hnaccount2001

Software seems like overkill for mechanism. I were doing this I’d model the mechanism part manually, maybe a scaled-down mock-up out of foamboard, pins, tape, glue etc. if you’re unsure about a certain connection prototype it with scrap wood.

For the dimensioning, Rhino or Sketchup. Really any 3d cad. You probably can get by with grid paper though.

If I really wanted to geek out on the mechanism in a cad modeller I’d probably do it in Grasshopper which is a plug-in for rhino.

I felt the same as you OP, and I just kept calibrating those recommendations until I found the magic formula of exercise, schedule, etc. It took like, 10 years though. It sucks but keep trying. My breakthrough came from upping the exercise (6x per week, vigorously, even on vacation), taking a very small dose of melatonin, and listening to podcasts when in bed which seems to quiet my racing thoughts. Things are mostly good now.

Paradoxically, it’s hard for me to sleep when I haven’t been sleeping well. So these days I am gentle with myself if I can’t fall asleep despite being tired.

I’m not sure what the alternative is, in any field, unless your work is so boutique and specialized that nobody else does it (auteur filmmakers, maybe). I used to work in a design firm where estimates were even more meaningless than in software. We all hated estimates but we all knew nothing would get done without them.

I concur with this post. Shaum’s outlines are no-nonsense supplements for any math course that isn’t proof-based.

Basically I kept trying; IMO several “failures” were necessary. What really got me over the hump was taking up new hobbies that I couldn’t do hungover, and resetting my social life (meet friends for lunch, not drinks, etc). After a year or so of not drinking I now do have drinks every so often, maybe once a month, but my relationship to drinking is totally different now. I’ve become one of those people who feels sleepy and kind of gross after two drinks.

Psychotherapy helped with the hating myself when I failed (which was almost worse than the drinking itself). That was a major issue.

I’m not sure about 8 hours but I’ve had some success with ~15hrs distributed throughout a week so the employer knows they can get in touch with me most days. Unfortunately I think this that finding these sorts of gigs requires a lot of up-front networking or grinding away on freelance sites until you hook something medium-term, like a half-year contract or whatever.

In small doses the comment section is funny. I like it when someone tries to hawk their app.

I have successfully cultivated a “third speed” somewhere between close reading and skimming, which is helpful for cruising through casual books like Robert b Parker novels , etc, but I still prefer reading slowly as I can visualize better and appreciate word choice, sentence structure etc when I do.

My advice is to just cultivate a wide vocabulary as that will help you out the most (each time you have to think about a word’s meaning slows you down, IMO, more substantially than a minor difference in the speed at which you cruise over words.)

I can second this - drag and click is not always necessary. If I am really in a pinch and I need to do stuff directly with beziers I try to 1) stylize the desired curve so that it uses as few control points as possible, and, 2) redraw on top of early attempts instead of editing existing curves.

It’s a lot bigger now and therefore has the same problems any big online community has (bad signal to noise ratio). I think this is made worse through the upvote system, but that’s purely my anecdotal take. The niche communities continue to be pretty good. I use askliterarystudies pretty often and get high-quality info.

In my experience even the most niche online communities begin to seem “dumb” after you’ve spent significant time on them, as the once-novel information gets rehashed endlessly.

All the time.

Thanks for sharing. I don’t have a lot to add - just wanted to note that he was a fantastic writer and one I return to over and over and over. Nobody quite like him. I’m currently rereading The Emigrants.

I got a smartphone a couple of years ago. The only real difference for me is I no longer bring a camera around on shorter trips, and having a map app was helpful when I was living abroad.

Life with a dumb phone was fine. I guess sometimes I had to type urls people would send me into my computer. Near the end it was a bit annoying when people would send me five texts in a row, or when people wanted to be super loose with their plans. Planning social stuff has become a lot looser, I noticed, in the last five years because of constant texting.

If you’re considering getting a dumbphone, all I can say is, it’s easier than you think. Carry a little notebook around with you, wear a watch, ask people for directions. I wasn’t shunned by my friends or anything like that. I’m in my early 30s and I even had a landline when I was in college. It wasn’t a problem. You do need a printer, though.