Could be a painting, a story, a movie, woodworking, absolutely anything. Also why?
I’ve considered making a youtube channel discussing politics with a heavy emphasis on organizing unions. I’m extremely proud of my achievements as a part of a successful union campaign, and I want to share what I’ve learned, give folks some of my war stories, and teach people the political and practical necessities to organizing. The reason I haven’t is because I feel like I would get entirely drowned out in the political youtube space
I’d subscribe just to watch the comment sections.
LeftTube (definitely covered by union-oriented content) does a fairly good job of propping up important messages and messengers. You might try uploading a few videos and sharing them with the likes of Hasan Piker, TYT, Big Joel, Shaun, and PhilosophyTube (Abigail Thorn). Getting your videos in front of the right eyes can expose them to an enormous audience, and most of these people do nothing but consume recommended content in one way or another.
It almost never happens overnight, but I think there’s an importance to your story, and we need more union-centric content. Shoot me a link, and I’ll be a day-one subscriber.
i personally would love to hear your story
A novel. First because I’m not sure on some key aspects of the plot, second because I’m not an amazing writer
you wont get any better at writing by avoiding it. start writing out your current key plot points and see if your pen can guide you towards some others
Also maybe check out the “snowball” outlining method. There’s no secret sauce, except whatever actually gets you writing
What the other person said: practice in public. You’ll learn faster and actually get stuff done. It’ll feel like walking down Main Street with no clothes on, but you’ll actually make progress.
I started a writing club on here specifically because I’m such trash at holding myself accountable to creative stuff. And it’s not like I’m Isaac Asimov now, but I’m definitely making more stuff than if I hadn’t tried.
Anyway, I know it’s easier said than done, and actual execution can feel so uncomfortable, but I recommend it.
Sobriety
If you need a random mf to talk to hmu. Do it. You don’t gotta be a square just because you clean yourself up. You just may fuck up a few times, so may as well try sooner than later.
You’re a good one and thank you but no
What’s your poison?
Learning any instrument and creating music
I just constantly have ideas that need a lot of setup and never have any time.
contact microphones on a canvas run through distortion making noise art is probably the most likely thing to happen next, but again I never seem to find the time.
Your mangled brain would like you to know that there is a boxer called Contact Mike.
user name checks out
A sequel to my first novel that people regularly ask me about 12 years after I finished it. I published it myself and sold to friends, family, work acquaintances. Two young kids and a busy job wildly delayed any free time I might have for grand modern fantasy. One of these years.
Can I have a copy?
I wanna learn more about poetry. I love reading poetry. I’ve written some too. Some of those even got published. But I feel like I don’t really understand how it works. I can write decent lines, make things rhyme, or not if that fits the tone better. But I don’t really understand why it works, if you know what I mean.
I guess I kind of want to study about how to analyze and appreciate poetry in a structured way. I wanted to take a few courses, but I’m in USA and they only have courses on Western poetry, which I’m not really that interested in. (It definitely very good, but I’m more fascinated with Indian, especially Bengali poetry. That’s what I grew up with.)
So yeah, IDK how to do it. But I’ll love to. Maybe I can mail some professors and ask for books? Or maybe actual poets might be better? I’m not sure. But I’ll love to do it one day.
If you’ve had poems published without really understanding poetry itself, you may naturally have an intuitive grasp on poetry. I think it would be interesting if you continued writing and reflect on what you write, how you write it, and how you feel while writing it. Maybe write a poem expressing your feelings on poetry!
Then again, studying could give you better means and terminology to express your internal understanding. Either way, I wish you well!
I would read this
Look for online courses, like that archive of free MIT lectures. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found something worthwhile.
I haven’t been able to find anything like that yet.
Try these https://ocw.mit.edu/search/?q=Poetry
I have several small ideas that seem like they’d go together in a work of fiction, but there are also so many gaps that seeing it ruins any forward thinking I might have about it.
