31–40 of 56 posts
Reinforcement learning
If you end up joining the contest, shoot me a message on the discord, I would love to chat about RL (I am `lyons` on the discord).
For anyone looking for something to learn, I'd heavily recommend Haskell. It's been an eye opener for me.
I'd really like to get into hobby electronics, specifically DIY guitar pedal design. There's a great subreddit, /r/diypedals, which I've been lurking for a while, I just haven't made the dive into buying my first kit and soldering equipment. Does anyone here on HN have any tips or words of wisdom?
The underlying mechanics of soldering are that you are effectively making a metal to metal connection, which serves as both electrical conduction, and mechanical strength. The key to making good solder joints in the mechanical sense, is to ensure that the solder reaches the full melting point, so that it flows as a liquid. Once it flows as a liquid, it will wick onto/into the metal you are trying to fasten, the components and circuit board.
There is a second component to solder, flux, which essentially optimizes this flow. As you heat the solder, the flux activates, as well as boils off. So this is why its somewhat time sensitive. It is during this activation period that the solder is optimally positioned to make good joints. If you just leave the iron right on the solder for too long, the flux burns off, and the metal starts clumping again, becoming less like a liquid and more like a solid. In this state, its kind of a losing battle to continue to attempt to form a good solder joint. The caveat to flux is that you must clean it off when you are done, as it is corrosive. There are no-clean fluxes out there too, meaning that they don't need cleaning.
Thus, I've found the key to being able to solder well is to pay attention to the flux, and the viscosity of the solder. You can get flux by itself, to add as needed. You can buy it in a marker, or a bottle. This is very helpful with small pitched parts, because it allows the solder to wick very efficiently, as opposed to forming unwanted solder bridges.
When your solder joint cools, you want it to be a nice hyperbolic transition from the horizontal plane of the circuitboard, to the vertical surface of your part lead. In other words, you want it to be concave, as opposed to convex. Another key metric to look for is the shininess of the cooled joint. If its dull, its because some part of the process didn't happen correctly. Add some flux, and hit it again.
In terms of actual technique with the soldering iron, the key science to remember is heat transfer. You are taking one hot piece of metal (the iron), and mating some surface area with another piece of metal, the place where your component meets the circuit board, with the goal of heating that second piece of metal to the point where it will melt the solder. Thus, positioning the tip to have maximum surface contact with your joint is beneficial. Dont be afraid to put a decent amount of pressure as you are applying the tip as well. This will increase that surface area, and the heat transfer.
Finally, this is going to make smoke, and get chemicals on your hands. If you just have a fan blowing at your work area, you are defeating all of your heat transfer work. I've found using a small desk fan, and just having it far enough away to draw the smoke away is a good compromise. Point the fan away from the work, not towards. Also, wash your hands after you solder. You don't want to put that stuff in your body.
Buying some through-hole protoboard with individual solder pads, and some resistors is a good way to practice. Dont worry about the circuit your building, just try to get the hang of making good solder joints.
3D modeling in Blender3D
Blender Guru on Youtube has a good set of video tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOKHwx1VCdgnxwbjyb9Iu1g I came across his channel when an interesting interview he did with Blender's founding creator was linked on here a while back.
Read "Blender 3D Basics"[1], this book is pure garbage. It's 70% of offtopic and author clearly doesn't have experience with blender and can only make some basic things. Author clearly have been paid for number of words and didn't even attempted to fill with useful information. Pure waste of time.
Then tried more advanced book "Blender Master Class"[2], it was actually easy to follow and understand until some point when it went from one pic of blocks to fully modeled temple. (Just make the rest of owl)
Next book I want to try is "Blender 3D Incredible Machines"[3] this time I made quick read of it. It looks like perfect place to learn blender.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Blender-3D-Basics-Fisher-Gordon/dp/18...
[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Blender-Master-Class-Hands-Sculpting/...
[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Blender-Incredible-Machines-Christoph...
I'd really like to get into hobby electronics, specifically DIY guitar pedal design. There's a great subreddit, /r/diypedals, which I've been lurking for a while, I just haven't made the dive into buying my first kit and soldering equipment. Does anyone here on HN have any tips or words of wisdom?
Here is the standard that everyone gets, but sometimes there are deals on other ones: https://www.amazon.com/Hakko-FX888D-23BY-Digital-Soldering-S...
Category Theory. I'm actually fixing this right now doing an online course.
3d modelling. Haven't gotten started. Really want to learn it.
Rust / Clojurescript. I've started several times but not really been invested enough in the projects I think up to get very far.
Swimming. I am also starting to make progress here.
Handstand. I have the strength and flexibility but need better technique.
Spanish. I understand when I listen but haven't learned how to speak, need to move to a latin country.
Eye contact. I can do it with some people but with others (people who feel insecure) I empathize too much and break eye contact and start talking to the sky.
Sperm retention. I want to be able to control my ejaculation, I've practiced a little but it's quite hard.
Haskell. I can only do simple things and need to understand more jargon. Category Theory. I'm actually fixing this right now doing an online course. 3d modelling. Haven't gotten started. Really want to learn it. Rust / Clojurescript. I've started several times but not really been invested enough in the projects I think up to get very far. Swimming. I am also starting to make progress here. Handstand. I have the stren…
I might want to look at some modern C++ style, but it's tricky to figure out a year to land on, and it's tricky to find a good book. This could be interesting for some gaming projects or simulation projects of mine.
I might want to look at salt/ansible from a professional perspective. I'm a chef guy, but it'd be good to know some of the other tools around. This is mostly a case of lazy and lack of personal project. Containers and orchestration systems as well, but that's planned at work.
Beyond that, electronics and model building. I've gotten myself some lego, an arduino, but I'll need to work more on that to do ... things. I dunno. Make my lego crane automatically pick up bright pink blocks or something. From there, I'd probably venture further into model building, like ships or planes. Or Nerf-Tanks. it sounds really useful to me to have a good basic grasp of low-voltage electronics, and how you'd wire up a home or how you'd fix simple electronic devices. It's something I'd be missing if I was supposed to build my own home from scratch.
And beyond that - but I really want to get going there this summer - get and learn to paddle a folding canoe. I need to work on my work-life balance, and paddling a canoe is a great thing to just ignore the world. It's hard to think about binary deployments if there is a duck racing you.