Well, how do we break out? I don't know, man. I thought the skincare was going to do it, but it didn't. It didn't do it. But we didn't break out? No. You don't think we broke out? With skincare? Oh, yeah, the skincare thing. I don't know. I think... Yeah. Maybe my skin wasn't good enough. True. Nobody bought it. Nobody bought my skincare products. I don't know. Like, I mean...
The numbers were met, Mark. I don't know if we can beat the... We literally took the numbers we were hoping for, doubled them, hit those immediately, and still you are disappointed. Yeah. I'm never satisfied. That's why I'm where I am. Where are you? In Seattle Hey friends, it's Mark and Scott learn about hobbies. Mark, I think a lot of people believe that in order to be successful in computering, that they need to only do computers both in the nine to five.
but they go immediately home and then they code as a hobby, do only technical things as a hobby. I assume that is the same with you, right? All of your hobbies are probably computers. Fair? Nope, not all. But actually, it's kind of interesting because are you referring to the comment? I think on one of our podcasts where somebody said, last time Mark played a video game was probably the year 2000. Right. I think the confidence level was low in your pop culture.
knowledge and background and actually I did respond I think I responded to that comment because I've been playing Battlefield series from Battlefield 1942 which came out in like 2005 or 4 I've been playing that series continuously since then. The multiplayer? Yeah, 50 players. And at this point, I don't even want to look at how many hours if I totaled them up.
that i've spent in battlefield but it's i'm sure it's in the thousands really yeah i find it so stressful because in battlefield you die and then you're fodder and then they zoom back up into the air and then you zoom back down again and then you're another guy on the battlefield and you go running back in i feel like i'm fodder i think that's the feeling you're supposed to have yeah
But yeah, that game is just a good release because I can just jump in if I've got 20 minutes, play around, get my fix. Are you console or PC? PC. In fact, I can't use console controllers. I'm a mouse and keyboard. Interesting. That is a really interesting thing. My son is keyboard only. I can't be precise enough with the stick on the game controller. You have like a 1600 DPI, super lightweight gaming mouse wired.
Interesting. All right. This is good. This is information I did not have. So that's a good hobby. How about you? Do you play video games? Yeah. Oh, yeah. You play all the time, right? I see you tweeting or posting about it on Blue Sky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. posting about it. Yeah, I've got a Steam Deck, which is an absolute glorious device. It's, I mean, cannot be said how amazing this is. I dual boot Batocera Linux.
off of a one terabyte SD card on this because it's just Linux and you can like boot into the Linux desktop. So I 3D printed a whole dock and I've got a bunch of retro games on that, but I've been doing JRPGs. I just did Dragon's Age. which was remade. And I think I did 35 hours over the holidays. And everyone thought I was neglecting my family, but I just do it when they're asleep.
you find time you intentionally find time and it is it was a very much a release and i felt perfectly good about it did you finish it oh yeah it took me 39 hours yeah yeah Now, I'm not a completionist because completionist, that'll get you. You'll go back through and get all that. That just stresses me out. Like I just actually acknowledge that this is an interesting thing. I have a, maybe you have this as a programmer. I have a relationship.
that I think is different with a game. Because as soon as it feels like I'm not playing the game anymore, I'm playing some dude and his for loop. And it's like, oh, well now I'm just... against this guy's algorithm, and that doesn't feel good. So as soon as the game makes me feel like I'm playing a programmer, I lose interest in the game. Yeah. I don't know if I've ever had that feeling. But the other...
Besides Battlefield, the other ones that I like are puzzle games. So Portal and also Left 4 Dead. That was just a great series. And I have to do a plug for this because the best video game I've ever played of all time. it was half-life alex which is uh the vr one vr one and it was it's just a masterpiece it's just incredible yeah and i played that during covid which was a great release then
That's such a great example of a game where you thought every VR game after that was going to be that good. I know. And it's like, nope. They nailed it on the first try. There's nothing that comes close. Yeah. I tried the Vader ones, and they're just not the same. No. Yeah. I did it on a HTC Vive. That's what I did too. Yeah? Yeah. Interesting. With a networking card so I could be untethered. Yep.
