I also do a lot of athletics in the sun--cycling, but also climbing and ski touring--where sweat wicking fabric and breathable clothing is crucial. Over the years I've acquired several sun protective hooded long sleeve shirts which don't cause me to overheat. I've got a helmet, sunglasses, and short or pants on, as well, so I end up putting sunscreen on the few parts of my body which are exposed. Bottom half of my face, back of my neck, and bottom half of my legs.
+1 on the sun hoodies. Those are amazing and make being in bright sun much less stressful. Patagonia had great ones, but pulled them for not meeting 50 SPF spec, but the replacements are still somewhere in the mid 30s I believe.
You might know the old joke about the factory that breaks down, costing thousands of dollars an hour. No one can figure out what's wrong. A consultant is brought in, he spends a few minutes analyzing the problem, then pushes a button and the factory starts back up. He presents a bill for $10,000. The owner balks -- $10,000 for less than an hour of your time? The consultant says the time is $1, the other $9,999 is for knowing which button to push.
When someone hires me to solve a business problem with software they aren't paying for my knowledge of Javascript or C++ syntax, or how to implement a linked list, or call an API. They are paying for a solution to a problem, and solving that problem means I need to understand it and draw on my experience and expertise. Sure, anyone can learn Python in a couple of weeks and get "Hello, world" to work (I've taught teenagers Python programming myself). But there's a big distance from there to solving actual problems with software, and adding value to an organization with programming skills.
Anyone can learn how to sum a column of numbers or take a blood pressure reading in a few hours. That doesn't make them accountants or doctors.
Different problems and business domains have varying degrees of difficulty. In general the hardest problems are:
- Defining requirements as completely and unambiguously as possible.
- Breaking requirements down into tasks suitable for estimation and implementation.
- Deciding on appropriate data structures, i.e. a relational database schema.
Inexperienced developers (which would include much of the target market for low-code/no-code tools) often make obvious mistakes: failure to test adequately, missing edge cases, not understanding security, implementing fragile and low-performance solutions, etc. They also usually have no idea how to approach debugging a problem, or even describe a problem -- anyone who has worked a help desk or had to respond to trouble tickets knows that.
Excel is a classic no-code/low-code tool. If you have ever had to review and debug spreadsheets put together by non-programmers you have seen what happens. The tool itself is very powerful and non-programmers can get a lot working, but on inspection you find formulas with errors, poor performance because of ad-hoc organization and data types, hard to reproduce bugs, etc.
I have worked with a lot of WordPress sites put together by small business owners and marketing agencies. WordPress is a low-code/no-code tool -- almost anyone can get a basic site up and running using a hosting provider, and install any number of themes and plugins to add functionality without any coding. But as soon as something goes wrong, like incompatible plugins, or some integration is needed like pushing sign-up forms to a CRM, the amateur developers are stuck.
No doubt there's lots of low-hanging fruit. I don't have a problem with non-programmers using tools like Excel or WordPress to solve their business problems, or even writing small Python scripts to automate something. That's not really what I do, and I know they will hit a ceiling pretty fast where they get in way over their head with how to define a problem, decompose it into tasks, algorithms, and data structures, implement in an organized way, test, debug. I can get so far with working on a car or motorcycle with my limited mechanic skills, but more often than not I need a professional with the right tools, expertise, and experience because I quickly get in over my head.
I see a potential problem, see if I can solve it. See if it's already being solved, if not I pitch the idea to few people. If atleast 50% got excited. I pick this idea to build.
Yes, alpine climbing. Which begat trail running, ski mountaineering, mountain biking, and wrestling.
A friend had moved to Denver and was starting to climb more impressive and intense routes just as my whole division at a big company was let go. It looked fun and I thought it would be a good way to spend my time. After a primer from my friend, I joined clubs and sought out partners who I gelled with. I ultimately found that the passionate rationality of alpine climbing's risk assessment and fitness requirements were a great healthy replacement for what I did at work.
