I try to make something that looks good (or at least doesn’t look like random static) by running pictures I’ve taken through audio editing software. There are some extra steps that go into it to “trick” the program into importing the picture as if it were a sound file, making sure the header (information that tells your computer that this is a picture) doesn’t get fucked with, and then exporting the data in a way that it will be saved as a picture and not an mp3 or something else.
On the rare occasion I do bring it up, I can literally watch people’s eyes glaze over. Until I show them a picture
Edit: internet is really bad right now, will reply with an image when I can
Edit2: picture was too big at 7MB. Hopefully a screenshot of the picture doesn’t look too bad
I used to do a similar thing where I saved photos as .txt files, but they were an awful lot glitchier, and usually split the RGB channels to look as if you had three eyes and were crossing them.
I just wanna know how people even came up with data moshing. It blows my mind that there’s a thought process that incorporates these steps, and ends with awesome (sometimes) results!
you just post the link to image hosted on imgur.com or catbox.moe, don’t really need to upload to lemmy itself. Like this - 
That’s pretty cool and definitely falls under the category of a hobby that you do because you can, although I’m sure there are people in the world who would pay for art like that (not suggesting that you do).
I have had the thought about trying to make money off of this, and some friends have joked that I should be making album art or something like that.
However, I don’t want to feel like I have to meet a deadline or feel the pressure of making something that someone else wants/likes. I just want to make something I like
Most of the time I don’t have a plan of what I want out of something. Sometimes I can get something that looks interesting or cool right away, other times I have hundreds of files trashed over a couple of days and there’s not a single one that I personally liked
Considering it’s audio-software, I guess the changes are related to frequency changes. You should look up Fourier transform (the function that allows to see the sound frequencies of music, for example) applied to images and play with it. If you are not afraid to do a little bit of Python coding, you should be able to have much more control on the parameters responsible for the visual effects you’re looking for.
The image equivalent of bass frequencies (long wavelength) are big details (ex: the trees) and high frequencies (short wavelength) are small details (ex: the leaves).
I haven’t had to think about Fouier since college, so thanks for bringing up that trauma lmao. I do realize that there are ways to reliably get certain effects or even learn how to do this in Photoshop or GIMP, but I like the shotgunning, spray-and-pray of not knowing what the outcome will look like
I guess I find the process of going back to make small changes to the settings and then seeing how that affects the image more satisfying. Getting something that looks good is just a bonus
I do a lot of photography and I’ve been trying to find something that I could do with some of my more experimental shots that makes them more… more‡. If that makes sense?
You wouldn’t happen to have more details on how to do it would you?
Edit: ‡ My more experimental shots are more done as like experimenting with how a shot is taken for like evoking a specific feeling or doing something strange in camera or really any number of reasons. Hell some of my experimental shots were accidentally taken pictures that are disorienting or confusing. I don’t share them often, because IDK it just seems like really personal sometimes. Those experimental shots feel less like photography and more like painting with photos.
I have a bookmark saved on my computer at home to an old forum with the instructions I followed when I started doing this, and I can send that link later.
There are two programs that I use, and both are free.
GIMP - image editing software
Audacity - audio editing software
Here is the basic process from that bookmarked forum post that I can remember off the top of my head. If something is wrong (especially the Audacity import settings, since I don’t ever change them), I will fix it later.
In GIMP (or other software of your choice) convert the image to a bitmap (.bmp). This step is very important!
Use the option to import raw data as A-law with “little endian” (I have no idea what those setting do, but I assume it’s for keeping the header intact)
Change the timeline in Audacity from time to samples and select everything after the 34th sample to edit and add effects (samples 1-34 are the information that tells your computer that this is a picture CHANGING ANYTHING IN THE HEADER WILL STOP YOU FROM OPENING THE IMAGE AFTER THE EDIT)
Export the audio using the raw data option, selecting A-law again. This should re-save the “audio” as a bitmap image as it will not add an audio file header to the data.