Did you have the battery pack in your pocket? Yeah. It's just amazing. Just bumbling around. VR is such a weird thing. Are your eyes perfect? Do you have perfect vision as well as perfect care? Close to perfect. So you don't have to wear lenses. So the number one tip that I give anyone who does any kind of VR, I use a Quest 3 now, is for $79, you can get prescription lenses that click in.
If you have always felt like VR wasn't for you, if you have like readers or like whatever. So I have, I just took my regular prescription and I put it into the website and it pops out these lenses. They show up a week later for 70 bucks. And that made it really, really cool. And I guess Windows 11 is building in virtual desktops now so people can do that. Have you ever used these? Yeah, in fact, I got that because you recommended it.
I did tell you to get these. And did you like them? I do. On airplanes. That's when I use them, on airplanes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are great. Like watching movies or coding on an airplane? Yeah, apparently a bunch of people from the Xbox team work over there now.
But yeah, these are great. This is not a plug. I mean, we don't have any relationship with these guys. But what's cool about these that I like is that it's just USB-C. Yeah. You just plug them in, and then it shows up as another screen, which I think is pretty cool. By the way, you mentioned my hair, and I just need to set the record here because people have said in the comments, in fact, there was the last one, this episode of Scott and Mark Learn 2 brought to you by L'Oreal Hair Dye.
It's not dyed. It's natural. It's horrible. No one believes it because... You're going to end up being, like, at some point, you're going to be 80, and you're going to be fully vertical and straight-backed and healthy, and you're going to be, you know. Or you'll do the Ted Danson, where, like, overnight, your hair will go snow white, and then you'll look better.
And that's going to be worse. Yeah. We're going to appreciate that. Actually, when I was at Winternals in the early 2000s, I was in my, I guess it was in my late 30s then, there were already rumors in the office that I was dyeing my hair. Some people just win the genetic lottery, man. And others are diabetics that are eating while we're doing our podcast. I'm diabetic. I need to eat. Okay. I'm sorry. All right. So video games.
I don't know if that helps our case, because we just said that we don't do computers in our spare time. Well, I do. Actually, computer hobby is for me in my spare time, and I spend most of my time actually doing, it was sysinternals. But now it's AI research. It's a hobby. It's a hobby, yeah. Gamifying the AI, beating the AI. You get nerd sniped. What do you mean? This is the thing about you. Nerd sniping. You know what nerd sniping is, right? No. Okay.
I think you do, but you just don't know the name for it. Nerd sniping is when you tell a person with a certain kind of personality that something either isn't possible or might not be possible, and then they can't concentrate for the rest of the day.
And it ruins their whole day. So with you, I'll be like, you know, I was trying to get the thing to hallucinate, and I couldn't, and I tried these things. And I think it's pretty much not possible. You want something done, you tell Resinovich, it's not possible. And then two hours later, he'll text you a screenshot. He's like, I got it to do this and even this other stuff. That's true. That's true. I do. You're right.
I didn't know the name for it. Now I do. It's a nerd. You know all my weakness. Boom, snipe. So yeah, tell Veris Intervents you can't do this with AI and it'll get done. It will get done. What about woodworking or anything like that, anything with your hands? What's the non-computer thing? Well, when I was growing up, I drew. I just had a natural talent for drawing, and I just did it for fun.
And then I stopped in college. I did it a little bit in college, but then I stopped. And then picked it up again in COVID time. And for about a year and a half, I did tons of drawing. Started with graphite. which is pencil, moved on to pen and ink, which I love, and then did colored pencil, which I love even more. And so I have tons of drawings from the COVID timeframe. I stopped when GPT...
Four came out because then I switched into AI research. So I haven't been doing any drawing since November, December of 2022. But I did a lot of that.
