I’ll start by plugging Harvard’s free courses catalog as well as Udemy
Edit: Gonna add 2 more I remembered-
Blender - I wish I had more time to learn it, but I did start the infamous “Donut Tutorial” once!
Watch Cartoons Online - Lots of good older stuff!
Deeply, slowly, and calmly breathing in, and breathing out, while focusing on the sensations in your body and how much more relaxed you’re feeling right now
i.e. meditation
Nah. Intrusive thoughts are a bitch.
Let them come, then let them go
" Come on in, take a breath, the oxygen is free! "
thanks now i feel more relaxed on my toilet
In Canada, crown land camping and Christmas trees. You can camp on crown land and cut up to 10 cubic metres of wood a year.
Ten cubic meters of free wood a year. Huh. That’s an oak or two.
I think they use to call it two trees a year and then went to cubic meters. Probably someone taking out the giants of the forest that inspired the change.
I could run a fairly decent woodworking racket given 10 cubic meters a year. Does that include branches and such?
Huh… Can I come? Always hated how free camping isn’t legal in England. Stealth camping sorta is, if you don’t get caught no problem but if you get caught you kinda have to move or you are committing a criminal offence.
For sure. I’ve got a lovely spot on a lake with no one around that’s my favourite. Bring your fishing pole.
Not had much luck fishing, though I tried a hand line rather than a pole and it was from a kayak. Started feeling seasick which surprised me as I have kayaked loads on the sea before just fine.
Have had a bit more luck with crabs from a pier or quay. Probably could do that from a kayak too if it’s nets that you just drop and leave for a little while. I think the seasickness was due to looking down a lot at my equipmemt while not moving in the waves. Shorter periods might not be so bad as you can move on to the next net again pretty quickly rather than sitting still the whole time.
Kanopy - a website where you can stream movies and TV shows, which is free if you have a library card.
And Hoopla Digital! They each have some things that the other one doesn’t.
VLC Media Player
Even better, MPV Media Player. Vlc has bad color reproduction
I use mpv, but VLC has GUI config stuff that is a lot more approachable.
Interesting. Does it take you back to resume if you closed it halfway through a video?
It’s not enabled by default, but you can configure it to: https://mpv.io/manual/stable/#resuming-playback
No
Darn. That’s why I’m with SMPlayer; that time continuity is extremely helpful to the point of being a requirement for me. VLC also has it but it actually makes the jump-to-time prompt vanish if you take too long to click it (which is… a bizarre “feature”).
<3 VLC, been using it for decades at this point.
VLC: the only media player you’ll ever need. Peak FLOSS.
Audacity: free, robust audio editing/effects tool. Not a proper DAW but so feature rich some people treat it like one. Another peak FLOSS.
Freesound.org: huge library of free audio, all Creative Commons/non royalty shit. Effects, music, you name it. Been around for literally 2 decades, is run by a non-profit. Definitely a relic of a bygone era
Back in the windows 7 days we were sitting at Christmas lunch and my dickhead cousin started bragging about all the different video playing apps he used, without looking up from his lunch my grandpa goes “I only use one, vlc, only an idiot would use anything else.”, then continued eating without looking up, my cousin looked shitty and I just left to go laugh outside.
I am so torn between calling bullshit and wanting to believe this so badly
I don’t care if you believe me or not that’s your business, my cousin is an arrogant asshole, the type to bring his house plans to Christmas lunch and spread them where we’re about to eat lunch while standing there demanding people admire his shitty house and my grandpa doesn’t give a shit. When he retired in the 90s he got into building computers which lead him to piracy, he introduced me to piracy and is why I’m the pirate I am now.
No believe me I am leaning towards believe. It’s just so perfect lol
It was random af, he’s usually a chill quiet dude lol.
We used to have family pirate nights where we’d visit the video store, rent out all the games we could, go home burn copies of them all, take them back the same day and grab more, they didn’t know or care. I’ve taken over his role now and now I set up pirate streaming apps for my family.
Fucking amazing
Audacity: free, robust audio editing/effects tool. Not a proper DAW but so feature rich some people treat it like one. Another peak FLOSS.
If you need what I understand to be considered a full-on DAW, there’s Ardour, which is also FLOSS.
Never tried it! Thanks for the suggestion!
Another peak FLOSS.
Actually, Audacity lost this status when Muse Group bought it out. There was a huge community fuss over this especially in /r/Audacity when the company started adding data-tracking to it, and the protests eventually died down because they just kept muscling through their decision like Reddit did with its changes.
I still use Audacity, to be fair, but may consider Ardour that another user mentioned here…
Is that a fork of Audacity? I think I remember reading about that around the time of the hullabaloo…
Oh wow. I hadn’t seen any of this that’s wild. Bummer to hear :/
Their “data tracking” was just telemetry to figure out what buttons people were actually pressing.
