Containers are surprisingly expensive. And you need a lot of soil to fill them, which gets expensive too. Then it’s impossible to only buy the seeds you need, when there are so many cool varieties…
It’s all about learning to mcguiver shit. If you have some land/trees keep all the leaves, branches and yard debris, + some cardboard boxes. I fill like a foot or two of every big bed or container that way before I use soil. Cheap material for containers like using big plaster 55g drums cut in half or the top cut off can be found easily. I like to use galvanized roofing sheets with some framing for large beds.
So true! Even two diy raised beds ended up costing quite a bit. Lumber is not cheap. Neither was garden soil. Buying perennial plants costs a freaking fortune. I am going to try for seeds for next year. Plus some bulbs. For vegetables, I need to learn how to grow tomatoes from seed. Of course that requires grow lights and such.
I started with a couple gifted plants, some hand-me-down pots and a cheap bag of potting soil. Figured I’d “keep it simple” and it wouldn’t be much more than that.
Now it’s different potting mixes, mulch, fertilizers, antifungals, and that’s not even counting the durable stuff I want now like plant stands and even a humidity tray. Oof.
Oh yep, thankfully I am limited by the small size of my garden. But in the past years I’ve spend a lot on it. In the first year I only realised it when I made my budget at the end of the summer. It was so many small purchases but ended up to a big sum !
3d printing. I started out with a cheapish Chinese model, got annoyed by the lack of accuracy and bought a Prusa.
Then there’s the filaments, accessories, post processing stuff… I own a Dremel now for some reason!
And I’m constantly eyeing those resin 3d printers, telling myself the higher resolution is totally worth it…
The only thing saving my bank account is my low attention span and dozens of other interests :)
It can also save money. I love just printing things I need rather than buying them! Even if I have to do some test fits, I can easily beat off-the-shelf prices with some meters of PLA.
Happy with my Prussia mini, but starting to feel the post-processing itch.
I feel you, started with a cheap 200$ ender 3…. I know have two ender 3’s, an ideaformer belt printer, a bambu p1s, and. Tronxy 400 I’m converting into a Frankenstein printer. Oh and an anycubic mono x resin printer and a laser cutter.
Yea, 6 printers and a freaking laser cutter/engraver. All because I thought it would be fun to tinker with 3D printing
Bought a cheap printer and it worked, but I couldn’t fix it.
Then I got another cheap printer that was bigger, but it was a fire hazard
Then I got a not as cheap printer, then it broke in the stupidest way possible
So I got a the Popular Cheap Printer, and it was good enough
But I needed a Prusa since I was now selling my parts, and it was good
Then I got a bigger prusa since the popular printer turned into a sunk cost fallacy.
What should’ve been a one time cost of $350 turned into multiple $350-500 printers until I started a business with it and spent $1000 to stop messing with it
3D printing turned into building printers. Im 2 Vorons deep, and the annex k3 is starting to look interesting. Machine in general. I know I have no Real use for a co2 laser, but damn does it look interesting.
So I’m just gonna quickly add in on the resin printers.
Even a dirt cheap used anycubic model from years ago is going to be much more impressive and fantastic resolution than a standard FDM printer.
But the build plate is really small and the resin is super toxic. You will need to get something to wash the prints in and a constant supply of high proof alcohol that if you want to save money you need tools to filter as well. Then you should get UV lights for curing or you will have to wait days to harden naturally.
It’s not nearly as expensive as you would think if you buy used and fanagle parts and pieces of stuff from weird sources but it’s smelly, messy and more of a pain unless you really need super clean but small parts or minis.
Every time I feel the temptation, I think about the mess and chemicals and rubber gloves (that last one always does it for me somehow).
I don’t have the space for it, nor the ventilation. It’s just… I like to design stuff and print it. And whenever my printer can’t match my design, I get annoyed and blame it on my tools. Even though I know I should adjust my design instead.
I have like elbow length chemical gloves and wear n95s and still will walk away feeling woozy if there is a lot of cleanup to be done.
I only have one at the request of my significant other and think that sometimes this push to move everything from factory to the consumers house doesn’t always work. Some things need a proper setup and place and the home isn’t always it.
Don’t get me wrong I love the aspect of it literally making something from a digital mockup but would in a better world just want a space down the street to go to and have it done there. But makerspaces never really took off.
I started to really get into it back in 2015 with a Sony A6000 and a kit lens. Then you buy more, higher quality lenses. Then you buy better camera bodies with full frame sensor, then lenses that are full frame compatible. Then the various odds and end accessories. Then trips around the world to take pictures of things.
I have taken a break from photography recently, on account that having a kid doesn’t allow me a lot of opportunity to edit my photos anymore. They say the best camera you have is the one that is on you. That has proven to be true while I try to be as present as possible around my daughter. I can quickly take out my phone, capture the moment and it will take care of most of the post processing edits that I can share with family later.
