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·
    1 天前

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

  • rodneylives@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 天前

    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)

  • AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip
    3·
    2 天前

    There’s always software reverse engineering. As bad as it may sound to some people, the US NSA has a github repositroy for a tool known as Ghidra, under Apache 2.0 license, so you can look at the source code and determine whether or not it’s spyware. If it’s actually NSA quality, you know it should be good enough for reverse engineering old software that won’t land you in trouble if found out by the original devs. Last update was 2 months ago.

    I tried a little bit but have yet to go very far at all with it since I am an idiot who thinks he’s smarter than he really is.

    Though, taking a page from your book, I am interested in looking up rekordbox now.

  • SoulKaribou@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 天前

    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

  • Lee@retrolemmy.com
    1·
    1 天前

    FOSS, learning curve, and niche field? I got you. VLSI layout software or SDR (software defined radio) software.

    VLSI layout is kind of software allows you to design electronics hardware at the silicone/transistor level. IOW you have to draw the layers of materials that form transistors (cross poly silicon and p/n-diffused silicon to form) and connect them to metal layers. Learn how NAND and NOR gates are actually formed. Make a 1 bit data storage (flip flop), half adder, full adder. Go as far as you want.

    Example software:

    SDR. Less intense, but also niche and gives you lots of related things to learn/branch in to.

    Can be used to receive and decode radio/satellite transmissions. Normally people would buy hardware and use software locally, but some people make their receivers accessible on the internet (websdr) which can give you a first intro to it. After you capture data you can run it through other software to decode (depending on what it is). For example, you can capture raw weather image data from satellites and decode it to get the images that the satellite is transmitting as it’s capturing the data.

    A list of some SDRs you can access over the internet (doesn’t require hardware purchase to use): http://websdr.org/

    It probably won’t be immediately obvious how to use either SDR or VLSI software but you asked for niche and learning curve, so enjoy. ;)

    EDIT: Fixed some typos and grammar.

    • Anivia@feddit.org
      1·
      2 天前

      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

      • DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz
        4·
        3 天前

        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·
      2 天前

      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

  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    11·
    2 天前

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

    • Thales@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      2 天前

      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·
        2 天前

        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.

    • xylogx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      3 天前

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

    • Digit@lemmy.todayEnglish
      3·
      2 天前

      Reminds, there’s mypaint too.

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

    • Cxyz@lemmy.zip
      2·
      3 天前

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

  • Digit@lemmy.todayEnglish
    13·
    2 天前

    some suggestions for your consideration in order of empowerment and learning curve first,

    • AWK
    • ffmpeg (~ & imagemagick ?)
    • bash, zsh, or fish
    • kew (it’s just a really simple nice tui music player, no fuss). (… “Am I the only fun one in Digit’s list here?” – kew)

    n_n

    Some other things that sprang to mind, (generally tending to more gui things, some distro/packagemenent things)… audacity/tenacity, fontforge, gimp, gentoo and portage, bedrocklinux and brl, peertube self hosting, forgefed self hosting, suckless.org’s tools, CRUX or KISS/Carbs, just playing around in stellarium, playing around in pioneer space sim, learning how to evade humanity’s detection as an ai in the game called singularity, ;3

    Oh… Here’s an idea for you… Learn a text editor.

    Think it’s not fun?

    Depends on which text editor you pick, and how much the fun suits you. … Emacs has so many things (including games, like tetris and doctor). Even neovim has some extra things (~ opencode runs on neovim… tho it’s not the same, lol). Or maybe you want something simpler, like nano, mcedit, or fin (I wrote fin, don’t use it, it’s scruffy… and only able to do that from learning some of the things mentioned, and more).

    Yay for learning. Yay for asking for what other fun things to learn. Good post. Good question. … Sorry my answers were not better. Heh. Caught off guard, answered just what first sprang to mind. n_n Doubtless many other more fun things exist.