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?
Butterfly stroke. Technique’s still terrible but I cam clear, may be, 30 meters in one go. Because if the nerve problems in my leg, I decided to drop jogging and start swimming again.
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.
We sure hope it’ll be interesting, ya! We’re going for a fantasy/medieval vibe with a little tournament to win a wish from the queen. And it’s obvious what my wish will be, when I win that thing lol
Love whistling. I learned it as a teen and drove my parents mad practicing.
While I am not inept in the kitchen, I only recently figured out how to get the classic French omelette consistently right. It’s harder than it looks to get it looking flawless like that with an ultra thin exterior layer and perfectly creamy inside, and not ruining the structure when rolling it on the edge of the pan. I followed the instructions of the legendary chef, Jacques Pepin, in this video, and supplemented by the wonderful videos of chef motokichi (link). They make it look super easy because they are extremely skilled.
Learned to throw my little cast net! Had it for years, never used it. The trick was watching videos on how to throw small nets. Don’t have a fishing license, no idea what I’ll do with this skill.
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.
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.
I got into photography during the pandemic as a way to go outside and stay active. I find it makes you pay attention to the environment around you a lot more closely. Things you normally wouldn’t notice become interesting.
In a similar way, I’d learnt an eeny bit about visual composition at one point, and it’s helped me understand how something pretty can be uninteresting and something ugly can be interesting. (Maybe it was more obvious to everyone else, especially with the whole image gen sitch (ー﹏一))
Oddly it’s made me respect internet-ugly MS Paint stuff more. Like this ancient shitpost.
And nature too of course. The way a red sky refracts in cirrus clouds. Ladybugs on leaves. Elk.
All stuff I normally wouldn’t have noticed :p
Yup, we tend to take our world for granted, but there’s so much to see even in things that normally seem mundane. Learning to stop and appreciate things has been a really eye opening experience for me as well.
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?)
Last two skills I’ve successfully learned:
-
Giving subcutaneous fluids to my cat. Followed vet instructions and watched several how-to videos online for different tempered cats.
-
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/
-
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.
Splice chain link fence. Learned from YouTube. 5 days ago.
Weaving up the wire thingies on chain link fences? What’d you need that for – did your property fence get a huge hole from a burglar or something?
An old storm damaged fence.
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 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.
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.
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.