I picked up photography back in May which just started by getting an old point and shoot digicam to take convincing liminal space photos, then I got another… then another… then some film old cameras, a cheap DSLR a set of lens, etc. Etc. It’s become a full on addiction at this point lol
Farming - family has been doing it for ~5 generations. I’d say we have put in about $10 M dollars over time (adjusted for inflation).
What’s that dear? It’s a way of life/occupation . . . are you sure? Seems like it must be a hobby given the return we’ve made on it over the years. Well, if you’re sure.
My wife said that farming is technically an occupation and not a hobby. I still have my doubts given how much we have thrown away on it over the years, but I don’t like to disagree with her (she’s usually right).
This is something that’s really hard for me. I’m against corn subsidies because I’m tired of everything having corn/corn syrup because it’s so cheap. I think the subsidies should be based on something else that promotes variety, and also favors sustainable farming instead of monocropping with petroleum based fertilizer. I know it needs subsidized, because people are price sensitive, but it needs to be done differently.
Yeah this is one of those things I’ve just accepted will require someone really skilled in drafting political policy to fix, but with the ongoing trend of people leaving the farming trade such a farm subsidy reform is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve
Tabletop RPG. I started in High school, you need only paper a pen and a set of dice, right ? All the rules can be found online anyway, right ?
But it’s so much better to have the physical books. And you need more than one dice of each obviously. And this nice metal dice looks very good. I obviously need different set of dice with colors pattern that match my different characters.
Speaking of characters, I need mini. I could get the cheap basic one of course, but the lead ones looks sooo much better.
And I obviously need custom models for all my characters.
Several years later, with a disposable income and I added maps, tokens, terrains, cards, ect. Even a tablet that I use only for this. I’m now limited by the storage place available in my flat (maybe for my own good).
Bought a decent street bike to start on, learn the ropes for several years, had the occasional mishhap or two which I fixed by myself. Still, cost money to fix things right?
Upgraded to a proper sport bike and realized how much fun it is, also with a new level of danger involved. Still, I wasn’t an idiot into things right. Bought 100% proper gear, including a track suit, good helmet, gloves, etc. as any motorcyclist knows, you’ll eventually drop your bike, which I did. Again, fixing it yourself is certainly an option, but also again, it cost money.
Then, I made the mistake of going to my first track day. They will allow you to use your own motorcycle as long as you prep it correctly and have decent tires and safety gear. This was an absolute game changer, and I was hooked harder than a heroin addict with an unlimited bank account. Unfortunately, I am neither of those two categories, and track days only get more expensive the deeper you get into them. First of all, they are not cheap to begin with. A decent track day will set you back 300 to $500 just to get on the track. Then, to really get the most out of it, you should have true racing tires with tire warmers. Then there’s the matter of getting your bike to the track, race fuel, a place to hang out, etc etc etc. The list goes on and on.
Maybe it’s midlife crisis, but I’ve decided to get a motorcycle now that I’m pushing 50. Turns out, I can easily spend 3500€ for my gear and classes before even getting a bike!
Unless you have a dedicated track bike with an ECU map and engine modifications that requires race fuel, you don’t need it. 93 octane ethanol-free is just fine. It’s all about what the compression is in your engine; higher compression means that you need higher octane fuel, and higher octane fuel in a lower compression engine isn’t helping at all. (Most modern bikes also have anti-knock sensors that will retard the timing if your fuel is too poor for the engine.)
this is true outside of the motorsport too. Oh you want to use your bike to take trips or go motocamping? every single little things is gunna cost $50+
Wow I love this! When I was in school, you were seen as a cool kid if you had a four-colour BIC pen, but a amazing mechanical pencil like that Japanese one would have been much better!
Kuru Togas for sure for their rotating lead engine. The Advanced Upgrade specifically is my daily driver. The Pentel GraphGear 1000 is also a very comfortably hefty pencil. Otherwise the Pentel Orenz Nero and it’s auto dispensing lead mechanism is also really cool. Rotring 600 and Staedtler 925-35 are also popular pencils that I’ve tried and like, but I don’t own.
Playing music. Started on a shitty hand-me-down acoustic guitar. Got a better guitar. Got an electric. Got a better amp. Got a couple of pedals. Got a better amp. Got like 6 more amps, some cabs, 5 more guitars, a huge pedalboard, a cello, a keyboard, an audio interface, attenuators, mics, etc etc.
You gotta understand... I need all this stuff. There are subtle differences that you've never noticed before but will probably hear once I do an a/b comparison for you, and I absolutely must get an AC15 next to round out the collection instead of buckling down and recording something.
I spent a decade as a touring musician. My guitarist is still a tonechaser and has new shit every practice. New amps, New pedals, etc. He’s constantly trading and saving for new crap
I’m so happy I run my PBass into an OCD clone voiced for bass into a Mesa 400 with 2x15 and I’ve never wanted more.
