| HN Mirror

I can tell you about what I learn about. It's hard for me to pin down whether it's dabbling because it's not as if I become disinterested once a spat of study has run its course.

Here's are some examples of how I've used my spare time:

- I once was taking math lessons through Khan Academy from the ground up. Yes, this meant going all the way from arithmetic to at least college algebra. I wish I could have gone a lot further, but I had to devote my time back to programming and other topics. I did this because I have always been absolutely terrible at math, and as I got older I didn't feel good about it.

- For a while, and still off and on, I became fascinated with player pianos, music boxes, nickelodeons, and orchestrions. More specifically, I was very interested in understanding how self-playing instruments could function without electronics. I spent many nights reading through patents and Mechanical Music Digest trying to understand the basic inner workings of self-playing instruments, and even got in contact with a retired player piano repairman. What I learned was that a lot of the basic concepts in electronics existed in pneumatics before electronics took off.

- I have a casual interest in my local botany, edible plants, mushrooms, etc. I'm actually pretty good at plant identification and remember the scientific names better than the colloquial ones. It's a very interesting experience to forage for your own food in the wild.

- One of my interests of the last ~5 months is learning the mechanics of nuclear explosions, radiation, fallout, etc. Of course I have recent events involving North Korea to thank for that. Since I live in a likely target for an ICBM, I wanted to learn just what it can take to survive such an attack. I've learned that most preppers are woefully underprepared.

- There's a nearly unlimited supply of lectures on YouTube about human psychology, theoretical physics, etc. I usually pop one up on my Chromecast while I'm doing work on something else.