Monday, Monday, Monday, open wide dev fans. Get ready to stuff your face with JavaScript, CSS, Node module, barbecue tips, Git workflow, brick dancing, soft skill, web development, the hastiest, the craziest, the tastiest web development treats. Coming in hot, here is Wes, Barracuda, Boss, and Scott El Toro Loco Tolinski. Welcome to Syntax on this Monday AC Treat.
We're going to be treating you with the topic of hobbies. And we like to talk about hobbies, but this is going to be talking a lot about how hobbies can help you be a better developer, how they can help you in your life, and how they can just make things a little bit cooler for you overall, so we're not just wrapping ourselves in code 24-7. My name is Scott Turbo Tolinski. Is that what you're going by now?
Yeah, that's what I'm going by. El Toro Loco? El Toro Loco? Yeah, I'm not crazy about it.
I'm sorry. We'll see. El Toro Loco literally means crazy, doesn't it? Crazy bowl.
Loco, yeah. But I'm not Loco about it. Yeah, I'm not Loco about it. My name is Scott Pilinski, and with me as always is Wes Boss.
Sup, everybody? Sup, Wes. This episode is sponsored by Sentry at Sentry.io. Use the coupon code TASYTREATRIT, all lowercase in all one word, and you will get two months for free of this fantastic service.
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Check it out at sentry.io. Use the coupon code TASYTREAT. All over case I want more, get two months for free. Let's get into hobbies.
Yes, so with that, we do a show on how important hobbies are for the mind, and I think they make you a better developer. If you're able to take some time out of your day, or on your weekend, or in your evening, or whenever you have time for something, to focus on something that is probably unrelated to code. Not that it's not necessarily bad to have a hobby that is code. Certainly, that's one of my hobbies, but something that is unrelated, I think.
So real quick, we'll just go over some of our own hobbies. For me, I tend to take on a new hobby, research it like crazy, do build or make something, and then when I finish that, I'll move along to something else. So I don't really have a whole lot of long-standing hobbies. I have more very short obsessions where I learn something.
So in the past, I've done kombucha, fermentation, keering, things like making bacon. This last spring, I got super into bike flipping, where I bought and sold, I think I bought and sold about 40 bikes in, I think, a two or three month span. And I made like seven grand or something like that. You weren't stealing those bikes.
No, let's not talk about that. I was buying them from older suburban gentlemen who had them in their 70s racers. They've been sitting there, and they need work, right? So you buy them and fix them up.
I did kids ride-on repair. So we have three of these, you know, those like 12-volt kids ride-on Jeeps. I got three of those that were in the state of disrepair, and I fixed them and sort of hack them to run on drill batteries. You can overvolt them to go faster, which is kind of fun.
And most recently, I got an ATV that was super broken. And I'm currently going through the process of learning how gas engines work and how brakes work and clutches and things like that. And my end game here is to get another ATV and convert it to battery. Take the gas engine out.
So I learned about batteries on the kids' ones. I'm learning about brakes and clutches and stuff like that on the new one. And then I think eventually I'm going to go and replace the motor of an ICE one, internal combustion engine. They call it two batteries.
Wow. Yeah, it'll be fun. Cool. That sounds like a lot of fun.
Those all sound like really handy and like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know why they're all very like, there's something just like working with your hands and figuring that kind of stuff out that is interesting to me, I guess. I'm not super good at it, but I'm learning. Yeah, I think that's the thing.
We'll talk about that later in this episode. But I think that's the thing with hobbies that people really, when they want to start a hobby and they want to pick something up, they worry too much about being good at it or the possibility of being good at it. At the end of the day, you just, you don't do it for those reasons. That's not why I do most of my hobbies.
And so I have a lot of hobbies too. I've been, many of which for a long time, I've been dancing for 15 plus years and I do that like twice a week or so or once a week occasionally when it gets crazy. But even when I do only once a week, I'm still dancing sort of every day. For those of you who don't know, I do breaking, break dancing, I spend on my head and stuff, whatever.
I've also been weightlifting and doing a lot of fitness stuff for a long time, whether that's yoga or whatever. So I find time to move around a lot as some of my hobbies, especially to get away from screens. I spend a lot of time with screens. I even take my computer into the gym, so I guess it's not too relevant there.
But a lot of my hobbies are based around moving because I've got a lot of energy to get out. Yeah. Hence the Turbo. Turbo, the Linsky.
