I will have time in the next few weeks to post-process the parts and paint everything in time for Chr…

Cool project! Greetings from Belgium.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#264
Writing an album.

I had bands in high school and college. Made records, toured a bit. Worked as a recording engineer. I got into software development after I started having kids.

But now that they are older, and I’m no longer studying like crazy to push my career, there’s a bit more space for making music.

But this time, I plan on marketing it. I’ve been studying email/digital marketing, and I’m excited to actually try to sell some albums.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#265
post #79

I’m sick and tired of paying soda stream. Mostly on principle. My wife really likes her carbonated water though. So much so she’s green lit a kegerator for the sole purpose of housing a 5 gallon corny keg of carbonated water! Carbonated water on tap. Even better, I can plumb it into the fresh water line so it’s continuous! Infinite soda water on tap… till the co2 tank runs out anyway. I’m sure this is all old school…

In commie times or early 90s in eastern Europe people (or at least my friend) used to have at home extremely simple device soda charger adapter with two PET bottle connectors on top and bottom, where on each end you could screw 1.5-2L PET bottle, I think one filled with syrup water, other empty, in the middle on side you screw small soda charger bomb (see link, think size you could put in small air gun, one small bomb cost around 13 cents nowadays, reasonable even for one time use 2L) and then you just release valve and I think you had to flip over bottles few times. It was incredibly simple and I'm amazed by pricey SodaStream popularity (even over soda siphon/seltzer bottle). Shame I can't find this adapter on mobile, so now think it had to be home made device which was very compact, no pipes required, everything within small adapter which fit between two bottles with bomb on side.

https://www.amazon.com/Soda-Siphon-Charger-Classic-Sodamaker...

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#266
I’m loving raising my new kid. Funny enough, one of her favorite books right now is Hello Hello by a Brenden Wenzel. I love the way she’ll carry it over to me and crawl into my lap, waiting for me to begin, turning each page for me, how she says hi to the animals in its pages. I don’t care how many times she wants to repeat it, watching her learn and enjoy reading is absolutely delightful. I feel like I’m giving her a superpower by teaching her to enjoy reading. I’ll also read literature or magazine articles aloud to her, and it’s amazing how talkative she’ll become for the next little while, stringing together sentences of babble.

Personally, one of my life goals is to read a book by an author from each country. It’s a little fuzzy since countries have come and gone through history, then there are territories, autonomous regions etc, and maybe not a huge selection of books from each that have been translated into English. I just want to gain a worldwide perspective. One I’ve been slowly chipping away at and had put down for a while but recently became very relevant again is Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Also recently finished the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Cixin Liu, The Every by Dave Eggers (not really part of the goal, I just like his work, I‘d recommend that and it’s prequel, The Circle, to this crowd) and am saving the 6th and final volume of Knausgård’s Min Kamp for the long arctic winter ahead.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#267
Good morning, I used the first hours of the day to paddle, listening to the Republic I and II books by Plato. I started to study philosophy at university at the beginning of the year, and jumped right into it. One of the advantages is the immense literature and works existing in the area. I have to write an essay about the relation between Socrates' death and philosophy and politics, and although I never liked to write, I have been doing it in a very good way. In the afternoon I will start programming in closure again, because I have a small weather analysis service that I run in closure and clojure and clojure script that I use as a playground (clojure in production , clojure script, visualization, k8s and etc)

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#268
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re very kind. Looking forward to kidney stone surgery next week.

Hahaha! "Looking forward to"… I suspect you're more looking forward to the after part, where you recover and feel like a zillion percent better… Here's wishing you the speediest of recoveries. ;)

This is going to be TMI but: I don’t mind getting surgeries because it gives me at least one night of good sleep afterwards, and I sleep very poorly.

I don’t drink or do recreational drugs so the 15 seconds of being high before the surgery is always intriguing to me.

Now the beginning part where they go north up the southbound lane with a scope, well, that’s not welcome at all.

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#269
post #48

Pissing blood and on pain meds here in Seattle, and loving your post. HN is by far my favorite site. Every once in a while we get something out of left field like this for a bonus. Oh, and I’m cobbling together a tech publishing product when I can think straight. Thank you, stranger-yet-not-stranger!

Get well soon.

Thank you very much

Re: Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment

#270
First off, I'd like to share that writing a diary is amazing for collecting thoughts. There are so many brilliant ideas that flow about but never get written down unless you have easy way to save them. This is what makes me excited now.

Since I strted, I also started collecting game design thoughts. Now I'm messing around with voxels, with the goal to create a sandbox in which you can reshape procedurally generated towns (including via explosive means).

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