It can be a small skill.
The last thing I learned to do was whistle. Never could whistle my whole life, and tutorials and friends never could help me.
So, for the last month or two, I just sort of made the blow shape then spam-tried different “tongue configurations” so to speak – whenever I had free time. Monkey-at-a-typewriter type shit. It was more an absentminded thing than a practice investment.
Probably looked dumb as hell making blow noises. Felt dumb too (“what? you can’t whistle? just watch”), but I kept at it like a really really low-investment… dare I attract self-help gurus… habit.
Eventually I made a pitch, then I could shift the pitch up a little, then five pitches, then Liebestraum, then the range of a tenth or so. Skadoosh. Still doing it now lol.
(Make of this what you will: If I went the musician route my brain told me to, then I would’ve gotten bored after 1 minute of major scales. When I was stuck at only having five pitches, I had way more longevity whistle-blowing cartoonish Tom-and-Jerry-running-around chromaticisms than failing the “fa” in “do re mi fa”.)
So, Lemmings: What was the last skill you learned? And further, what was the context/way in which you learned it?
Sideshow performer. Lately been working on putting mousetraps on my tongue. It’s one of my tamer skills, but I just never really had the chance to develop that skill. It’s also one of the more child friendly skills.
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every sentence there makes me want more details
AMA I guess?
Done.
- How dangerous really is your job?
- What happens if you get injured? Insurance/etc.?
- What differences do you have when performing for adults vs. children? (since you mention child-friendly, I assume that means you don’t do things that might scare them)
- What are your least tame skills?
- How did you get into performing in the sideshow? Mentors, training, string of coincidences?
- Favorite memory?
- Any frightening memories?
Sorry for the wall x)
How dangerous really is your job?
Very. The name of the game is risk mitigation. Most acts put only the performer at risk, but fire puts the entire theater at risk, which is why I carry insurance and follow strict protocol. I perform at a historic landmark so they don’t allow just anyone to use fire there.
What happens if you get injured? Insurance/etc.?
I have a day job with insurance, but not everyone is so lucky and performers do get hurt sometimes. Injuries are bad because they mean taking time off to heal (a friend of mine is currently recovering from a broken rib and can’t perform). Minor cuts and burns are part of the job, you learn to manage them and move on, so we’re all covered in scars. Again, it’s all about risk mitigation.
What differences do you have when performing for adults vs. children? (since you mention child-friendly, I assume that means you don’t do things that might scare them)
Adult oriented shows often have more nudity/burlesque and more graphic acts, whereas kids get more traditional circus or campy horror. For example, children might see fire eating and mousetrap, while adults might get a bed of nails or human pincushion.
What are your least tame skills?
Tongue splits ALWAYS freak people out. So does anything involving a power drill.
How did you get into performing in the sideshow? Mentors, training, string of coincidences?
I started as a fire performer and got into it through fire eating. Eventually, one thing led to another, and I was invited to join America’s last permanently housed circus sideshow. Everything blew up from there.
Favorite memory?
We’re a close-knit group, almost like family, which is special since we’re a dying breed. My favorite memories are probably the things other performers have said about me while introducing me to the stage. We love to gush about each other.
Any frightening memories?
Earlier this year, one of my close friends tried to take her own life on one of my performance days. My phone blew up to the point where I couldn’t even see my GPS. My girlfriend stepped in to help thankfully. We got a group chat going, sent people to find her, got her to the hospital, and she spent a week in the psych ward.
After that, I hosted a fundraiser show that raised $1k to get her back on her feet. The event also brought a lot of people together.
If you read this far, here’s my IG
That sounds less like a skill and more like a very unfortunate freak accident.
The skill with a lot of these things is knowing how to present it with confidence. Plus pain tolerance, technical skills, and theater skills.
Oh yes, I was joking, that is definitely a talent outside of my wheelhouse.
I learned how to make my own GIFs.
I also learned how to upscale video, but I’m not very good at it yet.
Nice. kdenlive or something else?
Also – upscale video? Don’t you run it through some real esrgan thing and wait for forever? I’m working on trying to upscale a video right now but my GPU is ancient
Gifski for the gifs and Topaz AI for the upscaling. I am on a Mac.
Okay, so the most recent skill that I learned - or am still learning - would be making chainmail armour (or just “maille” for the pedantic). In theory, I now have the knowledge how to start from an iron ingot, turn that into a wire and that into the little rings for the armor. But because I want to be done in less than a year (will be part of my wedding outfit), I started with pre-made riveted rings, which I simply bend open, connect to solid rings and then bend closed and press in the rivet.
But since I never get to talk about it in other threads, I also learned how to make super primitive candles. Just yesterday I made candles from pork fat chunks that I ground up in my mortar and pestle. You don’t even need the little fabric to catch fire, you can just literally start lighting up the fat itself if you hold it long enough to a lighter
And before that, about one year ago now, I started learning to play the Herdy Gurdy, which is a lovely instrument, with a very lovely tone. And I even built one myself from a little do-it-yourself model kit, so to speak, which is called the Nerdy Gurdy. I started learning that because I was playing Sea of Thieves and I really enjoyed the sound of the instrument in-game. And then I also thought “hey, what if I not only learn to play it, but also learn to play it for my wedding in 2025?”
