I check periodically, but I don't see anything within an hour of me. It's a shame, as I'm in the more populated part of my state, between the biggest and third biggest cities and I read about these places and feel I'd really enjoy them.
I have a milk frother for example, that burned out its stupidly non resetting thermal fuse because it got put on the base, something bumped the start button with nothing in and it burnt out. I'd love to have someone show me how to locate that bit and replace it, but I dunno where to go for that.
Same with the 3D printer. I can afford one, but at this stage of life I'd rather someone give me a hands on run through and give me some of their wisdom from experience than me playing around and getting frustrated until I get it right.
I try to make my jobs work for me as much as possible. I find things that annoy me, and see what I can do to change them. Big things I've encountered in a few jobs now that we're solvable: moving physical paper things to electronic records wherever allowed, automating routine tasks, working out better workflows, improving usability of documents and forms.
All those things have multiple benefits. Time savings, uniformity/less confusion, and I learned new job skills to get better paying but still annoying jobs. It also sneakily molds the jobs into something that while I still find it largely pointless, it fits into my personality better because I took ownership of things and made them work in a way more compatible with me instead of them being things that someone that doesn't do my actual work said was good enough and called it a day.
It's near impossible to eliminate many of the stupidest aspects of a job, but inefficiency and having to redo things is one of my biggest energy vampires, so these things make it more bearable to me. No amount of bitching or bullet points will make a boss change the job, but invent a better solution on your own, and odds are they'll let you do it if you show it has merit. Or just do things in secret if you've tested them. I do that plenty too, and as long as work is being done timely and correctly, usually nobody notices.
Also, I focus on things I can actually accomplish. There is a lot of special equipment I need, and you would never believe how rich our company is by the way they maintain things. If something is down, I try to not let it upset me. I just report it to my boss and move on. I used to pressure myself to come up with a solution, but that's Management's ordeal once I report it. Just find ways to let go where you can. Keep doing an honest job, but don't sweat what work doesn't enable you to do. That is their responsibility to you.
Also have activities you look forward to after work. Work may always suck, but if you've got something positive you know is coming your way after work, it goes better than if you just work>home>sleep>work.
Thank you! I'll have to keep that in mind! It seems like a thing that would be useful to have access to. There are always little things where I think it would be cool if the local library or hardware store had a printer for things that don't seem like they'd be worth shipping but nice to have like pen refill adapters for instance.
That was my first thought, but it seems easier to run a few thousand more off the assembly line and make the original part than I'd think to have at least one person develop an adequate 3D part for an items that wasn't originally designed to be 3D printed.
Even for a relatively simple item like the trimmer guard shown, as someone who used those on their whole head for many years, they need to have decent rigidity coming from a number of angles so it cuts evenly, so someone needs to design a decent print, find what types of stock provide the right durability, flex, etc.
So it's doesn't sound that free for them or quick, but it's much cheaper than distribution for a bunch of random parts that may never get used.
I'm curious to see long term effects if this catches on. Will more original parts be made with 3D printing if they need to design prints anyway?
The big downside is even if this were available, I don't have a printer. I don't know anyone with one. I don't know where I could go to (?) rent time on one. So to me at the moment, this is as useful to me as no available replacement part! 😅
I did join up with the local rehab center this year. After promoting it every day, it didn't feel right if I did not participate directly myself. Last year I also had another commenter tell me the community got them to join their rehab center, so we're making a small positive change in the world.
I've been learning a lot there and get to see many adorable animals up close. Here is our newest owl patient:
I'm sure a good deal of it is just that like being lazy and complaining. 😁
I got some good posts added to the queue today and planted some more stuff in my container garden and made some bread, so now to clean dishes and laundry and try to focus on some piano.
I think I've been lost since the gf has gone to a very fluctuating schedule, as it really throws off my routines. It's like if the sun came out at a different time every day. There's still the same amount of time and opportunity to do stuff, but you'd feel off after a while doing stuff at what feels like the wrong time of day. I dunno. I'm weird. 😝
That's the drawback of there being so much great free music stuff these days! You can get lost playing and never actually finish anything.
I haven't used Cakewalk. It seems very powerful, but I see people say it's one of the harder DAWs to learn.
I also hear Sonar discontinued Cakewalk Free and is moving to a paid license, though that was 2 years ago and Free is still available I think, but I don't know if it's being maintained any longer.
As hard as it may be to imagine, I feel I've been getting a bit behind from where I'd like to be with owl stuff. With so many owl babies right now, it's been hard to get some of the variety I'd like, and between being sick and depressed, it's hard for me to focus on owls or music the way I'd like.
