Like the title says. Also skills you're working on or projects you're midway through.

My wife and I are learning about Eastern Europe this year and probably next too just because there's so much. It's been fascinating to learn about the Teutonic knights and the Cossacks (fishermen and pirates before they were horsemen, interestingly). Or that some cities have switched countries multiple times and are still known by different names (lviv, lwow etc) At least for an American it's a very ignored and very complex. 

I've been working on a bow drill and other "primitive" fire lighting methods including flint and steel and by magnifying glass. Harvesting some punk wood and fat wood to have a well stocked fire kit. I don't even really have much opportunity for campfires but I find it fascinating.

currently fighting with inkscape and the horrible svg file format.
Spent 6 years succesfully designing and making 3d items.
Now i need to do 2d stuff for the new laser machine, the software is just horrendous.

The laser software recognises by colour what you want to do. #black is a raster scan (burns by lines)
blue is a vector engrave (continuous beam burn)
red is vector cut (exactly the same as blue, but generally slower and using a lot more power).

Sounds easy right ?
And if the controller software ever recognised the colours you set in inkscape - easy it would be.
Alas not the case.

Also learning the things I can cut and engrave - so far I can cut thin wood and fairly thick acrylic and engrave just about everything except bare metal.
I can even carve up fired ceramics !
It doesn't just mark them lightly either, cuts deep enough to flood with paint should you want to.
love the machine, just hate the software I have to use.

learning more about online ways of making money and laws, laws about bows, driving, a little physics and ropemaking

@ perpetualstudent

before going to the balkans for a hitchhiking trip I read some of it's recent history
It seems that all the people I talked to loved Tito's communist government , apparently it's the place where some kind of communism worked (until Tito died). take a look at the recent history you might find it interesting
here is a documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OIwzWgOuBE

Learning how to make selfbows and how to market them.

Currently trying to deepen my knowledge of EKGs. Fascinating subject.

I just tried making a bullwhip, now I’m learning how to use it. I’ve also been meaning to learn how to whip up bad puns too, but the puns are never quite as good as they’re cracked up to be. I actually have a long “short list” of things to learn including real-time wireless video streaming on a Raspberry Pi, writing phone apps to control a wireless microcontroller, build a joule thief boost converter and wire it to a plug board to teach my children about circuits, web scraping and browser automation...  I could go on.

@CA, svg files are xml-based, right?  If so, you should be able to look at the svg in a text editor and verify that the red is pure red, blue is blue, etc. Obviously Inkscape is doing something funny with the colors, but you might be able to compare the xml from a work sample file from the burner with what inkscape produces.

Ah - had not though of that - cheers.

The weird thing is I can change colours and some stick and are ghood and some change but also keep the old colour as well.

Currently got a sheet with two star wars vehicles where the colours are the wrong way round for me. As it uses black for cut and red for raster.
I can change the red to black - that works fine. But when I change the black to red, it changes but also stays red. So while it will cut the right parts, it also wants to cut round the rastered parts as well.

The problem is these machines (k40) while a serious laser (I reckon it'd take your fingers off.), have very cheap controller boards, I can't afford the more expensive drop in board till I've made and sold stuff lol
Why they didn't make them with a bog standard - and even cheaper - board that would take grbl and use gcode, I have no idea.

Right I'll have a look at the svg file in a text editor - cheers :thumb:

Did you get your email ?

I think that I'll never learn enough camping/woods skills, always trying to learn and improve my skills not my gear bag. Eventually I want to start working on my pile of half started projects, bows, slings, camping tools, work tools, gardening the list grows bigger every day, but what I really like to go back to school for is mycology , find it fascinating and think that there's a lot to be discovered

     Political events have numbed my mind.  I really haven't learned or read much since 2016.  I am obsessed with just one thing and you all know what that is by now.  Hopefully things will change November of next year and I can enjoy life again.

We only get the one life there RM. You might feel better if you unplug for a while. Go to a museum, read a book just for fun, spend some time making stuff. Not saying don't stay informed and don't vote, just that obsession doesn't help you or the situation. So why sacrifice your life to it?

Took the girls to a cheese factory and a cheese museum this weekend and for a while nothing existed except old tools and techniques for making cheese. It was interesting. Move to Wisconsin and you'll start eating more cheese. It's weird. 

Working on way too many projects to even think right now, but i have been learning more tree identification, and learning what exactly i have thats on my property.  I had no idea a deciduous evergreen even existed called 'tamarac'@]iam sure my spelling is off,  and i found a few ASH trees.

Got another one on my short list: magnet fishing. Looks like a fun treasure hunting activity... I just need to figure out the local mafia’s favorite dumping grounds for guns and knives :)

@RM: don’t be a victim, man. That’s no way to live! You can’t control what happens in Washington or what ridiculous things blast out on Twitter or the cable news, but you can decide to find a way to be happy by focusing on what you can control.

One thing that I think the internet has caused is that now, everyone is expected to have an opinion on everything. Saying you haven't been following something or that you simply don't care about some news story happening is seen as some terrible thing when really the terrible thing is drowning in a thousand transitory topics that are like grains of sand in the grand scheme of things. Definitely stay informed and everyone HAS to vote, but stepping away from it is also necessary. The human mind has never had so much information available to it and it's not a surprise people are feeling overwhelmed. A relatively short time ago, we were living in groups no bigger than 50 and using pointy sticks to go shopping. The internet is a lot to take into our soft monkey brains.

Good advice for daily living: "Don't let someone else live rent free in your own mind."

No matter how much you despise someone your bad thoughts towards them will not change them one iota. As others have said, be active, vote, but don't be afraid to unplug either. 

My latest practical project is modding nerf guns. I'm still pretty new to it, but I want to brass breach and add a beastly spring to one I have... possibly getting as much as 200-300 fps.

Also ordered in my own 3D printer recently (mostly for work) but it will probably be interesting getting it set up properly.

I'm also cooking a lot more these days, I'm trying to do a proper chef job on almost all of my meals (2 a day usually), and actually really enjoying it, I've probably never been healthier and eat like a king every day! Pretty odd considering up to recently I hated it...

Gonna learn how to butcher my chickens this week. Been waiting, but cant wait any longer unfortunately

not fun, chickens are real characters. I'd keep them for eggs, but not for meat.

what printer you getting pete ?

Everything about E-waste scrapping. Aside from the tradeschool I go to I started an E-waste pick-up business. I advertise to individuals and small companies, pick up their e-waste, process it, sell it. It's fun and pays a little. We're talking mostly old pcs, dvd players, oddball stuff and getting the copper, circuit boards, alu out of it and selling them as scrap. Athough I am not selling my copper and brass, I am stacking it. Copper price should increase in the next 10 years, with EVs becoming a major thing.

Are you harvesting the gold too?  That’s a popular hobby... especially if you can find a good source of old Pentium chips.

Curious Aardvark wrote on Oct 14^th, 2019 at 10:00am:

not fun, chickens are real characters. I'd keep them for eggs, but not for meat. what printer you getting pete ?

I've got an Ender 3. Done a couple of test prints on it so far and seems pretty good.