I also play video games. I play a lot of video games on my Switch. Recently, I got an Oculus Quest, which is like the standalone VR headset that I've been playing with. Oh, so cool.
I burned 600 calories with it last night. That's unreal that you can burn that many. I have a hard time doing that many calories at the gym. I play for like a couple of hours and I'm playing these games that require you to duck and squat and jump and move around.
And they're fun. It doesn't feel like it. I'm not even intentionally exercising. It's just I'm moving around so much.
And I think I'm a bit of a spaz. That's a very good description for Scott. Unintentionally exercising. Yeah, that is true.
Also, I watch hockey a lot, which doesn't seem like a hobby. But, you know, it's a chill out. You watch thing. You keep track of it.
It's just not necessarily mindless. I do design as a hobby. I design the whole of the tutorials website. I don't really consider myself a designer professionally.
Granted, I professionally do design, but I do it mostly as a hobby. Computing, which I use my computer as a hobby. You know, I get good at my computer. I do web development as a hobby.
You know, I pick up projects and do them for fun just for no reason whatsoever. I also have been snowboarding for a really long time. And it's, you know, some of the best noms out here in Denver. And I watch a lot of kung fu movies, which also is a very relaxing hobby.
Yeah, watching hockey is always interesting to me. I always thought for the longest time, that's a waste of time. But then you talk to people who are super into it, and they follow the stats, and they know who's good at slap shots. And it's super interesting.
You can get really into the data of it, which I never really totally understood. Yeah, and there's going to be a lot of really interesting. They're going to be doing a lot of, like, player tracking and things next season. So you'll be able to, I don't know what APIs will be public, but I know there are a lot of developers out there who have hockey as a hobby and get to use the NHL's API to build statistical models and things like that, or even just visualizations of where, you know, heat maps and stuff.
There's a lot of potential there with these APIs, which is one of the things I wanted to get into sort of in this next section here, which is why are hobbies good for you and good for you as a developer? Now, before we get into some of the, like, non-developer ones, I figured maybe we'd talk about some of the developer-focused reasons first. So why are hobbies good for you as a developer? Well, like I was just talking about before, there are APIs out there that exist for the things that you like, or there might not be, and maybe you could build some sort of cool API around something like this.
But, like, maybe hockey is your passion, and you don't really know what to do for a side project to learn React or to learn animation or to learn visualization. But you can pick up that NHL API and do something fun with it, do something interesting with it, or do something boring with it just to get your hands dirty. But at the end of the day, when you're working with data that is actually exciting to you or interesting to you, it's going to be a huge, huge difference in the amount of energy and attention you're going to be putting into it. You end up getting these ideas.
Like, you know, we do a lot of, like, movie database stuff in the level of tutorials courses. And, yeah, sure, I watch movies, but that's not, like, my hobby other than the Kung Fu movie thing. But if I was doing a side project and I was going to do it on hockey, looking at the players' names and their stats is infinitely more engaging to me than looking at some list of, I don't know, I'm interested in a lot of things. I'm struggling to come up with something I'm not interested in.
Totally. No, for me, it's always the Pokemon API is always super uninteresting to me. Fubarbaz stuff is always very uninteresting to me. And there's so many other things that I would like to go into.
Like, one example here, this is not what I'm interested in, but this one developer on Reddit posted, they made this website, wooflu.live, which is tracking and charting all the stats about the coronavirus that we have right now. So how many are confirmed and what countries are confirmed in. And it was cool because they obviously are taking the raw data from a World Health Organization or something like that. And they use their skill to plot it, to scrape it, to update it, to deploy it, to design it.
And I was like, that's like, clearly this person was interested in it. And they probably learned a lot along the way making this website. I think those are the best kinds of, oh yeah, cross of hobbies. And not to say that like coronavirus is a hobby, but like being like a news junkie and a data junkie, a journalist, a lot of journalists are like this.
They just love the data and they need to be able to visualize it. Yeah. I think one of my most successful, I'm successful from a personal standpoint, side projects, I've talked about this before, is this B-Boy Tools app I made for myself. And basically as a dancer, I came up with all these pain points of things that bothered me about practice, right?
I wasn't, or even competition, right? I was forgetting my moves. I was forgetting sort of the combinations, how to work with these things. I was, had some like really interesting tool ideas where there was like, would be like an air horn that would sound every 30 seconds to help me like judge the time.