I used to do comic art and comic books. My son is in school for art, and I actually used to get a table at Rose City Comic Con and sell photocopies in the late 80s of my... art at the table that's cool so you'd have like a whole line somewhere around here i've got let's see let's see your art and i can show you some of my art too where's my i've got a pile here somewhere this is from like literally the 80s so i need to figure out where it is
I see that you're jumping up too. That's comforting. All I found here, I found two things. I'm just looking around my office here. One was an X-Man. Oh, wow. That's really cool. It looks like you're doing fashion design, actually. Did you design dresses when you were in high school? I didn't, but my son ended up doing that.
It's so funny. I love this about my son. My youngest son is kind of like a football bro. And he's like, yeah, bro. And he'll text me because he's in bra, bro. And his buddies will come over and they'll do. They'll do fashion. They'll make pants. They'll sew. And they're all the tough guys from the football team. And I just think that's so badass that they'll see something.
that like some Balenciaga pants or something like that, that are way too expensive. And they'll go, we can make those. And then they'll go to Goodwill. They'll get the pants and then they'll like make, that's wild. They'll make the stuff. And then they're like, bro, those pants are sick. I love that. And then I found this. This is not at all related, but, you know, I made the very first diabetes management system for the Palm Pilot. So I found the CD. Oh, cool.
So that's a hobby. It was a hobby. Very professional. Very professional. Well, I mean, because I had to print out, you know. Yeah. So Glucopilot. And what's funny is that this is a 700 megabyte CD. with a Palm Pilot TRC on it. I think those CDs are 750. 750? So 750 meg CD, and there's a 48K.
But people wanted CDs. It felt very special. So that's literally 40K, 48K on the thing. That was a hobby. I don't know when that was. So I can show you some of my... drawings yeah let's see it um so i've i've got a bunch that are star wars themed here in my office and then i've got non-star wars themed out in the hallway um all right oh my gosh so hang on
wow so this that's uh grogu obviously and is your pencil these are colored pencil yeah good lord c3po r2d2 okay well this makes me like you less What are you not good at? I think is the... Things I haven't tried, I guess. Just kidding. And here's... Are these all on the same paper? Yeah. Do you have a favorite kind of paper to do this kind of work? Yeah. Paper and pencils. Wow. Fantastic. And there's other ones around the house.
Those are great, man. Oh, here's another one. Wow. Which is related to the other hobby, which is the Star Wars props mentioned. Yeah, so these Star Wars props, do you get these on Sotheby's? Auctions, yeah. auctions and stuff yeah so that's that is from the movie so this is um from empire strikes back and george lucas put it up for auction in the 1990s at a charity auction he was in a competition with steven spielberg to
donate the most impressive item from their collections to the auction. And Steven Spielberg donated Indiana Jones hat. And so Lucas is like, OK, I'll do one better. Here's Darth Vader. Now, I do 3D printing, and I've got a Mandalorian helmet over there. But this is from 1983 or 1980, if it was Empire Strikes Back, 1980. Is it molded plastic? Is it blown? It's plastic, yeah. And I've actually put it on and said to my stepdaughter, I am your father. That's so cool.
Actually, I understand. Wow. And that's your prized? Yeah. That's the prized one. So all of these are real movie props. Yeah. This was a Stormtrooper helmet used from the collection of the Prop Master, used in both... a new hope and empire strikes back it's one of 35 helmets that were used in both movies wow this is a stormtrooper rifle also used in both movies when when you saw them in person
Do they seem like more amazing or less amazing? Well, this is actually a decommissioned real submachine gun, World War II. British, the machine gun. Oh, really? And they just added accoutrement around the outside of it? Yeah. This actually is just like thick paper mache. It's so light. No! Yeah, you press it too hard and you'll dent it. And so you look at Star Wars, you think those are like serious thick plastic. No, they're not.
