1mo ago

What are you going to be better at by the end of the year?

69 comments

Self-sabotage. Procrastination. Rotting in bed.
- The best thing to do for procrastination is find youtube videos about procrastination and add them to your watch later list
  
  My Watch Later playlist is full :|
  
  This is the best comment on Lemmy.
- mmm ill have one of those, to go.

The way the world is going right now? …survival.

Lifting weights, shooting, weighing less.

Purescript, Haskell, Functional Reactive Programming, Nix, KiCAD, and beating off.
- ...wait, Nix??
  
  https://nixos.org/

Making burritos. I've taken to adding in a bit of salsa and sour cream, and then finishing it in the oven with a layer of cheese on top and drizzling some hot sauce afterwards. I'm currently figuring out side dishes to go alongside them, and then i'll move onto the next dish that catches my attention.
update: oven broke lol

Legal writing & holding local public officials accountable fo bad actions.

Making it to the end of the year will be a feat in itself

Protecting my privacy. I am gender nonconforming and on HRT. So with the current political atmosphere and the fact that it has enabled and encouraged hate speech and attacks, I'll new to be more careful on platforms that my identity is more prevalent.
I'm not going to hide, as I'm not hiding by posting here. But I'm going to remove my data from corporate platforms that have connections to law enforcement and have poor security that insist on keeping my personal details. Can't trust the federal government or any company, starting next year if the Project 2025 or Trump's plan are truly put in place.
- I'm a cis het in the most protected racial class and gender and I'm scrubbing my shit. Facebook and Reddit accounts have been deleted and this and mastodon linked to a protonmail account accessed through a VPN are my only social accounts. We all have something to be afraid of and I'm already thinking about how to build an Anne Frank hideaway in my laundry room for my trans and brown friends. Protect yourself and hit me up if there's some way I can help.

Aiming.

lowering my expectations
hopefully, pretending to be straight or asexual; and being able to be happy without friends, as these will be needed survival skills
- We're better together. Don't try to survive on your own, having friends you can trust is crucial for survival
  
  that's unfortunate, as I don't really have any close friends I'd say I trust or could count on for more than thoughts and prayers. oh well.
  sometimes that's just how it is.

I started learning how to make karaoke videos. Because the songs I like to sing are not readily available in karaoke format on YouTube.
I made a channel for it and everything 😉 I'm getting ready to publish my 2nd video very soon.
My goal is to try to do 1 song per month at a minimum. But, I do also have a day job and life stuff to juggle. So the YouTube channel is just a hobby.
- Oh hey, that's really cool! A lot of the music I like to sing along to frankly isn't popular enough to get the karaoke treatment
  How do you get started learning about that? Do you need a high quality source with a separate vocal track, or can you somehow isolate the vocals from a simple rip?
  Super cool hobby, good luck to you
  
  I use 2 pieces of software.
  One is called "Ultimate Vocal Remover". Free and available on GitHub. It's a piece of software that seperates the vocals from the instrumentals. It's a little bit complicated to setup but once you got it setup you can just drag and drop the original audio in and then it spits out all the different tracks and stuff.
  Then I use another one called "KdenLive". Also Free download. This one is basically a video editor. And can be used to create the text for lyrics. It can also do animations and such. Admittedly it's a lot of work if you want to animate the lyrics haha. You basically have to line up the highlighting with each syllable in the word. Doing it without highlighting is a lot easier but also less precise. So pros and cons. ( I'm the meticulous type haha, it's just time consuming).
  A friend of mine helped research this for me as they too wanted to do karaoke videos. And then they taught me while showing me their screen. We're considering creating a tutorial video for others but we haven't got around to it yet.
  ;-)
  Lookup "Impulse Karaoke" on YouTube if you want to see my work. Though currently I only have 2 songs so far. I'm trying to do 1 song per month. I have a list I'm working off of. We'll see what happens after that.

Using a guillotine
- Boy do I have a song for you!
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJ5ZViYhHQ

Running, hopefully.

Exobiology in Elite: Dangerous. Just started last night and is already making some progress.

I switched to arch on my main PC, so probably better at managing Linux. Ramping up my road biking workouts, so I'll probably be faster (I normally do a 500mi riding event from Christmas eve to new years and hoping to crush that this year).

Basic music theory and guitar playing.
Also, learning how to use an Altair 8800 clone

Deno2 and typescript. For no particular reason the release of Deno2 has prompted me to build a web app in my spare time. I mostly a sysadmin, I haven't written anything but APIs and utility scripts for at least 5 years.

