My two are:

Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.

Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.

  • _NetNomad@fedia.io
    18·
    3 months ago

    libby is such a game changer. i totally get why a lot of people want to only read physical books but for me, being able to read anywhere at any time instead of having to make a concious decision to find and bring a book with you means i read way way more than i used to

    • earlgrey0@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      3 months ago

      For me it’s that I have to think less about my choices. I don’t have a ton of time anymore so if I pick a book I am not vibing with I can just return it and pick another in a matter of seconds. It’s led me to taking chances on books I normally wouldn’t read.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
      5·
      3 months ago

      I’m a mix of both. I generally read a book for the first time on Libby and then end up buying a physical copy for my home library.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      2 months ago

      I like physical books in a theoretical sense. Some hardcovers are beautiful and it’s hard to resist the urge to collect them.

      But I don’t really like reading physical books. I really don’t like the typesetting of 70-80 characters on a page. That leaves a lot of my books at maybe 2-3 paragraphs per page, and it’s really hard to get into a flow that way. On an ereader I can control the layout, the font, and really get into a book.

      (And that’s on top of the fact that I can carry thousands of books around with me, borrow from the library, and take notes more effectively for nonfiction.)

        • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          2 months ago

          I use roboto. I especially like how Moon+ reader renders it with antialiasing. Font size depends on the screen and reading distance, but the end result is generally 50-100% more per page. I don’t feel like I’m spending all my time turning pages that way.

          I still use PDFs for stuff with graphics, diagrams, code, etc. I don’t think epub maintains the formatting well enough. But if a book is mostly prose, I find the ability to reflow the text helps me a lot.

        • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          2 months ago

          And the too much detail follow up lol.

          full page

          That’s roboto size 13 on a boox go color 7, on moon+ reader.

          macro

          And a macro shot of the text to show that the apparent sloppiness is really just the picture. But other apps without the smoothing don’t always look the same. I’ve used different variations of the font on different apps to get the best result.

          The actual hardcover