I need to quench my thirst for knowledge and learn something new just for the sake of it.

I’ve already learned:

  • Equations and pivot tables in Excel

  • Vector graphics in Inkscape

  • Music mixing in rekordbox

  • Personal VPN on a raspberry pi 4 with OpenVPN

  • LAMP stack web hosting

  • Streaming & video capture with OBS

  • Manual & automatic backups with FreeFileSync

Things I’m open to:

  • FOSS (even beta) or free-as-in-beer software

  • A high or low learning curve

  • Tools for niche fields that I’d otherwise have no reason to learn

  • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
    7·
    2 days ago

    SQL - understanding how to interact with databases will be an incredibly useful skill for whatever rabbit hole you next want to fall down.

      • DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz
        5·
        4 days ago

        Nice I haven’t done that one! Haven’t even touched blender in years, but I’ve gone through like 3 of his donut tutorials over the past decade or so. They’re really fun and show off how impressive the program is.

    • MissJinx@lemmy.world
      2·
      3 days ago

      Adding to that, since I work at a computer I was never motovated to stay at tbe same place to learn blender so I changed to Nomad Sculpt at the tablet and I love it, I can do it from my couch (or toilet lol). It is a different aproach tho

  • rodneylives@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    ssh and scp (secure connection and file transfer)

    grep (the standard command-line search tool)

    sed (Stream EDitor, good for find-replaces once you learn how to use it)

    awk (can operate on text files or command output that’s organized in columns)

    sc (terminal-based spreadsheet)

    trash (safer replacement for rm that moves things to your desktop’s trash directory instead of deleting immediately)

    • justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      2 days ago

      trash is a nice idea, but i guess it’s hard to overcome the muscle memory, i might need to rename rm for it ;)

      btw: does somebody else pronounces awk as awkward?

      • JojoWakaki@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        I was thinking that too, I wonder if rm can be aliased to trash. I mean it probably can as I do have alias rm='rm -i'. Wondering if it breaks anything.

        • justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          1·
          2 days ago

          from what you wrote, i would guess bash is first checking through aliases. anyway that’s something to better read up before trying on a non-test system

    • xylogx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      4 days ago

      “Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. It is made by artists that want to see affordable art tools for everyone.”

    • Thales@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Came here to say the same thing.

      Krita is a fantastic image editor.

      The ability to script it with Python is a huge plus. I’ve created posters by having it read files from a directory and place images precisely spaced, etc.

      • CAVOK@lemmy.world
        7·
        3 days ago

        Krita is a fantastic name for a KDE drawing app if you speak Swedish. Krita means crayon, and traditionally KDE apps were prefixed with a “k”, also Rita means to draw.

    • Digit@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Reminds, there’s mypaint too.

      Yeah. Krita, mypaint, I neglect, living 99% of the time in gimp.

    • Cxyz@lemmy.zip
      2·
      4 days ago

      Thanks for sharing this! I’ve had Krita on my tablet for a while now and have been meaning to learn it.

  • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
    6·
    3 days ago

    One week of keybr.com to improve touch typing skills, which should serve you across all your IT endeavours… Unless you choose to learn gimp and drawing stuff :P

    • Anivia@feddit.org
      11·
      2 days ago

      Real cad software (like Freecad or OpenSCAD if you want FOSS) would be more useful for 3d printing, unless you only plan to print useless plastic figurines

      • testfactor@lemmy.world
        8·
        3 days ago

        It’s very unique in the CAD space. It’s almost more akin to a hardware definition language like VHDL than it is a traditional CAD solution.

        You don’t ever do any direct manipulation of your model through visual tools. There is a visualizer so that you can see your model, but all changes are done via plaintext editing of the model’s definition file.

        This has a lot of advantages, not the least of which is being able to version control your 3D models.

        It has some disadvantages as well, in that some transforms that are easy in a traditional CAD software are a little more manual in OpenSCAD. I’ve definitely had to dust off my highschool trigonometry once or twice to get something the way I wanted it.

        Specifically with regards to FreeCAD. I found FreeCAD to be a little inaccessible. It’s unintuitive at best, and I found it unpleasant to work with, as it was exceptionally fiddly. OpenSCAD feels far more intuitive to me, but I also have a software engineering background. I think OpenSCAD may be trickier for someone without that, but it’s hard to say.

      • josephc@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 days ago

        It’s quite different. I’m a programmer and find it substantially better suited to my mental model than FreeCAD. Don’t get me wrong, I respect FreeCAD – even envy it a bit and all the features – but I need to imagine my shapes and describe how they fit together. I spend so much of my free time thinking of equations that product shapes (yay game dev) that it comes pretty naturally.

        If you don’t program or prefer a more visual, arguably professional, workflow, you probably won’t like OpenSCAD.

    • 0ops@piefed.zipEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      I really like openscad! It maps well to how I think through modeling a part. I was just using it yesterday

  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    You can do really neat thinga in QGIS – like make your own professional quality maps, make map animated gifs, etc