It’s this very bready one that takes like, three hours minimum to be ready. Like a half hour to mix and then two hours to rise and then another hour to rise in the pan. It smells yeasty as fuck but when it’s cooked it is the best pizza anywhere.
I may or may not have eaten two slices before taking that photo. They were delicious. It’s Detroit-style pizza, so literally everything about making it is expensive, but so so worth 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…
Every damn time I get into something, I over do it.
I spent $13k on my kitchen stove, this one keeps giving, but that is $13,000.00 USD! Just for my kitchen stove. My range hood because it is required with my high output stove was $3k, and then let’s talk makeup air to replace what is taken out by it.
Or what about woodworking? Yep, I wanted to do it, and still do. I have a half completed work bench, and some basic tools… That will be about $2k…
Let’s buy a boat! Yep 29 years old, runs great… Break out another thousand…
But most recently, Plex… You know, let’s get rid of subscriptions… Yeah, this year alone I have put $900 or so into that. Yep I sure saved money on canceling Netflix!
I’m currently considering setting up Jellyfin to host movies for the times I lose internet. Something small, you know? No more than a terabyte… but that’s a lie. I’m looking at NAS and I’m already realizing that this could turn into a problem.
Yeah I wish NAS devices were cheaper. You forget how big shows are these days and that it’s still over $200 for a single big enough hard drive.
But a couple tips that I’m not using myself because of weird configuration requirements.
• You don’t really need raid if you feel comfortable having to get all the files again • You don’t need a true NAS device. Ebay and Craigslist can be your friend for getting either a used NAS or just a workstation PC for cheap (I don’t have a pi but a micro PC that was like $85 running a lot of server configs on it and it’s a 12th gen Intel chip) • Look for companies selling server or parts or old media drives they are generally models that last super well and even used will have plenty of life on them at a discount.
For the cost of just a year of HBO Max I now have ad blocking on my whole wifi, the ability to spin up custom websites and email addresses, and remote storage access on top of my jellyfin that I’m able to share and watch my 500+ TV shows with friends
It really can get expensive cause PC parts aren’t always cheap but like… We have so much tech scrap a quick dumpster dive would net you a lot of usable stuff
I recently set up a Plex server on a machine I was given that I also run my home assistant server on.
The machine crashes every few weeks and it is me thinking really hard about getting something else to use. I’d love to use a Pi, but have yet to find one at anything close to MSRP, so I’m eyeing different netbooks that I can run Linux on.
The rest of my home theater is just about where I want it for now (Onkyo TX-NR5100, Klipsch Reference all around with the 820f’s for my mains, r-32c center channel, r-52 bookshelves for my rears, r-120sw, and r-41sa for upward firing atmos which I’m not thrilled with and want to switch to in-ceiling speakers) and fills my small media room very, very well. But I see another few thousand dollars, at least, in my future here.
I’d love to use a Pi, but have yet to find one at anything close to MSRP, so I’m eyeing different netbooks that I can run Linux on.
I don’t know if Plex supports this feature but I’m running Jellyfin on a RPi 4B and Jellyfin support live transcoding for video formats that are not natively supported by the streaming client. Although RPi 4B supports hardware encoding of h264 1080p30, it performs badly.
So if you’re using live transcoding maybe opt for hardware with more oomph.
I’m just torrenting media that’s hard to get, namely now that I’m cutting subscriptions more and more, nothing terribly special. I honestly don’t even know what I’d need live transcoding for lol.
Generally for bigger transcoding jobs you need a legit graphics card however just modern CPUs with internal graphics can do a lot even if they are a bit slower.
It’s free and just as easy. You miss a few plex only features but they’re not worth their money. Although I did get a lifetime license for 75$. Otherwise plex is too expensive if it’s the monthly sub for the pass. Feature wise, but thats probably personal.
So far I haven’t found the Plex pass to be necessary for me at all. I torrent my media and that’s it. I have Apple Music for my music, which allows for lossless downloads, I don’t care about skipping credits, and love tv doesn’t matter to me at all. Since the free tier with Plex serves my needs well, I’m not sure why I should look at Jellyfin when by all accounts it’s more difficult to use and I’d have to make my friends switch to a new means of accessing my library.
It’s open source and gives you a lot of fantastic features that are locked behind paywalls and more on plex. But I will be honest it’s not nearly as simple and setting it up so I could use it outside of my home network took a week of figuring out issues with proxies.
You can keep using plex but if you have a good tech understanding jellyfin is pretty nice.
For your computer troubles I would say you can skip the pi completely if you have the space and get something like a cheap optiplex. They are dirt cheap used and can give more oomph and customization for hardware later on and are really simple to get any Linux distro on.
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