Swimming, I used to swim in high school but I've been out of practice for a couple decades, I got back in the pool a couple of weeks ago and struggled to swim 500 yards which is something I used to do in 6 minutes so I've been going a few times a week and pushed myself to 600 yards the last few sessions, anyway I want to try for 1000 yards by the end of the year.

Singing
- I love to sing, how does one get better at singing?
  
  Depends on the skill level that you are starting on. If your are starting more or less new then I cannot overstate how useful a teacher can be in getting things right from the get go.
  Generally speaking you want to start out with training basics like correct breathing and how to create a tone correctly. I'm the end singing is a very physical thing. You learn to use the muscles in your mouth and throat properly.
  Also things like hitting the right pitch and rhythm are a thing. Depends if you have a musical background otherwise.
  And very important: If something hurts die out after singing, you're not using the right technique. It will occur that your do things wrong while practising but listen to your body and don't overdo it.
  I can warmly recommend Catherine Sadolin's Complete Vocal Technique. It is a fantastic book especially if you don't want to / can't get a private teacher.
  I hope this was somewhat helpful to you, cheers!

Crying

gunsmithing and 3d printing (just check my post history)
- Me too! I have a pile of broken or malfunctioning guns and I want to figure out each problem. Had dropped out of gunsmithing for the past year or two, want back in.

Flute! I started learning it last December, it's been nearly a year and I've learned SO much. Going to keep at it and get even better!

Speellng.

Software development. I'm still not very good, but I'm better than I was at the start of the year.
- I was in a thread the other day about what things make us feel stupid, and for me it was front end development. Saying it out loud made me realize that I should probably take another kick at the can, and I'm starting on React today.
  Software's one of those tricky things where sometimes you never feel like you're very good at. Every thing you learn makes you realize there's more to learn, and as you become more knowledgeable sometimes you might actually feel less knowledgeable. The Imposter Syndrome kicks many a new developer's ass, so try to bear in mind that you probably know way more about software than before you started, and now you have about a year's experience to boot!
  Good luck to you!

Traditional wetshaving
- Safety razor is the way to go! Take it slow and let the weight of the safety razor do the work. It's so much cheaper than the multi blade razors too!
  
  Definitely. It’s also so much more enjoyable!
- I remember my dad doing it and it brings back good memories for me: The smell, the sounds.
  
  If you shave, I highly recommend learning how. It's completely transformed my experience of shaving from a task that I dreaded to an enjoyable part of my day.

Reading japanese, living life. Hopefuly I want to be better at overcoming my trauma but that outcome is kinda independed of my actions towards that.

Oh no is it that time of that year already?!
Maybe I should do the things I'm planning to do all year.

Reading academic literature hopefully. This shit is such a drag

Art.
- What's your preferred medium? Do you have a way to make art everyday? I feel stuck at times and learning about how and what other art interested people Do gives me ideas.
  
  Digital 2D art drawn in Paint Tool SAI 1! I've been using that program for as long as I've been drawing digitally and honestly wouldn't settle for anything else. I don't typically draw everyday, only when I'm in the mood for it. To get ideas I'll try doing random rough sketches and see what I vibe with, othertimes I can get inspired by movies, videogames or anime!

I want to get better at deeply understanding people, which probably starts with getting better at listening

Hopefully my hobbies and mental health. Hopefully...
I kinda hate doing my hobbies as they were "talented" ones and just about everyone in my life was toxic competitive about it. I was seen as "good" and everyone competed with me. But then they see I'm not good and still hate me for being "better" despite being not good. So improving and unfortunately actually becoming good is just triggering now.

Programming
Cooking
Sticking to a diet
Managing finances
Driving
Cultural knowledge stuff
Socializing
Cleaning
Lifting weights :p
Trip/travel planning
Cycling
Phone repair
Python programming
Embedded development
And probably more. Don't sit still, do diverse stuff and you'll get a lot done. Well, we do.

Writing, I hope. I'll have more time to spend on it here in about 5 days.

Climbing and playing DnD, started both hobbies this year, love them and practice / play easily once a week.

Failing

Deploying stacks on aws

My job (I guess?)

Setting and enforcing boundaries around holidays.
Sticking to a consistent sleeping schedule.
Exercising most days than not.
Listen to me first and keep tuning out all outside noise.
Managing things step by step in the best way circumnstances allow.

69 comments