I believe the blue parking garage image uses reverb, or maybe a phasor… possible both to get that effect? But there are a lot of setting to mess with for each audio effect that can dramatically change the outcome. The trees picture was made by putting the original picture in the left audio channel, and putting a horizontally flipped copy of the image in the right audio channel. Delete the header from the flipped copy, and exporting the data smashes them together in this really strange mirror effect. Afterward, I would use GIMP for any color correcting, changing saturation/hue, simple stuff
Fun fact: Lightroom has no idea how to process the image results in any semblance of consistent way, so literally which sliders you mess with first changes how the image as a whole is effected. And sometimes even moving the slider vs typing a number in does different things. Which leads to more and stranger distortion.
I did try turning a song into an image last night, and it looked like TV static. Kinda disappointing, but I’ll try some other songs and see if I can mess with some settings
I’m a math teacher. I use my video game making knowledge from Godot to make little video games to review skills. Each takes a few weeks to make with game design, making all the art, programming, and making the worksheet.
Here is my Disco Dj-Demo if you were curious what I mean.
I think it’s fun, it’s not something I can really chat with others about.
You are awesome. Thanks for being a good teacher and making math as interesting as it is for your students. And your hobby is fucking cool too.
I am a programmer (as in it’s my job) and I can’t really program anything in Godot. I’ve done the dodge the creeps tutorial and did some more tries, but I don’t really get game dev. It’s definitely a unique skill.
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I’ve just learned that my firearms lock…yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same “internet hacker” stigma so I avoid talking about it.
I love lockpicking! It’s got a really nice tactile click when the lock opens. Too bad there’s not a lot of locks to practice on (legally, anyways)
And yeah, I agree - locks are really more of a psychological hindrance rather than an actual hindrance. Although, for what it’s worth, I don’t know of that many people who can lockpick, so in that sense, a lock at least decreases the number of people who can get through
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
I’ve had this small 5 piece set in my backpack since before instructions for anything could be easily found on the internet. It had to have been $10 or less.
I’m not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it’s designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
That’s forbidden knowledge among the mechanics in my union local, lol. One of the shop mechanics at my training center was teaching some of my peers how to pick locks when we had completed our training and were just killing time helping the shop guys out. Had some downtime and he brought out a couple sets and some locks.
Apparently it’s sort of an unspoken tool of the mechanic trade when you work around machinery like that. Never know what you’ll have to get access to and you never know if anyone will have the right key. You’d think the ignition key would suffice to open, say, an access panel or storage cabinet, but some of these machines use a different key entirely for such a thing.
I got into it a bit during COVID and practiced a bit on a practice lock that I could repin myself. After being able to regularly open it without too much trouble, I decided to try my front door lock - thinking it would be a much harder challenge since it was a real lock.
Nope. Shit popped open almost instantly. It blew my mind! After watching Lock Picking Lawyer, I figured that a skilled attacker could get into most locks eventually, but I didn’t realize that most house locks require virtually no skill to open. And it’s literally easier (and significantly less attention grabbing) than breaking a window!
Sorry police officer, but the door was open ajar so hrem I just wanted to check if everything was alright you see?
Had a guy just being mind blown for the whole evening lock picking my way into my apartment, and then open some lock he had on his luggage (all very basic).
Saw him a year later when I had forgot about it and he still was startled about the evening 😁😅
Lol that just reminded me of something only vaguely related. Back in the day I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft with a friend. One day in the middle of a gaming session, he went “HOLY SHIT! There’s a naked guy sleeping on my couch!”
A couple things to note:
His couch and his gaming setup were both in his living room, barely 3 feet apart.
We had been playing for at least 2 hours at this point.
My friend woke naked guy up, who was very drunk and confused. Apparently my friend kept his apartment door unlocked and naked guy stumbled in at some point, thinking it was his apartment, stripped down, and then passed out on the couch. Still don’t know how long he was there for, but probably several hours before my friend noticed
So yeah, lock your doors people. They might not keep out a thief, but at least you won’t have a random naked dude pass out on your furniture.
I miss lockpicking, it’s so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I watch an ungodly amount of aquarium / terrarium videos, lurk a ton of aquascaping communities. I owned a betta fish in an empty bowl when I was 12 and that’s it. (poor fish)
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
I read a hundred pages long horse breeding guide for the game black desert online and I have no idea why. I only played the game for a month, spent most of it reading a google doc about horse. I’m not even sure I owned a horse in the game.
