What drives you? What are your subjects of interest as an adult?

[Tee Kay]

Anything that objectively prolongs your lifespan does.

Mostly exploration. Nothing too deeply philosophical, more just walking around places, trying food, noticing things I haven't noticed before. Sometimes you can walk the same streets you've walked a hundred time and notice something new, or appreciate something in a different light. But also travelling to new places, learning new skills or getting better at old ones, trying a wide variety of things.

I keep a lot of things from my past, I find it very difficult to let go or throw things away, and sometimes I return to old things for comfort. But I also have no desire to keep trodding the same grounds over and over. If I do something to push the boundary of my world out bigger, even just a little bit, that's a good day.

 

[Plains-Cow]

I like playing Civilization.

 

[dusters]

I like playing Civilization.

Any particular map or mod or version of it? I loved Civ3 so much, played most of mods, got to Demigod before game became algorithmic for me.

I tried Civ 6 and nope, those Civ4+ top view hexagons didn't work for me in 2010 and they ain't working for me in 2024.

 

[Arwon]

Mostly footy and strategy games really.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Any particular map or mod or version of it? I loved Civ3 so much, played most of mods, got to Demigod before game became algorithmic for me.

I tried Civ 6 and nope, those Civ4+ top view hexagons didn't work for me in 2010 and they ain't working for me in 2024.

I play CIV IV a lot. I really like the FFH mods. Really glad they ended up finishing campaign mode for it. I'd say that I used to play FFH more than classic CIV, but I've gotten back into CIV IV over the past two years more because of Sullla's AI survivor. If you haven't watched it, look it up on YouTube. They're a riot! Especially the most recent season! The most unpredictable wins you'll ever see, and I really mean that.

 

[bernie14]

During lockdown I was looking for something new to do and keep my interest and I stumbled across a YouTube video of this guy making model airplanes. I decided to try it and ended up sticking with the hobby., While I still have a long way to go, I've come very far in the past three years and it has been fun to see the progress. I'll often head downstairs into my workshop with a beer and either a spotify playlist or a good book on audible and just hack away at these. I find it's a great pastime when it's too cold to fish. Of all the "art" I do, I think this is my best, and that's probably because I study better modelers intently and practice frequently. I've tried applying that same concept to drawing and am starting to see some results there as well.

Here's a few of my better ones (even if I did screw up the aft antenna on the corsair lol).

Spoiler :

View attachment 684033

View attachment 684035

View attachment 684038

Compare those to the first one I ever tried!

Spoiler :

View attachment 684037

Spectacular!

I do it through the local SCA group. The style I do is medieval fencing (which after a few centuries evolved into olympic sport fencing. Our version uses longer, heavier swords so there is a greater focus on blade contact. I'm also slowly learning saber. (Specifically trooper/hussar saber, in contrast to gymnasium saber, which uses a much lighter blade and consequently has a greater focus on speed to score touch-hits.)
The SCA also features "armored combat" which has you in full steel armor, but use weapons made of rattan (a cross between bamboo and wood). Although this means it tends to resemble stick-tag more than actual swordfighting, it also means you don't have to be insane like the nutters who do Battle of the Nations or buhurt.
(There is a common principle in reenactment swordfighting. There are three things you can do - real weapons, real force, real armor - but to do it safely for modern purposes you can only choose 2. A system where you use real weapons and real armor, which is what the fencing and saber does, means you can't do real force. We try and deliver hits to positive pressure.
The people doing armored combat use real force and real armor, but they have to use rattan.

Spoiler for size, I'm the one in blue :

View attachment 684081

(I also realize how bad my form is here! I shouldn't be rolling by back ankle like that.)

WOW!!! Those are outstanding! Way better than my paint jobs!
I've found I have a hard time doing light weather and shading. Lacking an airbrush I have to rely on multiple layers of thin paint to get an even covering, and that doesn't really work well with light weathering and shading I've found.
(I use mainly Tamiya paints with the leveller that goes with the alcohol based acrylics. I sometimes use enamels for metals and water based acrylics when I have them handy and need that specific color.)
My battered Arab T-55, and I still haven't gotten around to finishing up the wheels and track. (Mainly because I have no idea how to weather the track. It is made of a slippery plastic that won't hold paint, and primer seems to crack when applied.)

Spoiler :

View attachment 684079

And the HMS Exeter, probably one of my favorite builds. Everything about it just came together nicely with minimal fuss.

Spoiler :

View attachment 684080

I remember that slippery track material! It was either that super cheap grey "toy soldier" plastic or worse, shinny black rubber! Have you taken sandpaper to it?

 

[Ajidica]

Spectacular!

I remember that slippery track material! It was either that super cheap grey "toy soldier" plastic or worse, shinny black rubber! Have you taken sandpaper to it?

Its the shiny black plastic.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Mostly exploration. Nothing too deeply philosophical, more just walking around places, trying food, noticing things I haven't noticed before. Sometimes you can walk the same streets you've walked a hundred time and notice something new, or appreciate something in a different light. But also travelling to new places, learning new skills or getting better at old ones, trying a wide variety of things.

I keep a lot of things from my past, I find it very difficult to let go or throw things away, and sometimes I return to old things for comfort. But I also have no desire to keep trodding the same grounds over and over. If I do something to push the boundary of my world out bigger, even just a little bit, that's a good day.

I've started watching cruise ship videos. It's something I'll never do in RL for several reasons, but it's nice to have a vicarious holiday. I got started watching them for research for a story, and just found a couple of channels with likeable hosts and carried on. One of them was a trip to Norway and it reminded me of warpus' thread from a few years back.