I use Ocenaudio for quick audio edits anyways.
To add a couple more FOSS programs, OBS Studio and kdenlive are both really robust video production and editing software.
Hah, I used kdenlive in like 2008 to make a 3 minute clip out of a bunch of pre existing material. It was buggy as hell, and crashed every 5-10 operations. But I just saved a lot and got it done. Glad to see it’s still going (and presumably a lot more stable!)
Just used it recently to recut something super simple and it’s pretty good. Worth picking up and learning
Making sure to keep it legal, right?
Let’s stick with Project Gutenberg - Public domain ebooks and other media, spanning centuries. They’re incredibly important for keeping our literary past alive.
I might have more later.
I kinda forgot Project Gutenberg is a thing. I read a bunch of stuff on there in the late 90s/early 2000s, Arabian Nights, Paradise Lost, etc.
Don’t forget Hathi trust. No one outside of humanities knows if it but it has a ton of material
I mean, I’m down for illegal mentions too, but Lemmy might not be?
Not on your instance, no. The Canadians don’t care.
I got a cooking book from the 1800s there, sadly the pricing is a bit off, I don’t think that recipe is 19 pence anymore.
Well, you have to account for decimalization at least.
I did convert it from Lsd
There’s also LibriVox for audiobooks of public domain books read by volunteers. They vary in quality but some of my favourite audiobooks are from there.
some of my favourite audiobooks are from there.
Go on…
What @Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org said seems to be correct, they apparently have some problems right now, I can’t reach the website. It worked yesterday, when I posted the link. I’ll try again later to link some I like, I hope they are able to resolve the problems soon.
Having looked at the forum, they seem to be under attack by a swarm of AI scrapers. If anyone can help them defend against the attack, please do so.
lichess.org is a fantastic online chess platform for players of all skill levels. it’s free and—what’s more–it’s ad-free (unlike the parasitic organisation that’s squatting on the chess.com domain).
it has one-on-one on-demand match-ups, tournaments, puzzles, user-published training courses, multiple chess variants, and so much more.
it’s one of only two online resources to which i deem donating regularly worthwhile (the other being wikipedia).
do check it out. chess is one really healthy mental habit to inculcate.
I find the dynamics of lichess.org vs chess.com very interesting.
They are similar in terms of features. Both have decent interfaces, puzzles, matchmaking, live viewing boards and broadcasts for tournaments, training programs, etc. But chess.com has ads, and features locked behind subscription paywalls where lichess.org does not. (Everything is free on lichess, except for the little logo next to a user’s name to say they have supported the site with donations.)
But on the other hand, chess.com seems to have a higher number pro players; and probably a larger number of players overall.
I think its very interesting to think about why that is the case. Why would more people choose the version that is more expensive, but does not have more features?
I’ve thought of a few reasons, but I think probably the biggest effect is that chess.com has more money to splash around (because it sells ads, and asks for user subscriptions), and it uses big chunk of this money to advertise itself. eg. by sponsoring players and streamers, offering larger prizes for its own tournaments; etc.
And although I definitely think lichess is better, since it is generously supplying a high-quality product without trying to self-enrich, I do sometimes think maybe what chess.com is doing is ok too: in the sense that it is not only self-enriching, but also supporting the sport itself a bit by paying money to players, events, and commentators. Lichess does this too - but less of it, because they have less money.
(Note that chess.com also does some really crappy stuff, such as censoring any mention of lichess in the chat of their twitch broadcasts. That definitely does not help support the sport.)
There’s also an ego thing. Lichess starts you off at 1500 elo whereas I think chesscum starts at 1000. So if you’re rated 1000 on Lichess you’re a lot worse. There’s a mentality that the better players are on Chesscum.
this of course isnt true, there’s plenty of competition and actually around the 2000-2200 elo level Lichess actually overtakes chesscum. there’s also fewer cheaters!
I definitely highly, highly recommend Lichess.
There’s a mentality that the better players are on Chesscum.
I’ve got a game coming up with my biggest rival next week. Are you saying this “Chesscum” can make me a better player? I don’t care what it is. I’ll do anything for an edge! 🥵
lol :D puzzles, prep, and calculation practice!
Why would more people choose the version that is more expensive, but does not have more features?
It’s chess.com. We are the tech-savvy Lemmy weirdos who dig around for alternatives. I’d put my money on people just literally not knowing or thinking to check for an alt.
I didn’t know lichess existed until I found an extension that opens my chess.com match review into lichess, since the review is free there.
It’s great! Also for anyone that happens to be in the overlap of people that enjoy chess and go, and want to play go online as well, there’s online-go.com.