Sometimes I try the hobby, for example mini painting, and don’t have the patience for it. But I still watch some random dudes on youtube paint for hours and sometimes they don’t even talk!
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I write sci-fi/fantasy stuff, and I do this too, but mostly so I can gift this or that character with some plausible insider info on a hobby THEY have.
The trick with creating a fantasy/sci-fi universe is to sprinkle true/plausible things all around the little details, so the obviously fantastical that doesn’t have grounding in reality will be accepted by the reader.
I do the same! And you know, I think this is a hobby by itself. It’s also very useful when talking with strangers if they tell you they practice one of the hobbies you’ve binged on. You can ask them more pointed, interesting questions and it makes for great conversations!
mini painting and ADHD is a funny one. I can have months of ultra focus and paint a whole small army up, then I have tiny bursts and it takes months just to finish a few models. I currently have 8 guys I’ve been working on since June about 50% done and I’m no high level painter
I like learning about random ass hobbies without ever indulging in them.
I do this too! I love watching like videos where people make jewelry or phone cases using resin. It requires a ventilated area though and I live in an apartment with no patio so I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.
I also watch nail polish videos cause nail painting is an amazing artform that is really difficult to do because its painting with material that hardens when exposed to oxygen or UV lighting. It also takes a ton of skill to get really good at it and people use all kinds interesting methods to get different results or looks. But yeah, I don’t have the patience to learn that beyond just painting my own nails and maybe some decals but that’s all I could handle.
I read all you could know about book binding fanfiction, never done it.
Found it hard to parse, and my mind immediately went with “Yeah, of course people have written fanfics about book binding,” foolishly extending rule 34 to cover it. Of course, there might have been that one fanfic about bookbinding.
But yeah, of course people have printed and bookbinded (bookbound[ed]?) fanfics. But for that to have a community? That’s unexpected.
I would be immensely amused if “bookbinding fanfiction” was called Rule 69.
I know that’s not what you meant, but it’s where my mind went, haha. Fanfiction is all about the weird insider eccentricities, and this sounds like it could be one of them.
Ever been screened for ADHD by any chance? I do this same thing. I call myself a serial hobbyist because I just bounce from one thing to the next. I’m always glad when I lose interest before I spend any money.
I also did well in school (have my Masters too!) and I got diagnosed with ADHD at around age 30 (I’m female so that made a difference in people’s expectations of how it presents). Totally no need to pathologize a trait or to pursue a diagnosis even if the traits do fir you, but I did just want to chime in that there are plenty of us who managed to defy the trope of “doesn’t apply themselves”.
For me, I totally do what you do with hobbies! It’s actually why I went into library science - ADHD is my superpower that allows me to be a generalist :P
I spent last night learning about wood pit clay firing techniques and learning about table saw safety. Why? Idk. I have Ehlers Danlos and I’ve had to give up sewing, spinning, etc, so it’s not like I’m going to be out there making slab tables or digging my own clay but… It’s REALLY fun to imagine and learn all about!
I love learning about new hobbies and I so rarely find the hobbiest of… Hobbies! Thanks for sharing :)
Barbara Sher (rip) has a great book, Refuse to Choose, that does a great job of reframing ones thinking about bouncing around between projects / hobbies and not “finishing” them.
Model trains. I don’t bring it up because it’s obscure, but I’ve definitely found there’s a stigma. “Oh he’s the guy who plays with trains”. Screw the haters, I like to relax after work and do a bit of escapism. Eventually I got over it though and talk about it with friends, but it’s not the first thing I bring up either
I’ve found the Kato setups to be a bit more friendly on the wallet and have great reliability. I’d recommend that, a small oval with a kato starter set
Not quite ready unfortunately, still in the “lots of pink fiberboard and paper mache” phase, but oh I will when we’re done. We’re probably too small for a model trains community, but I’ll probably be hanging out in !trains
this is a hobby I would absolutely love to get into but do not have the space (and renting a garage would probably not be realistic at this point for me). looks amazing dude I’m jealous of you! awesome hobby
It’s definitely a space eater, it’s currently taking up half of my bedroom as I build it. I probably should have waited for a bigger more dedicated space but then I’d be waiting another decade.