And so there's all these tool ideas I came up with. I was like, oh, these things would really assist me in my hobby. Not just, here's just a project with my hobby data, but here are some things that could make my hobby better. There's so infinite possibility.
If you think about any hobby that you have, just think about how could that be better and how could you use your skills that potentially make it bigger? And my, my opinion is to dream big on this because the possibilities of what you can build is really, I mean, it's totally endless, but you can do things that are much greater than what you'd expect. And if you have that seed of excitement around it, it's going to push you to learn those skills a little bit better. Um, so unrelated to just web development, I think like wire hobbies good.
I think they keep your mind sharp. Um, it's good for mental health and mood. Certainly I had a crazy busy week last week working on my advanced react course. And I said to myself, like, I just wanted to work on this ATV because I just got it.
So I said, I'm not going to touch it all week. I'm going to go hard Monday to Thursday. And if I can get, I made myself a list of everything I want to get done. So if I can get that all done, then I'm going to take Friday off and work on it.
I got it all done and it was such a motivation. And then when I did it, it was a nice way to come down from having such an overwhelming, tough week of just like being in the code. And it was, it was quite a slog. So just generally good for mood and, uh, and whatnot.
Yeah. My, my, uh, Friday was if I could get my course released before Friday afternoon, I could go have a date lunch with my wife and have a couple of drinks. So not as a, I mean, definitely something to look forward to, but not as, um, educational I would say. No, that's important as well.
I also think it promotes creativity and critical thinking. So one little issue I had was the struts on the ATV were blown out. It's like a little gas cylinder that goes inside of a shock and the dealership wanted like 220 bucks for them. So I just like kind of went online searching for like what else uses air struts.
And I found out that there's like a truck, a Volkswagen truck rabbit from the seventies that uses air struts. And it's like pretty much the exact same part. So I bought it at the local auto parts store for like a fifth of the price, put it in, works totally fine. Uh, just like little things like that.
But like you encounter that all the time as a web developer and that sort of thing is important in other areas of life as well. Trying to like take a step back and say like, okay, this part is not available to me, but like what do I actually need to fix at the end of the day? I think what you'll see pretty quickly is that problem solving skills can be exercised in so many different ways. Um, just so many capacities away.
And you should spend some time away from the computer screen solving these problems because I often look at my problems in my code and I try to visualize them or think about them or approach them. And you can learn so many different lessons from these different projects and tools. I think that's really impressive that you were able to do that with the AP. I would have no idea where to start.
Uh, that seems like a crazy project to me. But a lot of these things come down to that you're really just more capable than what you give yourself credit for oftentimes. Like I personally, I would say, I don't know if I can do that. But then again, I just did so much other, like I've done so many other things that I didn't think I could do both being a handy, handy guy around the house, you know, doing those kinds of things.
I do so much more than I think I'm capable of doing. And I think that's really the message all the time, especially now in the age of YouTube, where you can go to YouTube and do just about anything. I replaced some waterline pump on the back of my fridge and I could take apart the entire fridge. And I looked at that.
It was a very daunting project. And I sliced it up in my hand because I'm dumb. But at the end of the day, I did it and it works. And I'm pretty mad.
And you know what? To be honest, every single time I get water from that fridge, I'm like, oh, dude, then I did that little hose pump there. That's the best. Because like YouTube is the best.
Like a week ago, I didn't even know what a strat was. And a couple days later, I'm like finding alternatives to it. And it's just because you have the internet. You have YouTube showing people disassembling things and you've got measurements of different things and you can look them all up.
And I don't know, it's just that critical thinking, like you said, is so key. And I think that being a developer has helped that in other areas of my life. Yeah. One thing you do have to be cognizant of, though, is sort of the effect it has on your mental health, whatever this particular hobby is.
Because some people will be like, yeah, playing video games is my hobby. And then they'll sit down in front of the computer and they'll be like, I'm just, and you're getting actually really angry and frustrated. And in those cases, probably not having that desired effect on you. You know, maybe, sure, maybe it's increasing your response time or something like that, but it's probably raising your blood pressure and not having exactly great mental health effects.
And I've had to be cognizant of that personally, because I would play specific types of video games and Courtney would just look at me and she'd be like, I don't think this is really relaxing you right now. Like, like if you're spending time away from, you know, and you're stressed out, shouldn't you be doing something to help your space? It's not that video games have to be, you know, stressful, but I found more time feeling better about the things that I'm doing while I'm playing video games. If I'm cognizant of if it's actually making me relaxed or if it's simulating me in a way that's maybe not exactly helpful.