Edit because I feel this has been just a year of learning so much stuff for me: ASL. I started learning ASL about a month after I played VRChat for the first time and been practicing ever since. The chance of me getting good use out of ASL anywhere that is not online is pretty much zero, though, because I live in Germany lol
Wow, that’s definitely a few. Didn’t expect an entire set of chainmail to show up in these comments!
And I seem to notice something:
…the armor. But because I want to be done in less than a year (will be part of my wedding outfit)
“Hey, what if I not only learn to play the [Hurdy (Nerdy?) Gurdy, but also learn to play it for my wedding”
Someone’s wedding is going to be very interesting.
Body work on my car.
I’m poor as fuck and had tree branches fuck me up. Decided I’m not willing to deal with the bullshit of finding a new one, especially with all the bullshit privacy invasion on top of buying the damn thing.
So, I borrowed tools, looked shit up, and while the car isn’t fully dent free or anything, it was good enough to replace windows and you have to get close to see the warping that’s left.
Took my crippled ass damn near two weeks because I could only work maybe a half hour, 45 minutes at a go once or twice a day. And I wasn’t working fast.
While it was much simpler than I thought it would be, those auto body pros deserve their damn pay. Shit is hard physically. Just replacing the side mirror had my back cramping and spasming for hours after, even with meds. And that was the easiest job involved.
Dunno that I learned enough to exactly say it’s a true skill, since it really only applies to my car, and the kind of damage done, but the parts of the frame that were bent are back in line, and the dents that needed shrinking are damn near invisible, which I’m proud as fuck of.
The painting sucks though lol. Couldn’t get a good sprayer on loan, and the one I could get was a bitch about not giving an even coat. The blending is not great. Visible from even a dozen feet away. A few drips too. But I ain’t worried about that with a car that’s damn near twenty years old.
Dunno what the hell I would have done without good neighbors and friends loaning me the gear. No way could I have afforded rental for the air compressor after the supplies cost, parts, and glass. Came out to a few hundred all told, but the estimate was damn near 1.2k
So assuming you saved $900, and you worked 45 to 90 minutes a day for two weeks, then your total work was between 10.5 and 21 hours, which maths out to between $42 and $85 an hour. Plus the convenience of dodging the modern disaster they call smart cars.
Amazing. I’d be content running into a car problem and fixing it for half the savings. Hopefully YouTube will serve me well when the time comes :P
What would you say was the hardest part (effort or instructional accuracy wise)?
Absolutely the hardest part was the shrinking. Most of the damage, I had access to both sides of the panel. Which means you can use a hammer and a block thing called a dolly. But you have to hold the dolly on one side and hammer on the other. Which is awkward as hell. It’s slow work, or was for me; I suppose a pro can go faster. And you have to be careful because if you overdo it, you can end up hardening the metal and end up with cracks.
All the videos and tutorials say to practice on some scrap sheet metal, but I didn’t have any, so it was trial by fire.
This was back in the summer, but my left shoulder is still being pissy about the positions I was in to reach the dolly to the middle of the roof and still see what I was hitting with the hammer.
Tbh though, it was much simpler than I thought. There’s plenty of good tutorials out there,and the concepts aren’t complicated at all, it’s the skill that’s fiddly and detailed.
Probably proper knife skills. I’ve always been pretty good with a knife, but I’ve been taking my time to really refine the skill as I do a lot of cooking for large groups so speed is extremely useful. I honestly learnt a lot of it indirectly by just watching how chefs use them, but for the theory and all that I started with Lan Lam’s video on knife skills over at the America’s Test Kitchen yt channel.
I’m about to be going to an event where I’ll be cooking nearly a thousand meals a day for three days, so I’m going to be putting it to the test. The one nice thing is we’ll have a team of volunteers to help with ingredient prep, so it should be okay but daunting none the less.
Took a wood shredder apart and back together after something got stuck inside.
I can take a pen apart…
Did you have a lot of prior handy experience or did you follow a video? This is a bit vague on the how
( ’ ﹋ ’ ; )I’m kind of an electrical engineer by training. Experience taking electronics apart, but this was my first mechanical device. It was quite the journey and I only saw some general videos about people taking combustion engines apart. It’s a pretty simple device really, but still a new skill. :)
Learning the proper way to squat for my long femurs/short torso body. It makes such a difference in how and where I feel the muscle work. Knees over toes be damned!
It’s places like that where “I don’t know what I don’t know.”
- How did you realize you were squatting wrong?
- How did you figure out the right way?
e.g. dumbbell row-like exercises all feel odd and disbalanced to me but idk what idk (is it form? body type? ask a doctor/trainer? check an authoritative blog that isnt SEO-spicy enough for search engines?)
Well, I kept trying to squat like most people do trying so hard not to lean forward and kept falling over on my ass lol. That and also I couldn’t feel the work in my glutes, only quads. Are you familiar with the way little children squat? I still can’t do it but getting better every day by practicing.
Turns out I have super tight hips and that prevented me of hinging correctly, plus the aformentioned femur/torso ratio.