My dad has been into model trains since before I was born. We built a train layout in the early 2000s when I was in middle school or so. Working on that project helped get me into electronics as we made PCBs for signals and control circuits. Now, 20 some years later, I work in software engineering. My dad wanted to get back into working on the layout and I’m helping him with Arduino programming and Raspberry Pi stuff. He built a stepper motor controller for the turntable and then we built some turnout and light control boards that interface with DCC. We set up JMRI on a Raspberry Pi to drive trains from phones and automate stuff. I also got him into 3D printing and he’s printed a ton of new scenery for the layout after buying his own Ender 3 after using mine quite a bit. We’ve learned various CAD/modeling programs to make 3D prints.
I also finally got to do something I always wanted to do as a kid, which is to drive the trains from a first-person view. We have gone through a bunch of different variations of putting a Raspberry Pi Zero and camera module on an HO scale railcar. We did some different designs. Our latest design uses an SG-90 micro servo to control the camera angle so you can look left and right. I also 3D printed an enclosure for a regulator, battery charger, and battery that takes track power and powers the Pi.
It’s pretty fun to be able to sit on the couch with a phone, watching the view on the TV, and drive the train from the other room including operating turnouts. Haven’t yet tried to drive the trains over the Internet yet but I want to, since I live a state away from my parents where the layout is.
Very cool! Sounds pretty much like what I have started on mine, I went the full DCC++ route, have an arduino and rpi running the whole layout, with a few other boards helping along the way. At some point I’d love to do full automation of the setup but that’ll be a while. What camera did you use for the rpi and train? I’m running n scale so I’m assuming yours would be larger
We built the layout when DCC was first coming out after going to a train show. We ended up picking up one of Digitrax’s first systems (Empire Builder IIRC, with DB150 base station). That’s still what we use for DCC. I designed a LocoNet to serial adapter (MS100 compatible, but very cheap and simple) in college (2010 ish) and we’re using that to connect it up to a Pi 3 running JMRI. Our layout is HO scale. N scale is probably too small for even a Raspberry Pi Zero with camera module, as the setup barely fits on an HO scale car.
I have set up a DCC++ Ex setup at my house for testing and experiments. Just got a loop of EZ Track on the floor with an Arduino as the base station and another Pi with JMRI that is configured similarly to the real layout.
Here is an early picture of the camera car design with the servo. I’ve since condensed everything on to one car with a custom 3D printed design. I want to publish it eventually but haven’t had time. I even 3D printed trucks with power pickups in my latest design (just had to buy metal wheel sets to put in them). I also made a tiny Python webserver that has buttons for different servo positions so you can easily move the servo from a browser.
For the DCC controlled turnouts, lights, and turntable, I built up an Arduino Nano based DCC decoder from a design I found online and a DCC decoder library that is available in Arduino. Since the layout spans multiple tables, instead of putting a DCC decoder for each table/PCB I just had the one decoder echo the DCC commands as serial messages over a serial bus that spans all the tables. The other boards (turnout controllers, light controllers, and turntable controller) all just have their RX pins wired to the decoder’s TX and can receive commands that way. Turnout controllers are a mix of SG90 micro servo based ones and L293D motor drivers for Tortoise switch machines. Light controllers use transistors to switch 12V outputs on and off to drive bulbs and LEDs. Turntable controller is an EasyDriver based stepper controller with some pre-programmed position offsets for each turntable track (each track position is mapped to a DCC function address).
I like the secondary aspect of coffee, finding niche roasteries and indie coffee shops, talking to the owners about their passion for coffee and to keep buying the expensive beans from them and then drinking them.
Working on my (private) servers is a hypnotic activity for me. It can be interesting or I can hate it and still want to do it. It can also be relaxing. Last time when I was sick in bed I played around with wireguard VPN configs all day to get a routed VPN for my VPS. I’m going to fix it today because something doesn’t work the way it should.
You configure your wireguard stuff on your host and this is just a web ui that can show current peers and generate new ones.
That is useful for more complex configs. I only connect to specific servers and address spaces with the VPN, I also Support ipv6.
For that kind of configuration, I found it necessary to host a DNS server for the network, so that I can access the reverse proxy of my Homeserver.
If you’re only looking to warp your device into a different network, that’s more straight forward. I suggest to take a look at wg-easy if you want a web ui for that scenario.