But between all those links I've shared, you should have years worth of experimentation ahead of you. I hope you find lots of good stuff.
Gotcha, now I have a better idea of what you're trying to do.
Watching this video about looping in LMMS shows it can sorta be done, sometimes with some help from Audacity.
If you're adding in more stuff like VST plugins and vocals, you may want to try out Waveform Free, which I checked is for iOS also, so you get a full modern DAW. It's the same product as their paid full version, just like 2 updates behind.
For more premade loops, check out Looperman if you haven't already.
It's not free, but I think I under $20 for the program and all the upgrades, if looping and sampling is something you want to focus on, check out Koala Sampler. I downloaded it the other week and have been sampling vinyl recordings from YouTube, it has an AI stem extractor to separate the instrument tracks, and then chopping and looping that.
It has a built in simple synth now as well, and you can use a midi controller with it. Lots of videos are out there if you want to see how that works. You might be able to incorporate that into your setup.
If you're looking for instruments, effects, etc, the YouTube channel elektronickmusick demos a few each day and many are free or free trials and they run the same midday track through all of them to give you an indeed what they sound like.
I don't think they're the best demos because it's a generic track through all of them, not necessarily something that fits perfect with each unique instrument's strengths, but it gives you some ideas of the sound before you search for it, download it, and find out it's not for you.
If you want some nifty and weird sounds with fun back stories, David Hilowitz searches out obscure old instruments, fixes them, and samples them in his Decent Sampler plugin and rotates giving away different ones for free.
I'm still really bad at making my own music, but I like experimenting while I'm learning to do better.
I haven't used LMMS in a long time, but he's manually editing the piano roll (where the notes are stored) but I see a record button here where it should record what you play on the keyboard.
Oh, glad to help! Any other music tools you're looking for? I'm not good with any of them, but I like testing them out. I'm still just learning and experimenting.
I get a little sad when I don't see anything new for me on threads like this, but then I'm a bit grateful since that means I've already spent a long time enjoying all these things!
Things like what the Black Panthers were and groups like Unicorn Ranch and posts of the environmental resistance are the types of things I can get behind at this stage.
I've also been working to solidify my friendships and get more involved in my community and fixing our local environment as well. As you said, this is our home and we need to hold onto it.
I don't feel defeatist. I think my feelings on America as a whole are higher than many I've been seeing here. But tech has come a long way since a lot of these types of movements have taken place.
I love getting inspiration from people like the Maroons the bands of people hiding out in huge areas of Appalachia before the Civil War and others, but stuff like thermal optics and night vision and whatever other stuff the military and even local police likely have these days is pretty intimidating. It's also way quicker and stealthier to deploy. There's license plate readers that can grab the plates of anyone driving to a protest and databases of faces, etc.
I'm not as tech savvy as maybe a lot of you are so I don't know real life limitations of all this stuff or how to avoid it, and I just keep it in mind.
None of the actions have changed anyone's opinions though. Polling this week shows everyone still feels 100% the same on their opinions now and they did in November. Until the "This Needs to Change" group starts syphoning people at a solid rate from the "I Don't Care" and "I Still Love It" camps, I think more harm than good will come of things. All the things you are (rightfully!) upset about will only be made worse if an attempt to seize power takes place with about 50% of the populace against you. That's my opinion on the aggression anyway.
All you guys are right to want it, and I'd agree you are justified, but the rest of the county I don't feel has your back yet like they should. And we've already alienated our valuable allies on our border, and the same people here are cheering that on too. All the comments telling Canada and the EU that they're right to hate American people as a whole is sad to see. Hate the leaders and their supporters all you want, but Americans are chiming in saying "don't trust any of us" like that's a good thing. If we get Mexico and Canada hating all of us, where do we go if stuff really does pop off? The ocean? Some of you guys are boxing us in. It's freaking me out as much as the MAGA people are honestly.
I check periodically, but I don't see anything within an hour of me. It's a shame, as I'm in the more populated part of my state, between the biggest and third biggest cities and I read about these places and feel I'd really enjoy them.
I have a milk frother for example, that burned out its stupidly non resetting thermal fuse because it got put on the base, something bumped the start button with nothing in and it burnt out. I'd love to have someone show me how to locate that bit and replace it, but I dunno where to go for that.
Same with the 3D printer. I can afford one, but at this stage of life I'd rather someone give me a hands on run through and give me some of their wisdom from experience than me playing around and getting frustrated until I get it right.