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The blissful Zen of a good side project

joshcollinsworth.com

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Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#51

Post by indemnity »

chrisweekly wrote: post #41
indemnity wrote: post #8

My day job is soul destroying chasing down JIRA tickets, hours long cross time zone coordination calls, tedious documentation writing, and 10% of the time, if I’m lucky, a little bit of code. It affords my family a great lifestyle, but to preserve my sanity, I have to have little side projects. In the last three months I have: - Built a beastly water cooled SFF (small form factor) desktop PC in the FormD T1 case (995…

Whoa. All that since Jan 1? Inspiring!

The PC build took months of planning, but yeah, I've been on a tear since the December break!

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#52

Post by mahoumaigo »

aaarrm wrote: post #40
keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

I'm the same, and it has kind of ruined me. No one I know thinks the ways I do. I keep wondering if it's just due to anxiety or a fear of death, or an inability to feel present or what. But I really wish I could figure this aspect of myself out so that I can relax and enjoy in a moment. Whenever I realize that I was lost a moment, I get anxious about what I should be doing with my time instead.

I'm also like this. Some part of me feels that any moment spent not honing a skill / advancing in some way is a wasted one. I know it's a bs perspective, but still I find myself taking it constantly. I do manage to force myself out of this way of thinking from time to time, but it requires conscious effort to do so.

I imagine this forum has its fair share of people who fall for this "overachiever fallacy". I'd be curious to hear how others deal with it.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#53

Post by wahnfrieden »

danvillalon wrote: post #44
joshdavham wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I decided to go for Python Great choice and keep going! At my last job, we actually created and sold Anki decks and I can tell you that Python was the main language we used for this. In fact, it's also one of the main languages used to build Anki (it's built with PyQt + Rust & Svelte).

What type of job does sales of Anki decks? I never though this to be have like a market, so curious to know

In Japanese learning, people sell premade decks for things like learning kanji with mnemonics and graphics, or curriculum-like decks that provide a sensible order such as N+1 sentences (sentences with at most one unknown word or kanji)

I'm also in the business of generating Anki decks, except on the tools side: https://reader.manabi.io is growing in popularity for Japanese sentence mining for Anki on iOS & macOS

My project began as a "blissful" side project and is now my full-time occupation.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#54

Post by polishdude20 »

keyle wrote: post #39

It's an interesting read. I'm in the complete opposite camp. I can't pick up a game controller for more than 5 minutes without feeling like I'm wasting time. This has lead to many, many side projects throughout the years, which I tend to like a zen garden[1]. Pruning, refining, improving, and sometimes rewriting. As soon as I work out the game mechanics of any game, I just see it as just content now, and there is not…

I find that due to having a remote job and living alone (albeit with my lovely dog) I'm less inclined to work on a side project where I'm again alone. I tend to gravitate more nowadays to spending time with people and being outdoors.

I used to be really active on side projects when I was a teacher. I'd have my social interaction filled to the brim so side projects were a way to have some alone time and recharge.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#55

Post by czhu12 »

I’ve finally gotten to a place in my life financially where I don’t care as much about the potential of making money from side projects and get to just build what I find interesting with the care and attention that I’ve always wanted.

It’s very zen, finally I feel no pressure to make progress, or feel like I’m wasting time by refactoring.

Sometimes I’d spend days just trying to get an animation exactly how I wanted to, or build vanity features entirely because they’re cool.

Everything else I’ve worked on, had aspirations of making money one day, and it quickly becomes a job.

(Working on https://canine.sh)

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#56

Post by jcpst »

mahoumaigo wrote: post #52
aaarrm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same, and it has kind of ruined me. No one I know thinks the ways I do. I keep wondering if it's just due to anxiety or a fear of death, or an inability to feel present or what. But I really wish I could figure this aspect of myself out so that I can relax and enjoy in a moment. Whenever I realize that I was lost a moment, I get anxious about what I should be doing with my time instead.

I'm also like this. Some part of me feels that any moment spent not honing a skill / advancing in some way is a wasted one. I know it's a bs perspective, but still I find myself taking it constantly. I do manage to force myself out of this way of thinking from time to time, but it requires conscious effort to do so. I imagine this forum has its fair share of people who fall for this "overachiever fallacy". I'd be cur…

For the longest time I railed against the fact that I am mortal, and my time is finite. I wanted to squeeze everything I could into my days, and I would feel guilty about projects I didn’t get to. This is despite having a wife, kids, house, full time job.

Eventually I burned out on programming-based side projects. I switched to activities that do not require staring at a screen. So I build analog electronics, study music.

Then I had a heart attack. My mortality and the fragility of life was never more clear. I accepted that I could die, and let go of all the mental baggage I was holding onto.

I’ve felt ‘cured’ ever since. I don’t recommend anyone get a heart attack. But I do think people fall into patterns, and get stuck inside of them. Sometimes a “pattern interrupter” can break us out.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#58

Post by AdieuToLogic » 

  Zen is found,
  Not in a project.

  But in desire,
  To quell a need.

  A need born,
  From purity of thought.

  Thought without,
  Encumbrance.

  Thought without,
  Politics.

  Thought without,
  Concern of outcome.

  But in desire,
  To quell a need.

  To find Zen,
  Not from a project.

  But within oneself.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#59

Post by esperent »

indemnity wrote: post #50
esperent wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Built a beastly water cooled SFF (small form factor) desktop PC in the FormD T1 case (9950X3D, RTX 4090) I've only got as far as watching videos and daydreaming but whenever I need to replace my current setup I plan to build a SFF PC. I've had my eye on exactly this case for a while. How did the build go? Was it difficult? And how are the temperatures for the 4090? Can you run it at full power?

Final assembly was recent, but it took months of planning and research, mainly around being sure the components would fit in the tight tolerances of the FormD 2.1 9.95L case. I wouldn't say it was difficult per-se, but it did have its challenges in understanding which pieces go where and what screws/standoffs to use where, since you build from the ground up, and for the 4090 I used, have to build it up around the GPU…

Thank you for sharing, I'm gonna save this comment and come back to it. I'm in Vietnam and chose this case partly because it seems resellers do have it in stock here. It's all the other stuff - custom risers and cables - I'm worried about.

I'm gonna target a 4080/5080 - stuck with Nvidia because CUDA - which gives me a lot more wiggle room with the power supply.

I've built plenty of PCs, including a few SFF PCs without GPUs, but never something requiring this kind of customization so I'm planning to find a detailed build online and mostly copy what the other person did, if possible.

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