The best way really is to just start. You might chop and change, write and rewrite, many times but you will find a way to make it come together. Writing notes and a list of plot points helps, or even writing out the separate sections and then finding a way to make them meet. Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of sentences and paragraphs. Getting the bare bones down is your starting point. I used a spreadsheet and would add in new points and landmarks as and when they came to me. I still ended up spending ages editing, and adding, and amending until it felt right. Taxing but cathartic to get it all out.
I would add that writing it out, or preferably actually talking it out with someone, will take your ideas from the nebulous internal language of the mind, where they can be these indistinct perfect concepts that capture whatever it is you’re about at the moment… anyway, it will take them from that beautiful but unreal state, into real memes that have to be described with language and imagery and all its limitations.
The first time you speak your whole synopsis out loud, even if it sounds a bit hollow, that’s when you’re idea is born into the real world.
I said I’d make a musical RPG video game, and spent the last six years as a solo Dev for it. It’s now coming to steam at the end of this year.
Next I want to write a musical set in New Zealand about the Maori Land Wars. I have two Maori brothers who were embarrassed of their skin colour (rural NZ is pretty racist). I want to show how formidable and powerful a people the Maori were/are, in a style akin to Les Mis.
I would love to see your musical when it’s done
I keep telling myself I’m going to draw monsters. But I never do.
Would you start with big scarry teeth and draw the rest of the monster around that? Or start with the shape and worry about details later?
Body type. Reptile, humanoid, insect, vacuum cleaner, etc.
What about starting with a really really small monster. Like a tiny little itty bitty marginalia monster
Small monsters outfitted in cast off household junk that has been repurposed is a longer term goal.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s putting the phone down and picking up the drawing tools.
I’m quite literally in no position to criticise, but I’d like to brainstorm some ideas with you. I struggle with this too, but have managed to make some progress over the years.
Do you take notes for work or something where you could scratch out a concept or two in between tasks? Would an app/phone timer like Lock Me Out help get your phone time down to a level you’re happier with?
This kind of stuff has worked for me anyway. Not to say it isn’t still a challenge
I jot down notes in SimpleNote on occasion. I need to gather my supplies.
Like your drawing tools? That’s a good idea. What’s keeping you from that now?
A complete lack of organization and an air conditioner that hasn’t worked in three years. It’s frequently been 87 to 89 in my house for over a month now. It kills motivation to move. But I did just go outside and remove all the 4 foot tall grass from my brick patio. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.
I need to draw monsters that do yardwork. They work outside. Elves make shoes inside. Goblins prune and edge.
What about starting and not finishing?
Ah creative edging
This song that I’ve wanted to record for the past 15 years.
It started stagnating when my preferred DAW changed a lot with the newest update, to the point where I had a hard time being productive in it. The struggle with new features that I didn’t like, and old useful features having been hidden (or even removed), took away the joy of composing, recording, and arranging.
And then I had kids. Four of them.
Then came a period of financial distress, necessitating monetization of every lucid moment I had. The stress killed any remnant of creativity.
However, I’m doing A LOT better now, both economically and mentally, so I started looking for a new DAW. I really fell in love with bitwig during the trial period, so I bought a license a few day ago, and I’ve started playing around with it, taking baby steps in learning to be as productive with it as I was with Sonar back in the day.What a rollercoaster, but it sounds like you’re in a good place now, and heading into a really fun potentially personally rewarding chapter in your life!!
Record an indie album with mostly acoustic instruments then send it off to a DJ to mix and master. It wouldn’t be a remix then, more of a collaboration.
There are games I want to make. I caught long COVID and barely had energy for my job. I decided now that I got laid off for having an invisible disability, I can learn how to make games while I can’t get a new one, but I’m having issues thinking long enough to learn… I’ve almost started my game and that’s where I’m stuck.
I’m also in the learning how to make games path. So far I’ve learned you want to:
- Write idea down on paper. There’s something magic that happens with physical paper. Can move to digital later. What’s the game loop? How do you win/lose? This becomes the start of your game document
- Prototype in game engine of choice. Speed above all else. Don’t make it pretty make it functional. Make it feel good to play.
