Life-changing Purchases
- Home Assistant, music, guitar, fountain pens, Synology, personal
- 6
- 4
- finished
Guitar
I bought my first classical guitar 20 years ago, when I was 16 or 17. At the time it cost me 50 zł (~12 USD). Through blood, sweat and sore fingers, I learned a few first songs (sidenote: I think that the first one was “Jest Super” by T.Love, which consists of only 4 chords, looped over and over again, and the song even begins with naming all of them. ) and a few months later I spent my savings and ninja-bought (sidenote: I escaped the classes on that day and then kept it in secret as long as I could.) an electric guitar, which I kept hidden in the closet. I played without an amp, because I didn’t have money for one. When my mum discovered my secret in the closet, I thought she’d be mad at me. Instead she felt sorry for me playing the electric guitar without an amp and she financed it. The last missing piece was there. I bought a cheap Marshall MG15CD which became my neighbours’ doom.
In the early years I played at least a couple hours a day. As I got older I stopped playing so much, but I still play at least once a week. The guitar helped me through rough times and brought joy to me and my family in good times. In times of loss I played the same sad ballads over and over again, trying to comfort myself with a thought that at least I have my instrument.
More importantly, I’ve learned music and now it follows me everywhere. I whistle or hum or sing all the time. I subconsciously tap the rhythm of a song that’s stuck in my head. I hear the intervals in random sounds. I see math in music and I just feel what it should sound like, although I have no formal training and can barely read the notes. Although I mainly play guitar, I can play simple songs on other instruments and I know how to accent them to make them more interesting. When I first sat down at the real piano, I somehow knew how certain keys would sound like, because the distance between them is the same as the distance between the frets (in terms of number of keys/frets, not the actual distance). I sometimes wonder how some people can live without feeling the music all the time.
If it was up to me, learning to play an instrument, any instrument, would be a mandatory school subject, as important as math or physics.
I’m no prodigy, I’m mediocre at best, but music is something special to me and it was unlocked by those two guitars I bought 20 years ago.
Fountain Pen and a Notebook
Scratch. Slight resistance when writing. An ink filling the page, flowing through the fibers. Descenders nicely curving and looping beneath the characters. Letter after letter, forming words and sentences. Scribbles on the margin. Marginalia.
I think with my hand. I must note down my thoughts or I will struggle to fully formulate them. I never felt the urge to jot down with an ordinary ballpoint pen. There’s no feedback with these. The feeling of a nib gliding across a paper is what gives me a kick. It’s a reward in itself. So I note down things to constantly reward myself and my brain. That I’m more organized and think better is a side-effect. But it’s a life-changing side-effect.
The Way of Kings
The Way of Kings was my 2019 birthday gift. It was a complete, but a welcome surprise, because I wanted to buy it anyway. Since then I have read all Cosmere books, some of them more than once, so I I’m not exaggerating when I say that Brandon Sanderson’s novels have brought me back to reading a lot of novels. His books are the only piece of media which I follow closely. And it all started with “The Way of Kings”.
(Actually with “Elantris”, but it’s “The Way of Kings” which made me hyped)
Home Server
When I was buying a home server, I thought I’d use it as a NAS in the purest meaning of the acronym: network attached storage. Boy, I was wrong. Today my “NAS” controls my whole house, thanks to Home Assistant. Jellyfin gives us a little joy in the evenings. Navidrome is a replacement for audio streaming services. Dokuwiki is a source of knowledge. Pi-hole filters all the traffic on my LAN, so my kids don’t get annoying ads. It is a local backup target for all the computers I use. Finally, it is both NAS and a sync service, thanks to Syncthing.
Air Conditioning
I cannot express how much I love my air conditioner in the summer. I’ve been working remotely since 2020 and my workplace is on the top floor, just under the roof. Summer heats are no longer bearable these days: the thermometer reads up to 31°C just under the roof and 28°C near the floor. I set air conditioning to 25°C and it’s wonderful. Feeling the light breeze from the AC is like night and day.
This year I have upgraded all air conditioners in my house and they become even better: they respond to external thermometers and pre-programmed schedule, so I no longer have to worry about turning them off. If necessary, they cool down the bedroom before bedtime. They have a “vacation mode” and we control them with buttons on to the walls all over the house. Beautiful.