I don’t know that it has all the features that Lichess does, but it does have puzzles, tournaments, custom games, and so on.
cool!! thank youu
does lemmy have a chess community? I’m so tired of chess reddit. reddit is all Hans Nieman fan boys, because of course they are. I’m so tired of looking for chess conversations and hearing about how white males are oppressed
There’s also lishogi, if you want to learn that game.
Lichess may be the best board game software for any board game ever. It’s that good.
They should branch out!! Does it support anything other than chess?
um, chess 960? lol
Pi hole
Does a pi hole combine with a VPN? I assume the pi hole can’t see what’s in the VPN traffic and therefore can’t block anything?
You could have the vpn daemon running on the pihole itself rather than on connected devices.
In terms of fully free, obligatory mention:
Your library may offer more than books alone, depending on how well supported they are. Borrow music, movies, sometimes even video games. For music and movies they may also offer these to borrow digitally as well via online services they coordinate with.The library of things is also something many public libraries have now. Not just media, but tools, power tools, cooking pans and equipment, pod casting equipment. Definitely worth a look.
You can borrow fishing rods at ours.
Mine has trekking poles! (Colorado)
In the U.S. they may even offer things like State Park passes.
My library offers art! Like, original art pieces (paintings and sculptures) by local artists which you can borrow for up to three months.
That’s such a great idea!
I moved to a new town in 2022 and I STILL haven’t been to the local library. I need to get on that. I went to libraries so much as a child and in my teens.
You might be able to apply for an account online and not have to go in, unless you just want to meander through their not-book- things available to check out.
My library has a lovely assortment of things. Anything from camping gear to ghost hunting “equipment” like a spirit box or emf meter. My city doesn’t have a fully outfitted maker lab tho, but I am eligible for an account at the neighboring city that does have a kickass maker lab (3d printers, laser engravers, sewing and embroidery machines, Cricuts, and even a professional recording studio).
Our library does audio books, 3d printer, sound recording (like a small studio), and passes to provincial parks. Some can offer a lot!
I know lemmy is social media for people with a favorite Linux distro so I’m preaching to the choir here, but so much software is free as in speech it is truly wonderful. It’s like the only thing I love about being a millennial
Gonna take this as a jumping off point to mention some software.
Wanna get into video editing? Shotcut’s pretty solid in my experience.
Into mind-mapping stuff? You might give Freeplane a look.
Have a drawing tablet & want to use it to take handwritten digital notes? Check out Xournal++.
Cross-platform Notepad++ alternative? Might give CudaText a try.Could list off more but will leave it at a few for now.
Dang, I wish I knew about Freeplane years ago. Thanks!! I’m also entrenched in Kdenlive but I wonder if Shotcut has a better UI…
Own your own ebooks. Make sure all devices work with whatever format you need.
Good call on that one, calibre is one of my favorite pieces of software. I, uh, acquire ebooks through creative means and use calibre as both an ebook catalog and format converter to then load them onto my kindle.
I try to support publishers that give you the full ebooks like baen library.
Calibre helped me back up my entire amazon library in a way my kobo can now read instead of just kindle. Both are excellent devices, but I wanted a backlight after 7+ years with the same ebook reader. And I’m not about to purchase all those books aain for the privilege of using the kobo bookstore. Plus Calibre makes it so no matter what you get (pdf/ebook/proprietary format) you can get a good old fashion ebook format for future preservation.
You should probably note, the functionality you’re describing now requires modding/plug-ins and not the “search and enable” kind, the download from third party sites and run random install scripts kind. It also since February requires you use your Kindle to download and copy every book you own (a chore if your family buys a lot of pulpy urban fantasy novels)
LMMS - free and open source garage band. It’s a little weird on how you do a song, but it’s pretty great.
Tips: Look at Beats and Baselines Editor and Piano Roll Editor first to probably get you where you want to be.
And if you need some free virtual instruments, Plugins4Free and Vital.
Wow, this thread came to me with perfect timing. I love LMMS and I’ll try out this plugins on Monday, thanks.
I’m currently going through this thread and found 3 other sites that are amazing and solved some project issues I was having.
Oh, glad to help! Any other music tools you’re looking for? I’m not good with any of them, but I like testing them out. I’m still just learning and experimenting.
I get a little sad when I don’t see anything new for me on threads like this, but then I’m a bit grateful since that means I’ve already spent a long time enjoying all these things!
I’ve been playing with it since my last comment. I just installed 8 plugins. There are 3 that are so freaking good.
My only wish is there was a way to make a song like in Garage band, where you can overlap the instruments and loops more easily. I think it’s there, but I’m just not good enough at it yet. When I play with the piano, I get a really good sounding melody, but then it’s gone.
Sort of, I found that portion. Here is my workflow in Garage Band.
