I have a ok laptop but its not the greatest, i want to have something such as a creative outlet that i can do in a simple manner? Ive thought about many of things but im unsure if i should try them? Im stuck inside alot and im bored alot aswell. I just want something to do other than light gaming and watching youtube.
What would you advise and why so?
Crochet, knitting, sewing and general ropecraft are some of the best ways to build dexterity, focus hand eye coordination, and train your brain at the same time.
It doesn’t require electricity, the bar to entry is so low you can knit with two chopsticks, some twine, and a book from the library.
Added bonus of anyone who says knitting is for old biddies and women will only ever say that kind of shit when you’re not holding two footlong metal spikes.
As an added bonus you get a whole physical item that you created yourself.
OpenStreetMap
Soldering. You don’t need a huge amount of space. A desk and a box to keep stuff in. You can buy reference kits which allows you to build your own devices like headphones amplifiers. The reference kit should come with instructions and the PBC board will show which components go where. Kind of like painting with numbers.
Once your confident with it then it’s also useful. Replace bad caps on monitors, motherboards, anything really.
For the love of all that’s holy, get a proper ventilation though. A lot of people who soldered with leaded solder for years will tell you that it’s not necessary, and that alone should tell you everything.
Fuck yeah, soldering is incredibly empowering. Getting into it is crazy cheap compared to many other hobbies.
Factorio
So other than light gaming and YouTube, op can be sucked into a rabbit hole of deep gaming, spreadsheets and YouTube to figure out what the hell is happening?
If you like being broke, Warhammer 40000
I like writing stories.
With a little help of AI you can also try indie game dev. My advice - use it as an interactive tutorial and better search engine. You can learn a lot when AI gives you examples and then do your own thing.
I just got into tying knots! It’s a useful skill. You can pick it up in a couple of minutes and then improve continuously. There are a lot of books on the subject. It’s cheap. You can use cord you might already have lying around the house, or you can get paracord at the hardware store, or you can go somewhere fancy like Paracord Galaxy if you want some extra special colors or patterns. It’s soothing and leaves you with something tangible at the end.
Here’s a monkey’s fist knot I just finished! I’ve been giving them to friends to use as keychains.
Ayy, nice monkey’s fist. If you’re getting real into it a sailor’s knife with a marlinspike (blade has no pointy tip and there’s a fold out metal spike to help push rope through knots/lever rope out of knots)
Additional recommendation towards Dyneema (brand name of a type of High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene or UHWMPE rope) that’s about 50x stronger than paracord and quite cheap if you get it as an offcut from a small chandlery, plenty of them about on ebay.
I picked up some 0.8mm or 1/32inch stuff that can lift 65kgs or 220lbs and some 4mm that can lift 2000kg, because of course I need it to be strong enough to tow a car lmao.Flying Dutchman is proud
I second 3D modeling, it’s super fun and entertaining. Blender is the software.
Thirded. If you eventually get a 3D printer, too, that can be a good time sink - as long as you are happy to spend time tweaking and fiddling with things to keep it working.
That way, your 3D blender designs can come to the real world.
I need to learn blender. I got into 3D printers and learnt FreeCAD for parts. It’s very good and easy to use but it lacks complex modelling and I think it runs on one thread only.
Even the pro systems have single threaded portions for modelling. Multi thread, multi processor is only taken advantage of in a few areas, and even then the performance improvement is not drastically different in most tasks
As long as you don’t need CAD levels of precision, Blender is fine. I still need to use FreeCAD when making enclosures and assemblies but Blender works well if it’s more of a decorative piece. I think they are making an actual CAD mode soon so this might be outdated!
Blender. Free and incredibly versatile 3D modelling software. Learning curve is a bit steep but YT has tons of tutorials to help you stumble along.
Indie game development. Tons of great, free (even foss), frameworks out there these days. Try ebitengine for an awesome 2d framework.
Ive thought about many of things but im unsure if i should try them?
You should definitely try them. What have you got to lose?
Since you’re a creative sort, why not make zines? Scribus is a free layout tool you could use to build them and there are plenty of free templates available.
I used to co-edit an indie magazine in the 00s using Scribus.
whenever we accidentally misclicked and it showed the error message “the program GIMP is missing!” the rule was you had to stand up and read the error message out loud
“The gimp’s asleep.”
“Well wake him up!”
I write fanfiction and make YouTube videos using a program called imovie
Learn Rust or another programming language. Useful to know something to expand your ability.
Learning rust as your first programming language sounds like a great way to learn to hate computers haha.
Yes or your second or third too :)
If you wanna start out I’d say JavaScript (or typescript) if your best bet because you can make pretty much anything with it (websites, desktop apps, cli apps, servers… anything you desire).
Yeah, that’s a good way to quit right away. Honestly, learning something which they can use to quickly build something tangible is the best way to get bitten by the programming bug. Making a web page or something like that.
Haha, tbh it’s just fresh in my head. Currently teaching myself it. My first language was qbasic.
Make music
3D modeling.
Check out Ryan King Art on youtube. Follow along with his guides.
Needs pricey software. the Freeware is shit.
Not really.
Blender?
