I had a recipe blog prior to the pandemic. I put well over five grand into it over four years and didn’t make a cent.
If I hadn’t decided that I hate website with ads and third party cookies on them I probably could have made a few bucks during the pandemic.
Thanks for asking. This prompted me to review some posts and I see I need to update a lot of stuff for consistency (it’s a bit of a mess). I hope to get back into this one day, after I finish some other projects.
My grandma got me 3 ducklings in 2019 for no reason. 3 ducks don’t cost very much. The issue is, that she unlocked a passion. I now have 12 ducks. I want more, but I don’t have the money or space.
Oh yes. I’m having issues putting pics in this comment, so here’s an imgur album. These are various birds from various stages of life. The big one with the red face is my fave. His name is Antonio.
They are. I had two very aggressive males that I did not consider pets. The one became dinner and the other one was killed by the other ducks. I, and the other birds, have zero tolerance for bullies. Thankfully my whole flock is absolutely lovely now. <3
that’s what i do in my life too, remove myself from aggressive folks and let them deal with the consequences of their behavior. haven’t had aggressive pets though, so not sure what i would do.
It’s easy to remove emotional attachment from aggressive livestock. At least it is for me. I grew up on farms, though, so that kinda thing is normal in my eyes
What’s your strat? I like fixing up older business laptops as linux machines. Do you just look on local listings after a big OS deprecation or is there more strategy to it?
Not really, I just thought to myself since Windows 11 dropped 32-bit support, we will probably see more older systems come to light when Windows 10 dies.
On the other hand, I recently started doing the other kind of magic with cards. That sounds really cheap, all you need is a $5 deck of Bicycle cards, some YouTube tutorials, and you’re all set. Turns out, that can be a money sink as well if you decide to go deep (or wide) enough. Still far less than MTG though.
There are endless ways to play magic cheaply. Starter decks, pauper as a format, online. I could make a dandan deck for Magic less than one trick on theory11
Tabletop Roleplaying Games.
I bought Mutant Year Zero in 2015 thinking “Ah, this will give me countless hours of play! I can make my own adventures and stuff!”
Now, my shelf is buckling after trying a hundred different games and supplements, and getting addicted to pretty books.
Currently, my favorite game of all time is Delta Green. Investigative horror mystery. Amazingly horrific scenarios (adventures) with True Detective season one level of masterful writing.
I love how TTRPGs are the model for having a quality product means people will buy it. It’s not difficult to pirate everything, and many systems are just flat out free. And yet I buy most of it.
It started with a little green in the living room and suddenly turned into a full grown, humid, highly poisonous indoor jungle that’s thirsty as fuck. And it turns out that exotic plants, fancy pots, growing lights, different types of soil for different species, fertilizers, and dozens of liters of water every day are somehow expensive…
You should still go for it though! You can contact people on radio, you don’t need to necessarily have anyone local join you to achieve that. At most times of the day, there are hundreds of radio contacts being made. Now actually receiving those, and reaching those stations yourself as well in order to make a contact, that’s the challenge. And there are many different ways to achieve that with different gear on different frequencies in all sorts of different conditions. You can do much more than just a bit higher power walkie-talkie, you can reach the other side of the world if you go at it well :).
My main motivation was game coordination around our camp. We didn’t have decent phone coverage until recently and phones aren’t practical for it.
As for reaching and connecting to other people it is fun but I don’t want to do it alone. It is better to have someone to share this hobby. I am homebrewer and my friends can at least enjoy my beer. This wouldn’t bring that enjoyment.
One option is to see if there’s any GMRS repeaters, and especially any repeater groups, in your area. The license is cheap and you can still go 50w with it, but it’s not as popular as the HAM bands. There’s a few really good, but simple enough, mobile stations. Pick up a better antenna (height is king!), and you’ll be able to listen & talk with the locals.
I’m in the beginnings…and yes, with two Baofeng handhelds lol. Then I got a little SDR kit for receiving. Of course I also needed some cable adapters and ferrite cores, while I was at it. Oh, and the ARRL license manual to study for my technician license (I knew nothing about amateur radio prior to this rabbit hole, so it was actually really interesting to read)
Was supposed to have my technician license already, but life got a little chaotic. Was passing all the practice exams easy and just needed to sign up for the real exam. Hoping to get it done soon, but I have to brush back up a little. Then I’m hoping to move quickly to my general class, while the basics are still fresh.
Even started learning morse code and was getting better at it. Had the alphabet and numbers, could read it just fine, but the listening is what’s hard… but still kinda fun. All the Q-codes and slang are what I think will take the longest if I really start getting into CW, but I know that’ll be time/experience more than anything
But for now, I just listen-in on my SDR around my area when I can, and have maybe looked into how to grab some NOAA satellite images lol
So yeah, I can see this becoming a bit of a thing for me, because I keep learning more and more, and it all just seems so cool to me. Using the ionosphere to propagate, tropospheric ducting, or even using freaking meteor scatter! So much cooler than I ever thought when I knew nothing
Instant (analog) photography and collecting pins and buttons. Turns out film is expensive and buying pins are expensive. Started out with friends giving me pins to stick on my bag and now I have close to hundred pins on my pin wall. At least they look pretty rad.
For me it’s photography. I originally bought a camera and lens second hand. Now over the past two years its become rather a lot of money. I bought a Nikon Z8 last month and it was definitely worth the money.
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