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The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

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Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#91

Post by rramadass »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #87

When you present a four square quadrant to measure something in terms of two values (axes), with two categorical values like this, I’d like to request you do it the same as every successful management consultancy and pitch deck in existence: the aspirational/better/best quadrant needs to be top right, not top left. I looked at this and immediately squinted, because it looked like doing the gear was the thing we shoul…

Good point! I too was thrown off by the picture for a few seconds before adjusting.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#92

Post by andreareina »

dehrmann wrote: post #32
gensym wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

> With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Running reminds me of strength training. No one thinks a new barbell is going to add 10% to their one-rep max.

Have you seen all the specialty bars fittube is repping?

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#93

Post by JackMorgan »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He…

Mmm this right here is why for the last two years I've been using Jetbrains IDE and Obsidian as my daily drivers, because my Emacs config isn't _quite_ right and if only I could have a shortcut to tile the buffers according to the golden ratio... but first why isn't the font-face-mode applying to magit... Hey wait, this elisp to convert org-mode to markdown is failing but only in this directory...

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#94

Post by samirillian »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #36

It's well known in the reading community that "reading" and "talking about the books you want to read" and "buying and owning books" are all very different things; I guess the missing piece would be "talking about the books you've bought and now own" which is sharing pictures of "shelfies" etc. I'm not really into the last one but the first three are all very enjoyable to me, in very different ways, although I only r…

Actually, the fourth category is making fun of people with inferior taste. The highest form of literary enjoyment.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#95

Post by RHSman2 »

gensym wrote: post #5
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He…

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

Isn't it marvellous to simplify. Remove all 'things'. I feel it in playing guitar, I often only play the most simple of setups (acoustic guitar) as it gets the the root of my itch without distraction, blame or gear desire.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#96

Post by RHSman2 »

dehrmann wrote: post #32
gensym wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

> With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Running reminds me of strength training. No one thinks a new barbell is going to add 10% to their one-rep max.

What is hilarious in road cycling is all the middle aged men who really do believe that kit = faster. If you have any basic bike of a reasonable standard, it is ALL about hours, weight and power. Nothing else. On a one hr climb up a 10% mountain, nothing is gonna save your fat ass.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#97

Post by dajtxx »

rfrey wrote: post #30

For efficiency, I took up machining, where "Doing" and "Gear" have had a cosmic "merge cells" command applied to them. The only reason to own machining equipment is to USE it... to create tools and fixtures to improve your machining equipment.

Yes, so many people who write for magazines seem to use their tools to make more tools.

I wish I had some of that in me. I resent every second working on my machines as opposed to using them to make stuff. Which would be why none of them work very well :-\

I wish I was rich enough to pay someone to 'just come and set them all up properly and check on them every couple of months!'

My actual hobby is model engineering focused on locos. Like sailing, it's 90% maintenance & 10% doing. Unfortunately, it's the doing I prefer.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#98

Post by roxgib »

ehnto wrote: post #44
swyx wrote: post #31

i love the framing introduction to this post that is something relatively quotidian but then loops back to something dev career related. > If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, no…

I notice this with YouTube personalities. It takes a lot of effort to run a high quality YouTube channel, and you often see people stop being competitive in their sports and start being youtubers instead. Some of the most well compensated sports people aren't even competing, they just teach on YouTube.

I suppose it depends on the field. A retired athlete probably still has a lot of useful things to say about their sport, whereas other fields really require you to stay up to date to be useful.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#99

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

ehnto wrote: post #44
swyx wrote: post #31

i love the framing introduction to this post that is something relatively quotidian but then loops back to something dev career related. > If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, no…

I notice this with YouTube personalities. It takes a lot of effort to run a high quality YouTube channel, and you often see people stop being competitive in their sports and start being youtubers instead. Some of the most well compensated sports people aren't even competing, they just teach on YouTube.

The only sporty YouTubers I follow are in parkour and World Chase Tag. Most of those are demonstrating their own skills, so they do have to be good at what they do. Some are among the best in the world at what they do. Only one (JimmyTheGiant) is mostly commenting and interviewing (and making brief documentaries about the history of the sport), and he's open that he's not the best at the actual parkour.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#100

Post by sveme »

gensym wrote: post #5
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He…

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

But rock climbing doesn't have the gear heads of other hobbies - at least, I've never encountered these. There are definitely people that enjoy the technical aspects of how to best secure yourself with your gear, what knots to use and so on, but otherwise I haven't had many of these discussions.

On that aspect, rock climbing and especially bouldering are very similar to running. Don't get me started on trail running, though...

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