Leisure without study is death; it is a tomb for the living man. ~ Seneca

Heinlein has a similar quote about lifelong learning being the secret to a happy life. Certainly something to it. Or at least I feel worse when I'm not learning about something.

Lately it's been trying to chase down information about 17th and 18th century airguns and modern PCP airguns and the internal workings. I kinda want a modern globe reservoir that looks like it's from the 18th century. What about you? What have you been learning about?

This is actually a very interesting question for me. What I’ve been learning is everything and anything about everything. Literally. I’m one of those people that are read four or five books at the same time, while watching some learning videos on YouTube, having two part time jobs learning two trades (HVAC and carpentry/cabinetry), learning and getting good at five instruments, trying to find the best sling design, and hopefully soon I will start earning money on the side using my skills, and I also might learn some welding too. This is a few of the things I’ve been learning.

The Lewis and Clark PCP always fascinated me. Thats as good a subject as any. It would be cool to have one.

Right now I am (and I know this will be shocking) studying mushrooms.  ;)

I have an old oil immersion microscope that I received from my Grandfather before he passed that I would like to use to study the spores of different species. Not sure if it will work for mycology as im not sure how to measure things with it. But either way it should be fun.

You could start with this calibration slide and use a tripod and your phone to take pictures looking through the eyepiece.   Just count how many pixels in 5 or 10 graduations, divide by that number and you have the calibration for pixels/10 microns (graduations on this slide are 10 microns)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/381639802026?epid=1237338761&hash=item58db813caa:g:lwYAAOSwHrlcHEhU

More generally this year I've been learning to edit audio. I'm... passable at it now, but always learning something new with every episode. Along with that is podcast co-presenting.

I've learnt a lot about slinging, despite so little practice this year, and feel I'm actually a lot better slinger than I used to be. I just need to convert that into competition points...

Later today I'm going to be learning something new and meeting new people. I'm going along to a reenactment group for pole weapon training. To be honest, I'm using it as an "in" to introduce more people to slinging and work towards a Finnish slinging team for the next competition. They are more Viking reenactors so I've also contacted a Roman reenactment group to see if I can get them interested.

That's something I am learning really: the power of actually making the effort. For a lot of this year I've just been inside on my computer not interacting with people. I can't blame just Covid for it either. I've learnt a lot about myself in this time "alone" but I now need to get out the house and interact. The Ibiza competition really showed I'm capable of it and, despite my protestations that I'm an introvert, actually really enjoy talking with people and sharing ideas. It really lit a fire in me to actually contact people and find/make new slingers in Helsinki. I can't keep complaining about slinging alone if I don't do anything to fix that. So I'm fixing it.

IronGoober wrote on Oct 26^th, 2021 at 1:28am:

You could start with this calibration slide and use a tripod and your phone to take pictures looking through the eyepiece.   Just count how many pixels in 5 or 10 graduations, divide by that number and you have the calibration for pixels/10 microns (graduations on this slide are 10 microns) https://www.ebay.com/itm/381639802026?epid=1237338761&hash=item58db813caa:g:lwYAAOSwHrlcHEhU

Wow! Well thats kind of brilliant. Ill give it a shot. I was kind of hoping they had a marked eyepiece or something because of the whole laziness thing but that should work just fine. It would be pretty cool to find some type of phone camera piece that would attach to the microscope lens so I could take pics. One thing at a time though.

    I'm learning more about vegetable gardening than I knew before.  Squash Bugs were a new experience for me and not a good one. 
    With my old garden at my last residence I didn't have to pay attention to which plants needed direct sunlight. Here it's an issue. 
   Next year I'll plant crops that are OK in filtered sunlight in the back plot; plants like radishes, turnips, beets, and stringbeans.  I'll plant the crops that need direct sunlight like tomatoes and peppers in raised beds in the front yard where there is full sun almost all day.  I have to skip planting cucumbers and squash for a year so the Squash Bugs die off. 
Edit:  I've never done raised beds before.  This will be another learning experience for me.