Barbecue. I got a lightly used offset smoker/ grill that wasn’t working right. The install on the firebox was wrong and it took all of fifteen minutes to fix. The pit works great now.

I’ve made baby back ribs and chicken tenderloins on it a couple of times now. It takes five or six hours to do the ribs but it’s a good reason to be outside since I have to tend the fire, plus it gives me time to read.

The chicken to a while to figure out how to do properly but the ribs have been amazing every time. I use a dry rub or salt, pepper, and garlic. They’re great with barbecue sauce, but they don’t need it.

Jiu-Jitsu! It’s rough, but tons of fun. Builds friendships really quickly too. Not for everyone but it’s a ton of fun for some of us.

Playing piano. I started learning almost 4 years ago and have a chance to play Scott Joplin’s Bethena on a grand piano next week if I can get it ready in time.

It’s a little rough right now but I’m having a blast practicing it so I’m happy either way. I haven’t been challenged in a way I enjoy like this in a long time.

Got an old computer that a friend gave me up and running. It’s much better than the crappy one I was using, so I handed that one off to my Dad.

This will let me get back to a couple of personal projects I was struggling to complete on the old computer.

Also indulging in political news again, which I had to swear off for a couple of years for my mental health.

Despite being a frustratingly difficult game, playing Sonic R on emulator has been real fun. I’ve been getting somewhat decent at it. Not enough to unlock metal knuckles or get all the chaos emeralds, but still good enough to eventually unlock the other characters. Great soundtrack all around for each level. Having a lot of fun with it.

Also, let’s not even get started on me realizing a few days back that Plants vs Zombies Universe got an update that added levels 1-10 of Big Wave Beach and one of my all-time favorite plants: Homing Thistle. It’s genuinely fun despite it being a difficult game all things considered. Especially Fright Noght Theater 3, which I cannot beat at all without debug mode despite doing pretty well on levels 1&2. Pretty cool to have a fangame that’s trying to include as much content from all the official games as possiblr while also being given the choice to play on either PC or mobile. So nice and such a fun game so far, IMO.

Also am doing good on working through various missions on Mindustry, capturing sectors from both the official campaigns and many modded ones. There are definitely some amazing modded campaigns.

Ableton. It is fun to fuck around and connect all sorts of things.

And I get to a point where I can generate some working drums to emulate a jamming session with my friends. So that’s cool to get some ideas going.

I recently got a used Donner Hush X Live in mint condition off of marketplace. I’m a keyboardist but I play guitars on my music as well. I already have a headless 8-string guitar but it’s too unwieldy if I’m not playing heavy chug-y stuff.

It’s technically a travel guitar that you can break down into 3 pieces and stuff into a case the size of a bandminton racket bag. Since I already have my own plugins and effects pedals, I don’t really need the speaker attachment, so I only have the top brace attached and it looks like I’m playing half a guitar. It’s a fun little instrument and definitely live worthy as long as you’re not a snob for branding.

Luanti, the free and open source survival game engine formerly known as “Minetest”!

I’m pretty late to the party on this one, because I’ve been hearing about this project for years. But I’ve finally gotten into trying it out and it has been a ton of fun!

At a basic level you can think of it as a free and open source reimplementation of Minecraft. But there’s actually a whole lot more to it than that because Luanti isn’t just a single game with a single set of entities and rules, but actually an entire platform for making a wide variety of voxel-based games. It’s extremely modular and all written in Lua, so there are a lot of opportunities to customize the experience and every server you join can be wildly different. There’s everything from classic Minecraft-esque survival and create experiences, to Factorio-esque automation games, and even weird little experiences and silly PvP servers.

So there’s a lot of stuff to explore in the Luanti community, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’ve joined other people’s servers, I’m self-hosting another one for my friends, and I’ve even started hacking in some mods that I think will make the game even more fun for our group.

I can totally recommend it to anyone who has even so much as a passing interest in Minecraft-like games.

Outside of that I’ve been enjoying other video games lately, including Zelda Ocarina of Time Switch 2, Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, and Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart.

A little weird maybe, but…exercise.

A nice workout session gets my brain to making the happy juice.

Other than that, the usual…modular synthesis, beats, poetry…

Lotta video games. Still playing Gears E Day, and now Ocarina as well, and soon to be GTA.

Playing Space Station 14, i had no idea it existed and now I’m addicted.

I found a little underground music club about 20 minutes from my house that hosts both local and national touring acts for dirt cheap. For 30-40 bucks I can get three hours of live music in an intimate setting and enjoy the vibe. Been trying to go at least once a month. Doesn’t matter if I know the acts; I get to experience new music and support upcoming artists.

Photons. !flashlight@lemmy.world

I signed up for pickleball. Gonna give it a try.