Also, Caution: Some wireguard containers that use your hosts config love to delete them, so make backups. I’m looking at you, wireguard-ui.
I’m having a good one, it’s one of the Selfhosting weekends. Sadly I noticed that the server does not forward clients packages to other clients over the VPN. I’ve tried a static ipv6 route but gave up eventually.
I’m also interested in learning Chinese for the same reason, I downloaded a good app for basics and have learned a bit but it’s a long long way from anything actually useful.
I am also learning Japanese. I fine it hard to think of the sentence structure as different than English. In my mind I find myself daying the sentences the way Yoda from star wars does and it makes more sense.
I think, at last count, I had something like 50-60 docker containers running. I’m starting to hit the limit of what my 10-year-old hardware is capable of, so i’ve started saving for an upgrade. Lol.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the year making ebooks from out-of-print dead tree books. Proofing and formatting takes a ton of time. Nobody reads them but me.
Mobile app called vFlat to do the scans and OCR. Cleanup in Google Docs. EPUB creation in Calibre. Then for proofing, I read the whole thing on an Onyx Boox, which lets me mark it up with a stylus. Then back to Calibre.
You’ll be that guy that records old shows on VHS and when he died the only record of old shows was donated to an archive/museum. A priceless contribution to humanity.
It’s just part of my personality by now and I don’t feel bad about it any more. I just keep adding skills to my repertoire and thus have a broad spectrum of things I can talk about and relate with other people.
Contributing to OpenStreetMap. I try to bring it up because it would be great to get more contributors to the project, but either I have to explain “It’s Wikipedia, but a map” or they come out with misunderstandings about the project that aren’t worth correcting. E.g not liking the icons used to display points on the map.
An easy way is to download StreetComplete an app that breaks down contributions into easy questions about things around you.
I got started by just diving in with the editor at OpenStreetMap.org (Green button top left) and building knowledge using the OSM wiki (which is overwhelming at first)
I want to try this. I even downloaded the apps to do it a little while back and opened them, but I realized that I need to do some reading up on it before I start knocking about. I just need to take the time to learn this. I’ve joined the OpenStreetMap community on Lemmy too.
Just in case you did, don’t get started with ‘Vespucci’ it’s aiming to be a tool for people already deep into OpenStreetMap. I’m three years in and it baffles me frequently. StreetComplete is amazing and Every Door and OSM Go! Are very usable. If you’re on iOS, this whole post is irrelevant. I’ve not used those apps.
Do you know if there is a way to force Google to update an area from it? I put my road in on openstreetmap and Google appears to have tried to merge them and made a mess.
Are there that many delivery drivers using Google Maps though? I get the feeling they use some other programme in conjunction with their own knowledge of the area. That said, I’ve met people who’ve lived in this city for like ten years who still use the wayfinder thing on their phone, and some delivery companies these days really skimp on equipment, so I wonder.
Have you already used the ‘give feedback’ button on Google Maps? I think that’s the limit of what they offer. I’ve heard rumour that adding a business at your address makes it much more findable on Google Maps. But that might be adding misleading information. If Google started using OpenStreetMap data (they probably already do) they would have to attribute the data to the project. The big online shop named after a river has their drivers use OSM maps and they will add your driveway to the map etc themselves sometimes. So your additions to OSM will help you get some deliveries more reliably.
I also started this recently, it’s quite a relaxing way to contribute to a very useful project, often in a way that is unique to your local area meaning that your contribution has quite some value despite it’s small size.
Get started with the ‘edit’ button at OpenStreetMap.org. There is a Portuguese community, but I’m not sure where they are most active wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Portugal
In a way, my interest in internet privacy is almost always met with uninterested “ah” IRL. Even when I dont come off as preachy, when I just try to sell it as “watching YT without ads”, people often don’t care.
Downloading and occasionally playing games from the flip phone era (j2me games). They seem to be mostly forgotten. They’re basically the best alternative to the ad ridden, micro-transactions galore of today’s android games and there’s a surprisingly high amount of very high quality games.
An emulator called j2me loader on android. The best website to download such games is dedomil.net (recommended), mobiles24.co and phoneky.com.
Use the 240x320 resolution and the sony erricsson k800i (recommended), the Nokia N9X, the Nokia 6xxx varients for the best graphics, quality and emulation stability on j2me loader.