I hired a personal trainer in january of this year to help me out with stuff and she helped me correct my form. Now I use a pair of those foam wedge things under my heels to prop me up in a better position and I can squat way better. It was a game changer.
I learned how to make a really simple PCB in KiCad a few minutes ago, by watching this video. The thing I wanted actually existed already and I could’ve bought it from Aliexpress, but I realized I could save about $40 re-drawing my own version and ordering from JLCPCB instead, so that’s what I did.
Recently learned how to bend some notes of an harmonica. It’s very complex to have the good mouth position, but it comes with practice i guess.
Do you actually bend the harmonica? Or is it just messing with the hole using your tongue?
I don’t think bending the instrument is a good idea, i just move my cheeks, tongue and throat in a way that the air flux bend the pins to change the tone. More info here
That makes sense. That’s why physically bending my harmonica never worked! I still don’t understand mechanistically how moving your tongue in your mouth changes the vibration of a reed, but I’ll work on that part.
Edit: found it!
To break a tire nut that’s really stuck on, hold the tire iron sideways to the left, support the iron with the right hand so it doesn’t pull on the nut wrong and damage it, step on the iron’s handle and lean on it until it loosens (usually with a loud snap)
If you get a + shaped tire iron, you can simultaneously pull up on one end and step down on the other, increasing your torque and keeping the nut properly engaged.
Crocheting granny squares. My daughter got into crochet and I wanted to knit for a while so I asked her to teach me. After learning the basics I picked up what I need so I can make myself a blanket while commuting to work.
Probably rudimentary plumbing repair? (More specifically, replacing a bathroom sink faucet.) Via Youtube.
Nice! How long did it take, and did you hit any roadblocks?
Must’ve saved a lot of money there.
Well, the whole saga is longer. We got a bathroom redone and the sink never worked right. It dripped. I took the faucet apart several times trying to fix the drip, but eventually concluded the faucet itself was just cheap crap and couldn’t be repaired.
So I bought a nicer one and replaced the faucet entirely. I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of replacing it ahead of time. Usually the drain and faucet “match”. (As in, the finish of them matches and if the finish on the drain is a different style/color/etc than the faucet, it’ll stand out.) And so they come as a set. But in this case, the drain that was part of the old/cheap faucet a) worked fine and b) was so similar in color/finish/style that you couldn’t tell it didn’t come with the new faucet. So I didn’t end up having to replace the drain, which made the whole process considerably easier.
Oh, I did need to slightly modify the drain closure plunger to fit the old faucet’s drain… lever… thing. Heh…
There was definitely a moment once I’d assembled the whole thing and was turning on the valves under the sink that I was a little worried it’d all explode and soak the whole bathroom. Lol. But everything’s been fine for months now!
As for how long it took, probably three sessions of a couple of hours each to finally convince myself the old faucet was too defective to try to salvage. And then another thirty minutes to find a new faucet on Amazon and another three or so hours to replace faucet. And about the only roadblocks were the time I spent trying to fix the old faucet and the time I spent procrastinating before undertaking the actual replacement. Heh.
Coming out the other side of that experience, I do feel like I understand the sentiment better now that “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” And I think it largely applies even if you don’t have any particular amount of expertise. Someone who doesn’t have to live with the results may not really care about something like a dripping faucet. If they can check the “replaced the faucet” box, they can say “job’s done”, charge the customer, and be on their merry way. (And I’m not saying I blame them, really.)
(Of course, that only goes so far. I wouldn’t think you ought to DIY things that might be dangerous, for instance.)
I did this one a few months back with a kitchen faucet! Great learning experience. I even learned that German faucets, at least, don’t affix to the counter the same way as American brands.
Last two skills I’ve successfully learned:
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Giving subcutaneous fluids to my cat. Followed vet instructions and watched several how-to videos online for different tempered cats.
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Making macarons. Followed online recipes, tried some different techniques and troubleshooting through trial and error.
More recently, I have been trying to teach myself HTML whenever I have pockets of free time during the work day. I’m following the mozilla.org Intro to HTML as a guide.
Here’s a great guide: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/html-crash-course/
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I’ve been eating a lot of instant ramen lately and finally decided to get a pair of chopsticks and learn how to use them. I was using a fork before. The difference is incredible.
Yeah it just feels super different. Somehow it tastes different too.
It’s like drinking water out of a red plastic/solid cup vs. a nice clear glass. Or eating sushi using chopsticks instead of by spoon or fork or something.
I wouldn’t eat sushi without em :^)
I haven’t tried eating sushi yet. I bet it will be much easier with chopsticks too.
Reading the Cyrillic alphabet.
It’s not anywhere near as hard as it seems and there are so many times you encounter it.
What’d you learn it for (I personally don’t see it often so you likely live near a Cyrillic-heavier region) and how? Also
I kept seeing more and more things in Cyrillic especially because of the war in Ukraine, so gradually learned more and more of it online, now I know at least all the letters used in Russian. Now I can read Cyrillic, although only very slowly, basically I do it like an elementary school child.
I live in Austria for context, no neighboring countries with the Cyrillic alphabet.