- Pick loop and sound speed (has a ticker before it starts), and place on timeline
- Add instruments and play with melodies from a keyboard plugged in and record them.
- Use the melody.
- Record some vocals
- Add more layers of sounds or loops
- Create file
This takes about 4 hours to make an opening song that I usually love.
In LMMS
- I can find some loops, but they seem to really point towards making your own, or maybe there are some loop vaults somewhere I could use?
- I found some amazing instruments on the plugins4free site, but recording them with a keyboard seems hard somehow.
- I have the studio (paid) version of Davinci Resolve, I guess I could just switch over there once I’ve made my loops?
The rest seems easy and I like the set up.
Gotcha, now I have a better idea of what you’re trying to do.
Watching this video about looping in LMMS shows it can sorta be done, sometimes with some help from Audacity.
If you’re adding in more stuff like VST plugins and vocals, you may want to try out Waveform Free, which I checked is for iOS also, so you get a full modern DAW. It’s the same product as their paid full version, just like 2 updates behind.
For more premade loops, check out Looperman if you haven’t already.
It’s not free, but I think I under $20 for the program and all the upgrades, if looping and sampling is something you want to focus on, check out Koala Sampler. I downloaded it the other week and have been sampling vinyl recordings from YouTube, it has an AI stem extractor to separate the instrument tracks, and then chopping and looping that.
It has a built in simple synth now as well, and you can use a midi controller with it. Lots of videos are out there if you want to see how that works. You might be able to incorporate that into your setup.
If you want to do any loop and sample work FOSS style, then I’d highly highly recommend Bespoke Synth, easily the best FOSS modular DAW out there
It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you’re over it then it’s a pleasure to use and easily the best open source DAW I’ve used so far (and I’ve tried alot)
Biggest thing it has over LMMS: VST3 support, so you can actually use modern synth plugins like Surge XT, or dynamic EQ plugins like ZL Equalizer, or lo-fi plugins like CHOW Tape and MAIM
Although, there is a FOSS workout to get VST3 working in LMMS using KV Element, which you can load as a VST2 that itself can run VST3’s.
I use to use that before Bespoke but it was very much a workaround, and I had this infuriating annoyance where KV Element would just send pitch-wheel signals to everything and detune my synths without me knowing, and I could not find any reason or fix, so I just stopped using LMMS in favor of Bespoke
Hope this helped!!!
It looks I can use the same workflow, it’s just a little more complicated.
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I do have some other hobbies! 😁
If you’re looking for instruments, effects, etc, the YouTube channel elektronickmusick demos a few each day and many are free or free trials and they run the same midday track through all of them to give you an indeed what they sound like.
I don’t think they’re the best demos because it’s a generic track through all of them, not necessarily something that fits perfect with each unique instrument’s strengths, but it gives you some ideas of the sound before you search for it, download it, and find out it’s not for you.
If you want some nifty and weird sounds with fun back stories, David Hilowitz searches out obscure old instruments, fixes them, and samples them in his Decent Sampler plugin and rotates giving away different ones for free.
I’m still really bad at making my own music, but I like experimenting while I’m learning to do better.
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As hard as it may be to imagine, I feel I’ve been getting a bit behind from where I’d like to be with owl stuff. With so many owl babies right now, it’s been hard to get some of the variety I’d like, and between being sick and depressed, it’s hard for me to focus on owls or music the way I’d like.
But between all those links I’ve shared, you should have years worth of experimentation ahead of you. I hope you find lots of good stuff.
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I’m sure a good deal of it is just that like being lazy and complaining. 😁
I got some good posts added to the queue today and planted some more stuff in my container garden and made some bread, so now to clean dishes and laundry and try to focus on some piano.
I think I’ve been lost since the gf has gone to a very fluctuating schedule, as it really throws off my routines. It’s like if the sun came out at a different time every day. There’s still the same amount of time and opportunity to do stuff, but you’d feel off after a while doing stuff at what feels like the wrong time of day. I dunno. I’m weird. 😝
Maybe this is sorta dumb, but meditation is a free way to feel good and spend time, and also a free method of stress relief and to reduce suffering.
It’s not free in terms of your time & energy, and it might cost some money to learn, but the best meditation manual I know of is free online, or at least it used to be - it looks like it was locked down on archive.org, but you can still find it on Anna’s Archive, and you can probably find it at your local library. Either way, you can learn to meditate for free, that’s how I did it.
Running is likewise relatively free (you do generally have to pay for running shoes, and athletic clothing can be expensive, but it’s relatively cheap over the lifetime of those items, and it’s cheaper than most other activities). A great and accessible way to feel good and stay healthy.
Plug for Medito, which is a free non-profit for guided meditations. Not sure if the apps are open-source but still, they’re a good organization in stark contrast to the many other meditation companies that are very much for-profit.
