My two are:
Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.
Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.
Playing older video games via emulation. The barrier to entry gets easier and easier as time marches on. And as long as you have disc space to download the games, you’ll likely find a repository somewhere on the Internet.
Oh yeah some even let you play in browser now. Crazy how it takes seconds, and most peoples phones can even play most everything game cube and earlier.
That is a particularly handy feature for older computer games from DOS and C64.
But you see, I wanna git gud immediately
- Print one , or something like
- Get a scale/ruler, a pencil and an eraser
- Use the above to draw, first a and then a
- Then imagine and draw stuff like
The last one is not true isometric, but has a perspective. But you can make similar good looking stuff in isometric too.
To do perspective, you can’t use the Printed isometric line/dot paper.
Instead, it has an additional step of choosing the infinity points and making your own lines for it.
I tried to find a good instructions page, but unfortunately, search engines just prefer YouTube videos (which I don’t like to recommend).
Either way, this is one method that lets you
git gud
pretty fast, albeit in a different drawing form.
Another thing: The last example picture I showed, has circles and semi circles. Avoid those in your drawing at this stage. That requires you to learn an extra method.
/restofthefuckingowl
That intermediate step is amongus sitting down.
Painting miniatures. Anyone can do it and make their board games look way nicer.
All you have to do is avoid paying New-In-Box GW prices, and avoid/minimize GW paints and the cost of the hobby drops through the floor.
Tons of skirmish games in all settings are around, many of them with free rules. Battletech is cheap because it basically needs skirmish game amounts of minis. Even playing 40k is cheap(er) embracing third party and scratchbuilding.
Sword fighting. I joined an armored combat gym and just went consistently. They provide the equipment, at least til you get to the point you want your own armor and weapon. Good fun, good exercise.
What kind of sword fighting?
Armored MMA! Cage fights in authentic armor, with historically accurate weapons. I’ve yet to get in armor, just soft kit sparring and pell work with the real weapons.
Interesting! I looked into it a little (I’ve never heard of this) and didn’t find decent videos of an armored cage match. I wanna see how one goes. Do you have any links?
Here ya go! This was from an exhibition show back in July.
Wow thanks! The vastness of shit people get up to just make me smile sometimes. I’m genuinely ecstatic this exists.
The bizarre culture (pun intended) around sourdough is maddening. The obsession over the “ear,” bannetons, lames, daily feeding: all bro club bullshit. This is the bread humans have been making for millennia; the only tools you need are one hot rock and one not-hot rock.