There's a whole joke right now because there's a Star Wars Outlaws video game. I love it. I've played about 35 hours of it. But the girl in the show punches the stormtroopers in the face. And they're like, helmet punch is not realistic. And you just proved that a helmet punch would be effective. Yeah, it would be. Yeah, you'd break the helmet. And this was from Return of the Jedi. And that is something that Anthony Daniels put on his head. Yep. In fact, when I won the auction...
He signed a photograph of himself saying, congrats, Mark, on winning this. Wow. Have you ever had any interest in getting into 3D printing and making your own helmets? No. No? That's the final thing. This is the script from 1975. You can see it's called The Star Wars, so the story's different from the final. But this is the version that 20th Century Fox greenlit the movie based on.
They greenlit it based on the, just like the Facebook. Yeah, and the main character is Luke Starkiller. Oh, is that, wow. Is that years from then? Yeah. That's pretty well. 1970. Seven, I would have been three. Merry Christmas, 1980. Merry Christmas, 1980. I've got that still. I've got the big question and answer book about space. Super important.
Because that was the thing. When Star Wars came out, everyone was like, well, let's talk about space. What is an asteroid? Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. And those are all good spines. And I've had that sitting around the house here for... Well, shoot, 40 years. So you never got into the 3D printing? No. That's your other hobby, right? I would say that's probably a fair hobby. I've got a lot of hobbies. 3D printing is one. You showed me that before. That is really, really cool.
That came directly off the print, and then this is just a welder helmet that I cut. And you can see inside that it's kind of not clean. Because you wore it when you were dirty? No. That is the filament kind of leaking down. And I haven't even, like that came directly. You can see the lines, but it's minimal, minimal.
So that worked out great. How long did that take to print? That was 17 straight hours. Came directly off the print, sits like that, and then I had to do a little bit of light, light, light, light sanding. Now I need to do a stormtrooper on principle. And then these ones, this was a plan from Adafruit. My friend, Lemore.
Fried from Adafruit. You showed me that too. I love that. This one's great. Now you can see that there's some seams where the light comes through I need to cover. I don't know if you can hear it or not. Yeah, I can. So it's got a MicroPython inside there. And that was all 3D printed. And then there's an LED loop inside here. And I just need to figure out how to cover these seams. It's a black marker.
Yeah, that's probably one way to do it. And then this one is a bespoke lightsaber that was given to me by a .NET user group. So it's .NET colored, .NET purple. lightsaber I don't have any like glow forage high quality what are they called the super for you know the Saber Forge I need to but on the 3d printing prop side I was very proud of this one
This is Han Solo's. Nice. And that was 3D printed in about 50 or 60 parts. And this is not painted. So this is a wood filament from a place called ProtoPasta. where they infuse metal or wood into the plastic to make it look better. What? Wait, I don't understand. So filament is PLA, right? This is 3D printed. That wood thing. This wooden handle is 3D printed in a wood filament. So it's like 90% plastic, 10% wood. Smells like wood.
This has got a carbon fiber in it. They infuse flecks of metal or wood or whatever, and then you assemble it. These are brass, so it's still plastic, but it's... But it's brass infused or silver infused. And it turns out freaking amazing. I mean, I printed that. Come on. I printed it on a $600 printer. Yeah. So not as cool as getting something on an auction, but still fun.
Yeah, I've got a bunch of 3D printing filament right there. Ah, that's what that is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I thought it was your Cap 6 cables. Yeah, so for example, that would be the, like I could print a C-3PO head. Like that. Now, the correct way to do it is you sand it and putty it and sand it and sand it and then paint it and then do that kind of stuff. That is the part of 3D printing that I find the least glamorous and I try to avoid because, man.
Really, really good 3D printers, like electroplating. People will electroplate a 3D print. They'll get a giant bucket, and they'll put electricity into it, and then they'll electroplate a... I bet you could get a great Mandalorian helmet with that. Oh, my God. This is so good. Come on. I would dedicate my garage. Do it. Now you're going to nerd snipe me? Yes.
