Thirith on 2/8/2021 at 13:52
Are there any new hobbies or habits you've developed over the last one or two years? I've started playing board games with my wife - ironically beginning with Pandemic (in its Pandemic Legacy Season 1 incarnation). We'd previously played the occasional board game with friends, but usually just at their place, and we'd not played any two-player board games, but ever since we started playing the first Pandemic Legacy game, we've been playing 2-3 games most weeks. I've also bought a bunch of other games that we're hoping to get into, mainly cooperative ones: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (though that one's not strictly a board game) and Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, and the two other seasons of Pandemic Legacy. It's been very enjoyable so far, and I'm looking forward to getting started on these other games.
ZylonBane on 2/8/2021 at 14:04
Quote Posted by Thirith
I've started playing board games with my wife - ironically beginning with
PandemicThat sounds like the exact opposite of irony.
faetal on 2/8/2021 at 23:35
My daughter really misses going out to eat, so I now periodically host evenings for my wife and kids* where I make a menu using PowerPoint, prepare and serve up their choices while acting like a waiter, with some restaurant ambience looping on YouTube.
It's mostly just a bit of fun, but enough cheer to warrant it now being a burgeoning family tradition.
* My youngest is just over a year old, so in reality, the dopey little asshole just grins at the others getting excited, he's not really involved per se
Pyrian on 3/8/2021 at 01:30
Maybe give the wee one a picture menu!
demagogue on 3/8/2021 at 03:18
Well, I wanted to understand quantum physics so starting from like 15 months ago or so I started taking some basically self-made courses, homework and all, each one basically a month apiece: Calculus 1 & 2 (again), Linear Algebra, Statistics & Probability, Classical Physics, Wave Mechanics, Electro-Magnitism, "Modern Physics", and fiiiinally Quantum Theory 1, at least the first third or half of it so far. While I'm stoked to finish it off and keep this train rolling through QM2 and on to QFT, that's going to take another big investment in the math, so I'm good for now.
Now that I'm on the other side of my basic goal, though, I'm can't say I'm all that different, but i do understand some fundamental things about the universe a lot better ... like why there's no worries shaking a carbonated drink hard as long as you don't open it (and why); the mutual relationships of voltage, current, resistance, impedance, magnetism, and all of that; how to solve the SR twin paradox; what Planck's constant actually is (quantized action); etc.
The thing I feel best about probably is that I have a basic image in my mind about what fundamental reality might actually look like. The image keeps getting revised and updated as I learn more, and I imagine it'll keep getting updated. But it's a lot better now than it was.
The basic image I have right now, if you're curious, is that reality is a vast number of springy meshes that overlap in the same space on top of each other. Each mesh wobbles with waves propagating through them, carrying the info of a wave function state like a fundamental string in Matrix Theory. Sometimes two meshes can propagate waves to each other (when they're "in contact") and sometimes they can't (when they're not in contact, i.e., "at a distance", and you spend "action" to reel them into or away from contact with each other), and sometimes they can be in contact but no signals propagate because they're mutually scrambled or encrypted to each other, like massive ocean waves running straight through random surface waves (when they're decohered into separate worlds. But if you knew the scrambling code, you could apply it in reverse to one world like a deencryption key and the random background energy would cohere back into a separate world).
I could go into a lot more detail, but a post like this isn't the best format for that. It's got me really curious and engaged though. All of this business with holography, AdS/CFT correspondence, ER=EPR, etc., is endlessly fascinating.
Aja on 4/8/2021 at 15:43
That's fascinating, Dema. I recently tried to learn about the (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem) Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, but I've forgotten what little calculus I knew from my one semester of engineering, so I have to relearn math to proceed. So far slow going.
What I have been making progress in is woodworking (cliched pandemic hobby, I know, but I enjoyed it high school and have always wanted to pursue it but have never had the space until now). I turned my small garage into a shop and built a heavy workbench meant for using hand tools. I still use the table saw for big cuts, but I've been trying to stick mostly to hand planes, chisels, and backsaws for the majority of the work. Here's what I've made since the pandemic:
A built-in bookshelf at the top of our stairs
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/cXBW9SH.jpgMy workshop
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/QqKz6bO.jpgThe bench itself
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/n6iVJGG.jpgA low bench for sawing
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/zPIxJP0.jpgAnd finally some real furniture, a desk for my wife's mom
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/JCqtUjO.jpg
faetal on 4/8/2021 at 16:19
Nice!
Renault on 5/8/2021 at 02:02
Man, that workbench looks too nice to actually work on.
Tocky on 5/8/2021 at 03:21
It does. I would be afraid of accidently drilling through it while I worked on it or something.
And I've never quite understood how people think of the forces of the universe as meshes and the like. To me it's areas of energy. Some opposing and some interacting. Individual bits with forces of their own and collective masses made of those with a collective force unique to the whole.
rachel on 5/8/2021 at 13:43
After publishing two adventure novels this past year, I started in earnest an effort to complete a sci-fi opus I've been working on for years, virtually restarting from scratch. If all goes well, the first volume should come out late 2022.
There's another thing but that will call for a separate notice at the appropriate time :p