Love whistling. I learned it as a teen and drove my parents mad practicing.

While I am not inept in the kitchen, I only recently figured out how to get the classic French omelette consistently right. It’s harder than it looks to get it looking flawless like that with an ultra thin exterior layer and perfectly creamy inside, and not ruining the structure when rolling it on the edge of the pan. I followed the instructions of the legendary chef, Jacques Pepin, in this video, and supplemented by the wonderful videos of chef motokichi (link). They make it look super easy because they are extremely skilled.

Okay, so the most recent skill that I learned - or am still learning - would be making chainmail armour (or just “maille” for the pedantic). In theory, I now have the knowledge how to start from an iron ingot, turn that into a wire and that into the little rings for the armor. But because I want to be done in less than a year (will be part of my wedding outfit), I started with pre-made riveted rings, which I simply bend open, connect to solid rings and then bend closed and press in the rivet.

But since I never get to talk about it in other threads, I also learned how to make super primitive candles. Just yesterday I made candles from pork fat chunks that I ground up in my mortar and pestle. You don’t even need the little fabric to catch fire, you can just literally start lighting up the fat itself if you hold it long enough to a lighter

And before that, about one year ago now, I started learning to play the Herdy Gurdy, which is a lovely instrument, with a very lovely tone. And I even built one myself from a little do-it-yourself model kit, so to speak, which is called the Nerdy Gurdy. I started learning that because I was playing Sea of Thieves and I really enjoyed the sound of the instrument in-game. And then I also thought “hey, what if I not only learn to play it, but also learn to play it for my wedding in 2025?”

Edit because I feel this has been just a year of learning so much stuff for me: ASL. I started learning ASL about a month after I played VRChat for the first time and been practicing ever since. The chance of me getting good use out of ASL anywhere that is not online is pretty much zero, though, because I live in Germany lol

Splice chain link fence. Learned from YouTube. 5 days ago.

I’m in the middle of it right now but I’ve got an old plug in oil heater that I decided to pop open the cover and have a look-see before condemning myself to buying another for probably $100ish.

I am so far from comfortable working on electronics or woodworking or traditional guy stuff, but this radiator is old in the sense of it’s built like a brick shit house and hooked up to a simple mechanical switch with 3 wires, one of which is the power cord that finally disintegrated from the heat.

It’s so simply built even I can feel confident swapping out for a new mechanical switch and some new wiring.

Sideshow performer. Lately been working on putting mousetraps on my tongue. It’s one of my tamer skills, but I just never really had the chance to develop that skill. It’s also one of the more child friendly skills.

Recently learned how to bend some notes of an harmonica. It’s very complex to have the good mouth position, but it comes with practice i guess.

I recently learned how to use DAX expressions in Microsoft Power BI and how you can use them in measures so you can do all sorts of changes to datasheets so that when you make dashboards and data visualizations, it all looks super pro without complicated workarounds to make your data present nicely.

My employer didn’t read the description of the training and just signed me and a whole bunch of other people up. It was a certification course meant to train for the final exam but most of my coworkers who were there hadn’t even opened Power BI up before. I was just at the right experience level for this course though, as I’ve used PowerBI at an end user level for a couple years now.

Learning the proper way to squat for my long femurs/short torso body. It makes such a difference in how and where I feel the muscle work. Knees over toes be damned!

Probably proper knife skills. I’ve always been pretty good with a knife, but I’ve been taking my time to really refine the skill as I do a lot of cooking for large groups so speed is extremely useful. I honestly learnt a lot of it indirectly by just watching how chefs use them, but for the theory and all that I started with Lan Lam’s video on knife skills over at the America’s Test Kitchen yt channel.

I’m about to be going to an event where I’ll be cooking nearly a thousand meals a day for three days, so I’m going to be putting it to the test. The one nice thing is we’ll have a team of volunteers to help with ingredient prep, so it should be okay but daunting none the less.

Last I learned about some local plants (like the stinging nettle) and which part is edible and most energy dense.

I’ve been eating a lot of instant ramen lately and finally decided to get a pair of chopsticks and learn how to use them. I was using a fork before. The difference is incredible.

I recently learned to whistle as well! (in my late 30s). I’m bad at it, but finally can make a recognizable tune.

More recently though I’ve learned to cut my own hair :)

Took a wood shredder apart and back together after something got stuck inside.

Reading the Cyrillic alphabet.

It’s not anywhere near as hard as it seems and there are so many times you encounter it.

Butterfly stroke. Technique’s still terrible but I cam clear, may be, 30 meters in one go. Because if the nerve problems in my leg, I decided to drop jogging and start swimming again.