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Consider Knitting

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Re: Consider Knitting

#91

Post by balfirevic »

criddell wrote: post #84
smackeyacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No better time in history to learn guitar. Amazing online resources, the world is flooded with cheap guitars as well if you’re happy with 2nd hand. There is a technical side to it (tuning, restringing) and plenty of toys, pedals and computer integration to any nerd hearts content. Even if you get stuck at 3 chords it’s amazing the number of pop songs you can suddenly play. Plus if you get past there you still have cl…

I sometimes wonder if I'm broken in some way. I bought my first guitar in 1996 (a Mexican Fender Stratocaster) and my last guitar in 2018 (a Gibson SG). I've taken lessons with three different teachers. I've worked through a Hal Leonard book series. I've subscribed to Guitar Tricks for a while then switched to Justin Guitar. I have YouTube playlists a mile long where I try to learn songs. I keep a guitar in my office…

If you're not looking for random person's advice feel free to ignore :-)

> If I try to play along with a record, I'm almost always lost right away because I start strumming to match the drumming pattern or the vocal rhythms.

Are you able to play any strumming patterns (however simple) with just the metronome? Ideally you'd practice this enough that you are able to do it consistently with almost zero thinking, and then check if it has improved your ability to play along with the record.

Another thing that has helped me when learning new strumming patterns (and just rhythm in general) was practicing just the strumming, muting the strings with my left hand instead of playing chords. First with the metronome, then along the record (all without any chords, just muted strings). Give that a try if you feel like it.

Re: Consider Knitting

#92

Post by alabhyajindal »

Anthony-G wrote: post #67

Back in the mid-90s, I asked my mother to teach me how to knit. Like many women of their time, both she and her mother were skilled at Aran knitting¹ and I was always impressed at the complex patterns that could be created from a length of yarn with two knitting needles – or three for the more complicated stitches. Even though this was the 90s and mindfulness wasn’t something anyone would have heard of in rural Irela…

Why do you consider playing guitar as something tactile but not programming? Genuine question really. Isn't playing guitar also not producing anything tangible?

Re: Consider Knitting

#93

Post by criddell »

balfirevic wrote: post #91
criddell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder if I'm broken in some way. I bought my first guitar in 1996 (a Mexican Fender Stratocaster) and my last guitar in 2018 (a Gibson SG). I've taken lessons with three different teachers. I've worked through a Hal Leonard book series. I've subscribed to Guitar Tricks for a while then switched to Justin Guitar. I have YouTube playlists a mile long where I try to learn songs. I keep a guitar in my office…

If you're not looking for random person's advice feel free to ignore :-) > If I try to play along with a record, I'm almost always lost right away because I start strumming to match the drumming pattern or the vocal rhythms. Are you able to play any strumming patterns (however simple) with just the metronome? Ideally you'd practice this enough that you are able to do it consistently with almost zero thinking, and the…

You are describing some of the exercises from the Justin Guitar Strumming SOS course. I bought that course and worked my way through it and enjoyed doing it, but it didn't have a big impact.

To answer your metronome question - I can do it for a few minutes but soon something like semantic satiation sets in and I get out of sync. I start to focus on how my arm feels strumming and I can feel the pick vibrating in my fingers and feel the air I'm moving with my arm and I notice the vibration in the guitar body and as my attention moves around, I lose track of the click.

Re: Consider Knitting

#94

Post by munificent »

benchly wrote: post #41
bonki wrote: post #2

I like crotcheting (tried it again for the first time since childhood during Covid). My main problem is that, unless you have already mastered it and can do it in your sleep, I have to fully concentrate on it to not fuck things up, which means I can't do something else at the same time, e.g. listen to an audiobook. And because I'm so slow it takes too much time for me to not think that it's a waste of time because I…

If I may ask, do you suffer from anxiety and depression? I do. As part of that whole package, I find it exceedingly difficult to focus on more than one thing at a time. As much as I would love to sit and code a bit while watching tv or listening to an audio book, I simply cannot do it. I've tried many times and find it impossible to focus on my project while my brain is more interested in the easy attention economy o…

I also don't multitask well, but I think it's a little more complex than just not doing more than one thing at a time. Different tasks seem to occupy different brain regions, and it's really that I can't allocate one region to multiple things.

I can listen to music while I program, but it can't be anything with lyrics because programming requires too much of my language center.

Knitting doesn't touch my language center, so I can listen to music with lyrics or an audiobook. But it's too visual for me to watch anything else while I do it.

Re: Consider Knitting

#95

Post by Anthony-G »

deedree wrote: post #76
Anthony-G wrote: post #67

Back in the mid-90s, I asked my mother to teach me how to knit. Like many women of their time, both she and her mother were skilled at Aran knitting¹ and I was always impressed at the complex patterns that could be created from a length of yarn with two knitting needles – or three for the more complicated stitches. Even though this was the 90s and mindfulness wasn’t something anyone would have heard of in rural Irela…

How do you built your own wheels? Isn’t that super hard without industrial tools? Sincere question.

The other answers describe the process well but here’s my personal perspective on how I got into it:

When cycling off-road, wheel rims would regularly go out of shape so I purchased spoke spanners to correct the side-to-side wobble by adjusting the spoke tension. This was important as back in the 90s as almost all non-professional mountain bikes used some form of rim brake: cantilever, and later, V-brakes. I would fix the wheels by removing the tyre and tube and mounting the wheel in the forks (front wheel) or wheel stays (rear wheel) so I could see where the wobbles were.

I eventually realised that the rims also needed to be trued radially, i.e., the rim forms a perfect circle and is consistently equidistant from the flanges of the hub. I was doing this often enough that I ended up buying a proper truing stand and I became the go-to guy for fixing wheels for friends.