 

[bernie14]

Its the shiny black plastic.
View attachment 684271

The tank is beautifully painted. My first thought was very light sanding might help the paint stick but these sources seem better...

Getting paint to stick to tank tracks?

Hi all. I'm having a dreadful time trying to get paint to stay on various rubber tracks. The tracks vary from early 4 piece zvezda to older tamiya kits. I've tried priming with Vallejo primer. I've tried painting without primer using tamiya paints. I've tried sealing the tracks before I apply an ...

www.britmodeller.com

 

[Ordnael]

I have, and always shall be...a gamer.

Words to live by...i hope. Also a recent (started TOS 2years ago) Star Trek aficionado...and being lucky enough my spouse follows me in this interest.
BTW I just started watching Star Trek Enterprise a week ago, pretty good!

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Words to live by...i hope. Also a recent (started TOS 2years ago) Star Trek aficionado...and being lucky enough my spouse follows me in this interest.
BTW I just started watching Star Trek Enterprise a week ago, pretty good!

That's awesome to hear, especially hearing your spouse also enjoys Star Trek. My spouse also likes to watch Star Trek with me even though she's not as big as a geek about it as I am. Haha!

 

[Ajidica]

The tank is beautifully painted. My first thought was very light sanding might help the paint stick but these sources seem better...

Getting paint to stick to tank tracks?

Hi all. I'm having a dreadful time trying to get paint to stay on various rubber tracks. The tracks vary from early 4 piece zvezda to older tamiya kits. I've tried priming with Vallejo primer. I've tried painting without primer using tamiya paints. I've tried sealing the tracks before I apply an ...

www.britmodeller.com

Thanks man! (Somehow I missed this post!)
That's actually why I've held off actually finishing the thing, the tank turned out so good I didn't want to ruin it with the ugly tracks.
I'll probably just drybrush it with enamels. Enamel sticks to everything.

 

[Kyriakos]

Main driving force is the pursuit of happiness.
There are various interests too, but imo being happy is the only long-term assurance that you will be able to create stuff.

 

[Ordnael]

That's awesome to hear, especially hearing your spouse also enjoys Star Trek. My spouse also likes to watch Star Trek with me even though she's not as big as a geek about it as I am. Haha!

My spouse may well be just as much of a Star Trek geek than I am! I follow the technical evolution and continuity stuff, spend a lot of time (even too much) on memory alpha. Like I said before we are now watching Enterprise, but she didn't joined in the trek goodness till season 2/3 of DS9 and TNG season 7 (also made sure she knew what the borgs are before we delved into Voyager), because I am following production order not timeline. So I provide her some cues to the technology (she also missed TOS, but I may watch it again before getting to Discovery). She's the geek that follows the actor stuff, like reading tidbits about their life, what are they doing, watching YT videos on overseas panels. It's a great combination of geekiness!

 

[Narz]

Human flourishing & subjective well being

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

My spouse may well be just as much of a Star Trek geek than I am! I follow the technical evolution and continuity stuff, spend a lot of time (even too much) on memory alpha). Like I said before we are now watching Enterprise, but she didn't joined in the trek goodness till season 2/3 of DS9 and TNG season 7 (also made sure she knew what the borgs are before we delved into Voyager), because I am following production order not timeline. So I provide her some cues to the technology (she also missed TOS, but I may watch it again before Discovery). She's the geek that follows the actor stuff, like reading tidbits about their life, what are they doing, watching YT videos on overseas panels. It's a great combination of geekiness!

I'm like you in that I like to follow the production order. Timeline, although still important, is secondary to me. We could talk all day long on this!
My main interests in the ST universe though are limited to TOS, TNG, and the movies. I could never get into DS9 and everything that came after it for some reason.

 

[Ordnael]

DS9 after TNG is tricky to get in! The setting is so much different! The cast is larger compared to TNG! You could single out all the characters that stand out or have episodes focused on without running out of fingers for TNG, DS9 is so much different in that aspect that I ended up loving "secondary" characters opposed to the main cast. I would sigh at a Kira focused episode but I delighted on a Garak one. If you saw all of the TNG movies, watching DS9 would add some more understanding to them but nothing major, to the point that Worf becomes central in DS9 whilst it feels he is thrown into the TNG movies just because it's expected of him to be there.

I guess you could jump over DS9 and go straight to Voyager, which is in my opinion as well as my spouse's a much better show and for different reasons. I would single out Tuvok as the main one...finally after years of waiting we get another Vulcan front and centre of the main cast, and a good one to boot, we can see shades of Spock in Tim Russ's brilliant interpretation of a Vulcan senior officer. My spouse would probably single out The Doctor...a holographic medical staff with a attitude that expands into a human character. Also Voyager kind of echoes the voyages of the Entreprise (let me check correct serial on Memory Alpha) NCC-1701 from TOS. Also Borg.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm like you in that I like to follow the production order. Timeline, although still important, is secondary to me. We could talk all day long on this!
My main interests in the ST universe though are limited to TOS, TNG, and the movies. I could never get into DS9 and everything that came after it for some reason.

That's a shame. There are a lot of ways in which Voyager is quite similar to TOS, though Janeway would toss you in the brig for saying so. They have some excellent time travel episodes.

And if you liked "The Trouble With Tribbles", DS9 did a companion episode to that, in honor of Star Trek's 30th anniversary. It's called "Trials and Tribble-ations."

And FYI, there's a Star Trek thread in A&E.

 

[reststillunwritten]

Reading books and learning new things.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

And if you liked "The Trouble With Tribbles", DS9 did a companion episode to that, in honor of Star Trek's 30th anniversary. It's called "Trials and Tribble-ations."

Oh really? Now that gets my attention. I'll have to search for that DS9 episode. Thanks Valka!