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The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

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Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#141

Post by doubled112 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #133
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…

As a guitar player, this really resonates. I now spend almost all my time with my unadorned acoustic, leaving behind the tinkerhole of my electric guitar and its effects pedals, looper, amp etc.

Oh yes! GAS is real, and seemingly endless. I'm getting better though.

I've had the same two electric guitars for about a decade now, and have no real urge to change them up.

The pedals though. I can't use an amp in the townhouse I'm in, so fell into the rabbit hole of ampless setups. Almost everything is just a new take on a 30-60 year old circuit though, or a model of the same.

I can't handle guitar modelling software. It seems like a really cheap way to go, but it's just endless futzing about. Not only do I need the gear, I need the PC to work too. Nope.

I think somebody once said that this entire industry would fall apart if everybody just learned to use an EQ, and I have to say it feels really accurate. I think I'm almost "done" with gear though, and I can feel my playing getting better as a result.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#142

Post by doubled112 »

RHSman2 wrote: post #96
dehrmann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My kids race BMX, and I used to ride trails quite a bit.

My advice to them was that there are no slow bikes, just slow riders.

Sure, there are benefits to picking gear that works for you, but that's probably about 10% of it. The rest is your mind and body.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#143

Post by irrational »

mnky9800n wrote: post #82
irrational wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one thing I appreciate about swimming. I don’t own the pool, so no fiddling there. My swim trunks require no fiddling. The only thing that could possibly require fiddling are my goggles, but I use Swedish goggles that are so simple (two pieces of plastic and a piece of rubber - there isn’t even a gasket), they don’t require any fiddling.

can you recommend water proof earplugs? i have a ruptured ear drum and have to protect it but the wax moldable ones never seem to be completely water proof.

I cannot. I've never needed them. Sorry.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#144

Post by rrherr »

The 2nd diagram, under the heading "Appearance of Expertise", shows a negative correlation between expertise doing the hobby versus discussing the gear.

Counterpoint: "Jean Renoir once told us that when his father's friends used to come to the house — all the distinguished French painters of the time — they never talked about grand theories of painting; they talked about where to get the best turpentine"

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/10/20/turpentine/

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#145

Post by unzadunza »

I'm firmly in the 'gear' quadrant of beer brewing. I build a really cool automatic brewery (wrote my own software, welded a 3 tier frame, had a stainless insulated mash tun welded for me (my welding skills are not good enough for that)). All I have to do is add the grains and hops and suck the wort out with a march pump at the end. Everything else is automatic.

I haven't used it in 4 years. I think I just enjoyed building it more than I enjoy using it.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#146

Post by rramadass »

pjc50 wrote: post #117
rramadass wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, Ha, Ha! Jerome Klapka Jerome ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome ) is one of my favourite authors. For those folks unfamiliar with his works Project Gutenberg is a great resource https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 Start with "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and go from there. Just make sure that you are not eating/drinking while reading his books and have somebody monitoring you in case you…

> Klapka I've known of "Three Men In A Boat" since childhood and it never occurred to me to ask what his middle name was, or that it might be this surprising.

For me it was the other way around; We had the episode "Uncle Podger Hangs a Picture" from Three Men in a Boat as a chapter in our English textbook and i remember our Teacher explicitly mentioning his middle name as "Klapka" since it was such an odd name.

If you like old genteel British Humour, you should also checkout Stephen Potter's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Potter) series of books on Gamesmanship. Unfortunately Project Gutenberg doesn't seem to carry them and so you might have to get a hard copy. The classic movie School for Scoundrels (1960) based on these books is available on Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/SchoolForScoundrels1959

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#147

Post by sodaplayer »

ehnto wrote: post #41
mym1990 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat similar, but within a few years of starting photography I had a DSLR and 4-5 lenses. I was also taking lots of pictures but overtime the allure of the big gear wore off as I realized I didn't want to carry it around anymore. Eventually I downsized to a Fujifilm X100F and its been a wonderful experience!

I also downsized camera gear and much, much prefer it. A version of the old saying, the best camera is the one you'll actually take out.

Yup, bought an old, used point-and-shoot last year, and the low stakes of it have me using it more than my DSLR. Much easier to slip small P&S is my pocket for a vacation or hike. It's got the CHDK firmware on it as well, so it still outputs RAW, and I can keep my development process.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#148

Post by addled »

gumby wrote: post #24
mjb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great quote, thank you. I enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, but never read this one. It may be time to revisit Jerome.

You can't possibly be old enough to have met him in person, so I consider you impertinent in using the author's given name. Have a bit of respect and use his last name!

Perhaps they're the time traveller in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Say_Nothing_of_the_Dog?

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#149

Post by asebold »

This article summarizes a feeling I’ve had such a hard time articulating.

At many of my previous jobs, I was so frustrated by the people obsessed with tooling instead of doing the work. Like, why are you trying to develop a react application in VIM after you spent months evangelizing VScode to me?? Who cares, ship the thing!

Of course, these were the most visible people to upper management, and the darlings of our department. :/ Meanwhile I was the one staying on task, making sure things got out on time. Lesson learned: be loud. Advertise your accomplishments and advocate for yourself if you’re a do-er.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#150

Post by anthonypasq »

sveme wrote: post #100
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…

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,…

on the non sport side of things, people talk about and collect a lot of gear. read some stuff about trad climbing
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