Given enough abuse from mountain-biking, eventually wheels can no longer be trued by adjusting spoke tension. It seemed a shame – and environmentally wrong – to discard a wheel when it had a good-quality hub so I graduated to buying new spokes and rims to build on to the old hub (which would usually last for years) using the instructions from Sheldon Brown (as linked to in a sibling comment).

The process of building a wheel requires an understanding of the physical forces acting on the spokes and rim but the practice is more like an art. The more you did it, the better you got at avoiding issues like residual twist. It’s a bit like tuning a stringed instrument. I would even pluck the spokes and compare the pitch to get a feel for the amount of tension the individual spoke was under. It was very satisfying to get a consistent tone.

Re: Consider Knitting

#96

Post by munificent »

al_borland wrote: post #26
bonki wrote: post #2

I like crotcheting (tried it again for the first time since childhood during Covid). My main problem is that, unless you have already mastered it and can do it in your sleep, I have to fully concentrate on it to not fuck things up, which means I can't do something else at the same time, e.g. listen to an audiobook. And because I'm so slow it takes too much time for me to not think that it's a waste of time because I…

This was probably my issue as well. I grew up seeing my grandma crochet. She’d do it while watching TV (though I’m not sure if she was actually watching or just in proximity to others watching), and she was quick. I have a couple afghans she made. She probably made a couple dozen. The learning curve was higher than I expected, especially without someone to be there showing me stuff. I just tried watching some YouTube…

Both knitting and crochet are very difficult and frustrating at first. Harder, I think, than your first time picking up a guitar.

The initial hump is steep but fairly small. It took me about four or five tries before I could make stitches. Once I got over that initial challenge, it got a lot smoother. Since then, there have been continuous incremental challenges, but all fairly small.

I haven't gotten over the hump with crochet. I'm left-handed but knit right-handed because mirroring everything is very hard. The entire knitting world presumes right-handed knitting. However, I knit Continental style which uses both hands and engages the left hand a lot, so I don't find that it feels very "wrong".

However, with crochet, I don't think I could ever hold the hook with my right hand. But also mirroring everything while trying to learn is not easy.

Re: Consider Knitting

#97

Post by jderick »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #92
Anthony-G wrote: post #67

Back in the mid-90s, I asked my mother to teach me how to knit. Like many women of their time, both she and her mother were skilled at Aran knitting¹ and I was always impressed at the complex patterns that could be created from a length of yarn with two knitting needles – or three for the more complicated stitches. Even though this was the 90s and mindfulness wasn’t something anyone would have heard of in rural Irela…

Why do you consider playing guitar as something tactile but not programming? Genuine question really. Isn't playing guitar also not producing anything tangible?

I think with guitar it is easy to enter flow state because it is easy to avoid playing the "wrong" notes. Probably similar to these other hobbies. Perhaps they just happen to have a tactile component, although it is nice to do something a little different from time to time. It seems computer games probably provide a similar form of satisfaction.

Re: Consider Knitting

#98

Post by munificent »

criddell wrote: post #87

> Because regardless of how good the object itself is, it is an inarguable testament to the fact that I chose to spend dozens of quiet hours making stitch after stitch, all the while thinking about her and how much she means to me. A fraction of my life’s wick that I burned for her and no one else. That's lovely. When I moved to Portland in 2004, we went to the bank (Umpqua) to open accounts and found out that they h…

Haha, good question. I have tried:

* French press. Makes great coffee easily (but not super quickly), but the clean-up is a huge hassle and makes the total iteration time not worth it. I gave up on this quickly.

* Aeropress. Makes good coffee and the clean-up isn't too bad. Pretty quick and not too fiddly to do. I did this for a couple of years.

* Mr. Coffee drip coffee. Makes mediocre coffee very easily, pretty quickly, and with fairly easy clean-up. I did it this way for several years, but the coffee gradually got worse and worse. I tried cleaning it out with vinegar a few times but eventually ditched it.

* Pour-over. Very simple, fast clean-up. Can make good coffee but it took me many iterations to dial in the parameters and making it was always fiddly and somewhat mentally taxing. I don't particularly like the fresh and fruity flavor that pour-over leans towards, otherwise I might have stuck with this.

* Keurig. I hate the old DRM-based business model, but now they have reusable K-cups and take regular coffee. This is what I do now. The coffee is only mediocre, but it is very fast. Faster than microwaving a cup of hot water. Like wizardry. The clean-up is very simple and fast.

I think I prefer the coffee from an Aeropress more, but the convenience of the Keurig is hard to beat. Really, I just need a tolerable unit of caffeine first thing in the morning in order to be a functioning human.

Re: Consider Knitting

#99

Post by nmeofthestate »

timerol wrote: post #79
nonethewiser wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd go so far as to say your CS education is incomplete without at least passing knowledge of fabric weaving Why?

The first programmable computer, using punchcards, was a loom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machine

I'm going to go ahead and say that you can have a complete CS education without studying fabric looms.

Re: Consider Knitting

#100

Post by [deleted] »

munificent wrote: post #98
criddell wrote: post #87

> Because regardless of how good the object itself is, it is an inarguable testament to the fact that I chose to spend dozens of quiet hours making stitch after stitch, all the while thinking about her and how much she means to me. A fraction of my life’s wick that I burned for her and no one else. That's lovely. When I moved to Portland in 2004, we went to the bank (Umpqua) to open accounts and found out that they h…

Haha, good question. I have tried: * French press. Makes great coffee easily (but not super quickly), but the clean-up is a huge hassle and makes the total iteration time not worth it. I gave up on this quickly. * Aeropress. Makes good coffee and the clean-up isn't too bad. Pretty quick and not too fiddly to do. I did this for a couple of years. * Mr. Coffee drip coffee. Makes mediocre coffee very easily, pretty quic…

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