I didn’t know much yesterday but your comment sent me into a rabbit hole so here we go : The impressive quality of j2me games is because they ran using java through a middle layer called java 2 platform, micro edition (j2me) that allowed programmer to not care about individual platforms/phones but just use the phones capabilities through APis. This didn’t really work that well because there was all kind of contraints. I vaguely remember reading John carmack rant about developing the doom rpg serie for different resolutions and the sound api being garbage.
Old Nokia phones ran on serie 20. It didn’t run java games. It’s successor the serie 30 had the capability to run java games but only the serie 40 made all phone run java games. The serie 60 aka SymbianOS was the real deal and kept receiving updated until it’s death in 2012.
Sony ericsson phones like the k800i ran the java platform 7 (each generation of phones ran a newer version, the last bein java platform 8) directly on an Rtos (real time operating systems)
The doom RPG 1 and 2 série , wolfenstein rpg, orc&elves 1 and 2 (in that order ) , stranded 1 and 2, Crash Titans, Crash Mutant Island, god of war : betrayal, the block break serie, the tower Bloxx games, the sims serie, Brick Breaker série, the nights games serie , space miner, any game by digital chocolate, glue mobile, Gameloft, EA (shudder ), THQ, SEGA…and many others.
I went back to PS2 era games. This was the golden era imo, where games came out in a playable state and an amazing amount of content. Right now I‘m playing a completely English translated version of Monster Hunter 2 on a private server that went live about a month ago, it’s amazing.
I can’t really relate since I never had a game console aside from a Chinese NES knockoff that was a some kind of keyboard with a slot in the front where you could insert a cartridge with each having 50 games or so (we had two or 3 of those cartridges). It even came with two guns to play duck hunt with.
But i can definitely understand how it could be the golden era of gaming. The enshitification started when Microsoft(who else?) made playing online a paid feature and sony seeing gullible people paying for it did it to. Then came micro-transactions and shit hit the fan from there on. Now you have to buy half-assed games that are riddled with bugs and got a big chunk of them cut of to sell as a dlc, while also having ads being thrown at your face and the best equipment blocked behind a paywall instead of gaining it in game.
How do you upload them or play them? I got space trader from the palm pilot era working on my phone but would love to get those old games working again. When I was a kid it was then and Gameboy that kept me occupied.
If you mean on your phone, download jar games from dedomil.net and upload them on your phone. Just be sure the games resolution match your screen resolution and it should work. On android use j2meloader
You know, sometimes I wish I had the time to do programming as a hobby. I have cool project ideas I want to make and then open source, but I just don’t have the time.
Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. What I usually liked to do is stream my working process on YouTube or Twitch even though nobody watched, for some reason the act of streaming while I was working made it for me more important to be more focused and I felt I had greater clarity because I felt I had to explain my ideas out loud.
I like the idea. The only thing is I would worry it would add extra effort to the whole process, making you think “oh now I have to setup the stream and everything… Nah”. And just programming might seem much easier to “just start it”.
… Funny thing this reminds me of the time I had to refactor my API to accommodate three whole new call types, you should have seen the json generator code before …
I speak Esperanto and I am quite active in the movement and write for the Esperanto Wikipedia. In 2011 I had quite a cool trip to an Esperanto Youth Congress in Kijiv. But it’s hard to talk about it because most people see it as a failed project from the early 1900s, not as a modern subculture.
That’s interesting! A few friends of mine and I tried to get a hold of it during the last school year. But we were greatly annoyed that there was no good free/open source resource in our language. Everything that could be good material was basically “Pay for the course” or just buy the book for 50€. That demotivated us quite a bit. I get why you would like to make a buck for your work and yes learning languages in groups is more fun but besides badly formatted vocab sheets there was no resource that was a proper introduction to the language.
That’s not an issue anymore. There is an Duolingo course, tons of Anki vocabulary decks, the app Drops supports Esperanto and the website lernu.net has a pretty good free course to learn Esperanto grammar.
I couldn’t find the name of the story. 99% sure the author is Howard Waldrop. In WW1 a group of soldiers sneak into No Man’s Land and create an underground nation where all men speak Esperanto.