But it's cool because you can print all kinds of stuff, like printing a – this is a – it makes a barbell into a – Kettlebell. A kettlebell? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so if you need 3D plastic crap – Come to you. I'm your guy. All right. I need a Mandalorian helmet. Do you? Electroplated. The electroplating, man. That is the thing. If you're going to do it, you need to do it all the way. Got to go all the way. Do you struggle with that, with the hobbies? Oh.
Let me show you this. This one's interesting. So that is one of those foldable metal models. Have you ever seen these? Yeah. In fact, I've got one. You can buy them in the airport. And SeaTac. They're so hard. I was like, this looks too hard for me. So I haven't made it. It's a TIE fighter. I got a TIE fighter. Yeah. And that's page one. And there's no instruction. So it's like.
Imagine an Ikea catalog and then add in tweezers and magnifying glasses. And the goal is to make that. Yeah. I'm impressed. Yeah. That's your source material. So you built just part of it. You haven't finished. That's the leg. How long did that take? That was about four hours last week. But I've got a final one that I've made.
on the shelf over here. That's like a smaller Optimus Prime. And that one's a giant one. So that's like the perfect grade Gundam kind of a thing. Ooh, how long did that one take? That was probably... eight hours so i just kind of like watch netflix and fold metal with tweezers which is uh
Perfectly normal hobby for a normal person. I didn't realize they don't really tell you how involved those things are to make when you look at the box. They really don't. And they don't say, by the way, you need other tools.
It's not self-contained. You need to go buy some other stuff. So you're getting into the thing, and then you're like, oh, I need to go to Amazon, and I need to get this tool, and I need to get that tool. And then you can cut yourself. You're effectively working with razor wire. And then I need to get one of those like surgery loops or whatever, like the diamond loop, you know, uncut gems loops. That's interesting. So what other hobbies do we have? Do we ever go outside though? Do I go outside?
Yeah. Because I've just realized that we're sitting here talking about our hobbies and not one of those that required us to leave the house. Hiking. I like hiking. Yeah, yeah. That's such a Pacific Northwest thing, hiking. Do you do any sports? I did taekwondo. I played soccer and then basketball in high school and intramurals in college. Yeah. And then I stopped playing basketball. I did pick up basketball after college, but then I stopped when you risk.
Yeah, pick up basketball. Getting a black eye or twisting your ankle or somebody stepping on you. How tall are you, 6'4"? 6'6". 6'6", yeah. You're required to play basketball, I think, at 6'4", and above, right? Yeah, it's mandatory. But that sounds like a good way to twist a knee, and then you're going to be shorter. Hobbled for life, yeah. Yeah, I hurt myself a lot during Taekwondo. I was ripping toenails off, broke my pinky toe a couple of times, hit kick and stuff. Just not smart.
These are non-contact sports that I'm doing now. But hobbies are mandatory. They are mandatory. They're healthy. I think that we make a mistake. This is what I'm going to end on. Computer people make a mistake when they tell other computer people that their hobbies have to be computer-related. Or their hobby is their work. Yes, or it has to be monetized.
It's like, okay, I 3D print stuff, but I'm not selling it on Etsy. It does not have to be like that. Let me rephrase. Maybe you need to sell your thing on Etsy, but your... like your worth isn't what you can produce. Like sometimes a hobby can just be useless. Like when I'm done with that, that's shockwave or soundwave.
It's going to represent like 30 hours. Like any one of your pieces of art are unique, bespoke. There's no copy. They're unique on the planet and they exist only for you to walk by in the hallway and go. Yeah, exactly. That's cool. That's cool. All right, man. All right. Well, I'd love to hear about your hobbies, audience, in the comments. Are you well-balanced as well? And how do you find balance in your hobbies? Yeah, and post pics of your stuff if you make it.
Yeah. Hey, actually, follow us on Blue Sky and share us pictures of your hobbies. That would be a great idea. Yeah. We'll do that. We'll put links in the show notes. All right, friends. That is an episode, I think, right there. We'll see you again next week.