That's good to have that look on it. Yeah. So let's talk about how do you find a hobby? So this is something I talk to people all the time.
Like, how do you find a hobby? Like, how do you get into these crazy things? Or like I hear from people who are like, I need a hobby, but I just don't know what. And like, I'm opposite.
I've got a laundry list of 10,000 things I'd love to look into. I want to grow hot peppers. But I think for me, at least figuring out what a hobby will be is I always need like an end game. So for me, it's not like I want to learn about batteries.
Like I do want to learn about batteries, but like that's not an end game to learn about it. So my end game is I want to build something. I want to build an ATV that is battery powered. And that's my end goal.
And learning about that and having fun researching and going into all the different parts that you need is the hobby itself. So I always try to like kind of revert, not reverse engineer, but start at the end of what you really the same way. I don't necessarily look at it being an end game. I mean, I think that's evident from some of my hobbies.
Like I've been dancing for so long and whatever. There's no end game there. Yeah, I think that's probably maybe a little bit more healthy though. I don't know.
I just like not have to get something out of it, you know? Yeah, right. I'm just doing it for the creative output or the physical output. For me, it's always been about like, what do I think is cool?
And can I just do it? That's the whole thing is that oftentimes people look at these things and it's like, I think breakdancing is so cool. I can never do it. It's like, yeah, you can.
If you think it's cool enough, you could just start doing it. I started when I was older than most people who start and I got pretty dang far in it. And so it's good to just be able to look at things that you find to be cool and figure out how you can just start doing them. You're very capable of doing just about anything, picking it up, whatever.
I mean, I've always been able to do it. always been inspired by my dad who like he learned how to snowboard when he was like 40 years old and then he picked up the drum like he played guitarist all life but then he's like you know what i want to play the drums so he like went just took drum lessons like a bunch of kids taking drum lessons and then my dad in there like taking drum lessons but then he got really good at his drums it's like he was so capable of just being like hey you know that kind of looks cool maybe i should just like try it and pick it up he started doing yoga he started doing all sorts of stuff so i had that really good role model of like if you think something is cool just try it you know you may not be good at it you may not whatever you may really enjoy it and want to continue doing it or you may have this image of like i used to watch music videos and i see these break dancers and i'd be like this is the coolest thing on the entire world and i whenever i started saying i was gonna learn a lot of my friends told me i was ridiculous because i couldn't dance i had no background in dance no background in any of this i didn't know anybody that could teach this before youtube everybody thought i was crazy for wanting to learn it and i just thought it was cool and i let that push me through into um now it's just like one of the very most important things that's ever happened in my life because it allowed me to travel it allowed me to have some creative output and stay fit and do all these things so don't listen to people like that and just pick up stuff and try it totally agree just kind of gotta go for it yeah go for it other little things we have here is youtube we talked about that just go down a rabbit hole of youtube videos that's to find a different hobby um forums facebook groups things like that meetups volunteering just like putting yourself in different situations will often lead i've got so many friends i've gotten into rock climbing lately oh yeah like one person probably went rock climbing once with a friend and then all of a sudden they're like this is amazing and everyone's super into it yeah i went rock climbing last year with my neighbor and it was awesome i had a great time but then you know we have baby and it's hard to get out of the house as much as you like you know you only have someone that's like the same thing with me like you said before i have so many things that i would love to put my energy into and i just don't have the time or energy to be able to do it all so yeah yeah it's tough with kids i definitely try to always have something on the go but certainly it's the first thing that gets pushed to the back burner oh yeah when life gets crazy totally yeah and youtube i mean we mentioned like youtube being such a huge well of source but like you can find how to's on absolutely anything absolutely anything and i think that's an important thing to just start just start watching some of that stuff all right we want to know what is your hobby tweet us at syntaxfm or post it in the reddit reddit.com forward slash r forward slash syntaxfm uh we would love to hear what your hobby is it's kind of cool i've seen different people send us photos of them listening syntax when they're gardening or flying a helicopter or doing all kinds of uh really neat things so i'd like to hear that yeah likewise you're all amazing cool all right thanks for tuning in catch you on wednesday peace head on over to syntax.fm for a full of all of our shows and don't forget to subscribe in your podcast player or drop a review if you like this show you you