Mi volas konvinki mian edzinon al lerni kun mi. Mi pensas ke se mi povas praktiki kun alian homon, mia gramatiko kaj vortfarado pliboniĝus. Sed ŝi ne volas.
I have a hobby that I can’t even truly mention the name of it because the name is shared with the book Lolita.
However the lolita fashion clothing I wear and collect from Japan and China has nothing to do with the book so I often have to refer to my hobby as “Japanese Street Fashion” and that actually covers the other J-Fashion I wear too, which includes lolita dresses.
They’re just specific types of dresses with a certain cut, they are often described as cupcake dresses and were more popular in Japan during the Harajuku Girls craze, so like around 2010 to 2013ish. I actually picked up the hobby in 2015 and started building a wardrobe, learning how to use color theory to match pieces of clothing, learning about different fabric types and how to care for them, and even learning about how to import items from other countries like Japan where they have limits on what they want people in the US to be buying from them.
I’m not as into it as I use to be because I have less of a disposable income now and it’s a very spendy hobby. Plus COVID made shipping more difficult and a lot of laws in other countries changed around shipping and prices increased for international shipments. I still buy a dress like every 6 months? I use to buy them more often and sadly I don’t fit some of them anymore. I only gained a bit of weight since 2015 but the dresses are tiny and its hard to get them altered without the right matching fabric.
I’m currently trying to lose weight so I can get back into wearing more of my wardrobe again like I use to. Currently cycling as I write this.
I also use to go to meet ups for lolita fashion specifically but that community is unfortunately full of toxic people and I finally gave up on going to the meets not long after COVID restrictions were lifted where I live.
Hey, another fellow lolita!! I’m sorry to hear your local comms are so toxic. I live in Germany and I’m lucky that the comm local to me is incredibly welcoming and fun.
I’m plus size, but wear almost exclusively brand, so I have some experience with alterations too. I highly recommend checking if your pieces have pockets, because I’ve been able to extend the sizing of a dress by 10 to 15 cm using pocket fabric alone. I’m happy to answer questions if you’re interested in alterations.
I can only speak from my personal experience, but the online communities I’m a part of on discord are really friendly too. I’m on the plus size lolita discord, but that obviously might not be relevant to you. If you’re interested in finding a community, you might have to dig a little but there are friendly communities out there. But it’s completely valid if you’d rather just wear lolita by yourself. They are just clothes at the end of the day.
Sending positive vibes your way 💙 (I’m just up so I’m sorry if my thoughts are kinda scattered lol)
I’m plus size, but wear almost exclusively brand, so I have some experience with alterations too. I highly recommend checking if your pieces have pockets, because I’ve been able to extend the sizing of a dress by 10 to 15 cm using pocket fabric alone. I’m happy to answer questions if you’re interested in alterations.
Oh yeah I’m familiar with this! In my case its more about finding a seamstress to do the alteration and the cost of the alteration in addition to buying a dress. I do have some dresses and skirts that are altered.
the plus size discord sounds great but I rarely have anything regarding lolita to post now a days. I use to put together coords and now I just kind of wear it more casually and I’m sure a lot of people would call it “ita” lol
I’m hoping I can get my dresses to fit more comfortably like they use to and then I might start wearing more of my wardrobe again. I use to dress up like 3 or 4 times a week. Now its like maybe once or twice a month. Although I still try to buy dresses too? I currently have a tab open for a metamorphose dress I came across.
And no worries, my thoughts are always scattered lol
Hi fellow lolita! It’s such a pain trying to discuss the fashion with people who aren’t already into Japanese fashion. I feel weird every time I try to mention it because of the book. Also it’s so much deeper than people on the outside think! There’s tons of nuance in the brands and sub-styles and it all sounds so pedantic to outsiders. Have you been watching Tyler’s new videos?
yeah its incredibly difficult to explain to just random’s especially if you are out in public wearing it. Ugh. And I learned early on to just not say the name Lolita unless the other person said it first.
I was never really a Tyler fan and I’ve never enjoyed the cattiness of the community. That part was disappointing for me because it felt like I couldn’t make friends through this hobby. It’s why I stopped going to meet up’s for it too. It felt like paying to have friends who weren’t even interested in actually being friends through a shared interest.
Add comment