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

  • Thwompthwomp@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 days ago

    That is very true. If you just want to learn it, starting even at something like basic tex may make more sense. The latex ecosystem is where it starts getting interesting though, since there’s been so much created and written for it. BUT that does mean you’re stuck in a weird abstraction area. For when I’m just making documents (and not stuck to a specific journal format), I’m really enjoying org-mode and then piping its output to a tex PDF. I think markdown would work too, but org-mode inherits all the emacs modes, so you can get some pretty complicated in-document scripting done.

    • pmk@piefed.caEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      Plain TeX is simultaneously straightforward and impossibly complex. Want to change the left margin, just set hoffset to something, but if you want double sided output where the left margin changes depending on verso or recto page, then you need to redefine the output routine. Which admittedly is quite simple in TeX compared to the monster output routine in LaTeX, but still. To me, TeX is to LaTeX what C is to python.