- Vet the idea. Playtest the game with friends, family, randos. Watch them play, only explain what they need to know to test what you’re interested in. Sit back, watch and take notes. Do they find it fun? What do they think is cool about it? What’s frustrating them? Focus on the fun parts. Maybe the idea is a dud. Don’t be afraid to scrap it and move on to another. Some bad ideas can be salvaged. If people find some part of the game really cool take that an run with it. This process will likely take many iterations to find a good idea.
- Once you have your idea nailed down that’s when real development starts. Plan plan plan. Write everything down on paper first. Analyze your prototype and plan out all the systems the game will need and how it’ll be architect. Then scrap the prototype and build a vertical slice polished game demo.
- This is getting really long but from there you can get funding or just throw that up on steam to start generating wishlists while you build the full game.
A lot easier said than done! But thanks for coming to my Ted talk
- Done. Rewritten a few times. Fleshed out a bit.
- Learning the game engine real fast, as I haven’t used Godot before. But yes, that’s the plan. I have a minimal game loop I want to hit as the first target. And it’s not too much farther than the tutorial result I’m looking at + the main hook gameplay element of the game.
- Bounced the idea at least off people and they sound willing to jump into this.
And of course that’s where the trail ends until it’s vetted enough to move forward.
Nice to see it kind of laid out. Still don’t know how to get past the hurtle of my brain no longer working, but maybe I can still do it… Just slowly.
Webdev. Wanted to do this to increase my tech skills and insulate myself from several degrees of idiocy at work. Just haven’t had the wherewithal.
If you have the time, I’d recommend trying it out. Creating a basic webpage isn’t too hard, and you probably have the tools to get started on your computer already (you can do it with just Notepad and view it in any web browser! Although I would recommend downloading a free proper code editor such as VS Code).
Bruh, I’m talking about a crud app. Possibly running on the shiny framework. It’s not going to be trivial.
Oh, okay. Still more doable than you might think, but of course not trivial. Good luck!
Let me ask, maybe you know: say I want to build a finance app that basically crunches a lot of data accessed from a DB, does some pretty intricate subsetting of the data, and produces Excel reports (XML). I currently do this with about 1300 lines of R code and a SQLite DB. Pretty lean and easy to use (was a bitch to write, tho, really stretched my understanding of lexical scoping and functional programming). If I wanted to webify this, the main challenge that I think I face is finding a framework that allows me to do all that nitty gritty data subsetting and summarizing - this is where R is really excellent, more flexible and expressive than SQL. What framework, if any, might you recommend? What kind of stack would be good for a beginner?
I think that’s a nice hot goal to have, but you’re shooting yourself in the foot by aiming so high (pardon the tortured metaphor). Start with the basics of webdev and work your way up.
Like I’m a senior dev, and for years I thought I understood frontend. Finally, I had to reckon that I did not, and took a course on how to build a web app using React on Typescript + various popular libraries (YMMV).
Yeah a lot of it was boring or stuff I mostly knew anyway, but actually sitting down and going to school on it, like with pencil and paper, was a big help. So now I can actually contribute to FE/web dev. And all those little things I feel I should know are either known, or knowable because now I understand what to search for.
Yeah. I’m like 46 now, and this just feeds into my “fuck it” mentality. Thanks for the input, seriously, that is not sarcasm.
Have you tried discussing this with ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity? I’ve found it extremely helpful for getting started, and exploring different options.
Apologies for the wait!
Most good libraries for interacting with DBs and Excel documents are written for the backend, so you’ll probably want to use Node with a simple web server like Express to serve pages, and do your heavy calculations, report generation, and DB stuff on the Node server. Making a server seems complex but Express is quite easy-- you can get a functional web server in like 10 lines of code.
As for what framework would be good to use for the actual calculations, unfortunately I don’t have any recommendations. Generally I find that JS has enough by default to do decently complex grouping, summarizing, subsetting, calculating, etc. operations. You’ll probably want to use the “new” (now pretty old) array methods Map and Reduce, and new stuff like groupBy could be helpful. If you have any specific questions I should be able to answer them.
Imma be blunt. Maybe your attitude is contributing to the ‘Several degrees of idiocy at work’
Dudes tryin to be helpful with beginner tips and you jump down his throat. The irony of you saying crud isn’t trivial 😂
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