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Some of the most interesting people, I recall, have been Futzers. So many of them really clever people. I don't even know if Futzers us a word, but I hope the

Some of the most interesting people, I recall, have been Futzers. So many of them really clever people. I don't even know if Futzers us a word, but I hope the world produces more Futzers. When I was a kid--it was kinda frowned upon. "Don't waste your time fooling around?". I think times have changed though? I hope? The other day I made a watch band using the leather from my old boots, and dental floss. I didn't tell anyone because I knew it would be considered excentric. It looks good to me. That's all I wanted.

varjag 10y ago
There's still surprising amount of hostility to tinkerers to this day. When one of my hobby hw projects got picked up by hackaday and petapixel, the comments were mostly negative to downright rude. None of them even questioned the execution, but the point of doing it. It ranged from calling me a stupid hispter up to insinuating I'm a con artist who will use that to rip people off on kickstarter(?!?).
- throwanem 10y ago
  Hackaday comments are terrible no matter the subject. I don't know why, but they always have been; useful content is seldom and the tone is that of a struggle session. When you're on Hackaday, nothing is about fun. You are hobbying wrong and the world has to know about it RIGHT NOW. Granted, there's the occasional case where flagrant disregard for safety exists and wants addressing, but even that, I think, could be more usefully handled with less of a "you're worthless and you should feel terrible about yourself" vibe, not least because if you drive decent people away with your godawful attitude, no one's going to hear your warning. I don't know from Petapixel, but if it's the hobby photographer equivalent of Hackaday, that's terrifying. I'm sure there are serious amateur photographers who are also perfectly nice people, but for some reason the ones I find myself dealing with are more on the "why bother trying to frame anything, it's a phone so it'll come out bad anyway" level. I'm sure that guy would be perfectly at home on Petapixel.

varjag 10y ago

There's still surprising amount of hostility to tinkerers to this day. When one of my hobby hw projects got picked up by hackaday and petapixel, the comments were mostly negative to downright rude. None of them even questioned the execution, but the point of doing it. It ranged from calling me a stupid hispter up to insinuating I'm a con artist who will use that to rip people off on kickstarter(?!?).

throwanem 10y ago
Hackaday comments are terrible no matter the subject. I don't know why, but they always have been; useful content is seldom and the tone is that of a struggle session. When you're on Hackaday, nothing is about fun. You are hobbying wrong and the world has to know about it RIGHT NOW. Granted, there's the occasional case where flagrant disregard for safety exists and wants addressing, but even that, I think, could be more usefully handled with less of a "you're worthless and you should feel terrible about yourself" vibe, not least because if you drive decent people away with your godawful attitude, no one's going to hear your warning. I don't know from Petapixel, but if it's the hobby photographer equivalent of Hackaday, that's terrifying. I'm sure there are serious amateur photographers who are also perfectly nice people, but for some reason the ones I find myself dealing with are more on the "why bother trying to frame anything, it's a phone so it'll come out bad anyway" level. I'm sure that guy would be perfectly at home on Petapixel.