I started trail running as part of my training and decided I liked it for its own sake. I took up ski mountaineering a couple years later because it meant I could have more fun moving faster on larger terrain. I took up mountain biking two years ago because a buddy badgered me about how fun it was and described it as "skiing in the summer." And, recently, with a large base of fitness, I joined a group of friends who are all martial arts nerds who get together for sparring and style comparison chats. I wrestled in high school, so I jumped in and decided it was as fun now as it was then.
This whole journey kicked off in 2016. I spend between 5 and 15 hours per week in one of the above disciplines, plus a few hours a week in the gym lifting. It takes a lot of effort, but it rarely feels like it because I'm enjoying myself. I prefer all of these hobbies because, like many of us, my job keeps me glued to a screen/hunched over a work table and I wanted something that put me back in my body in an enjoyable way.
-Seeing another societal system in practice and realizing that there are things from back home (CA, USA) which I took for granted which actually worked better than anywhere I went. The corollary is things I took for granted that were actually horribly broken and easily done better everywhere else.
-If you're gone long enough, coming back to your own culture can actually give you culture shock, which is about as unique an experience as I've had. It is somewhat related to the above. Hard to put this one in to words... kind of a "dancing about architecture" thing. It's a new set of eyes.
-Perspective broadening interactions around relative wealth, prosperity, historical inertia, and personal responsibility. It became much more clear to me and much less hypothetical how some poverty is legitimately just lazy people and some poverty is circumstantial.
-I'm not ashamed to admit this one even a little: If you managed to extend your comfort zone while traveling, you win dinner party conversations when you return. I climbed big dangerous mountains and traveled to unique place. Nobody cares about the algorithm I worked out on a Thai beach, but everybody wants to know about North Korea.
-You develop the skill of being comfortable inside your own skull. Assuming you are traveling alone, there will be lots of time without a stranger to talk to. That's a lot of down time to spend with yourself and really examine your own thoughts.
-You develop a self reliance related to not needing a lot. Once you realize you are fine just fine with a book and an afternoon and maybe spending the night sleeping in a park (that the locals say is safe!), the world is less menacing.
Don't make the mistake of dismissing game design. Spend way more time than you think is proper on non-digital paper prototypes and greybox digital prototypes. Get your half-baked games in front of people and watch where and how they struggle, get bored, have fun, lose interest, etc.
All the best engineering, art, audio, marketing, and polish in the world won't make a game more fun. Stickiness comes from game design and game design comes from iteration.
Adding to parent, the premise of your game is very hard to change after you've started. You will think of new ideas that you will have to axe as you progress, so get a non-digital prototype you know has appeal. It will keep you on track.
Successful implementations of game physics often has far less to do with realistic simulation and far more to do with sensation. For anybody interested in diving deep, pick up Game Feel by Steve Swink[0]
When it comes to planning an alpine climb, I use http://www.mountain-forecast.com to judge what sorts of gear I might need. Super niche use-case, but it's better than anything else I've found.
I've lately been thinking about the relative healthiness of my hobby, in which failure could definitely bleed into the rest of my life. I go climbing and mountaineering, where the negative consequences for a mistake can be disastrous. Part of the fun of this hobby is the risk assessment with consequences, so I wonder how it skews with your definition. There are similar edge cases with other potentially dangerous hobbies (racing cars, mountain biking, wingsuiting, boxing, etc) and this also brings up the nature of consequences as a delineator. Where you draw the line is very personal--I also tinker with electronics and, as part of that, have messed around with mains electricity.
Not saying you're wrong, just throwing a wrench into the works because it has been on my mind and I'm curious what the hive mind has to say.
Try paying attention to your respiration while running. Attempt to maintain a pace that is possible while only breathing through your nose. (This pace may be walking, which is fine.) This is less about proprioception and more about paying attention to what your exertion demands from your body and finding a pace/respiration equilibrium.
> Try paying attention to your respiration while running.
As I already tried to explain upthread (this seems to be a pattern), I have tried, and I don't know how to do those things at the same time. I can stop and count my breaths, but the sensation is so indistinct that it becomes difficult to keep track of when I'm doing anything else.
