ERE Adventuring

Where are you and where are you going?
NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:29 am
this just as a curiosity, because it's not for everyone... but i used to get knee pain from heavy shoes and heel strike... have you experimented with minimalist shoes/forefoot stride, etc?

it's not for everyone and takes some adaptation, and some people even get injured, while others say knee pay requires more arch support, but... have ya?
I've tried a few shoes, but most of them were on the more minimal side. My Peregrines have a 4mm drop and very little cushioning (for a running shoe), so I can really feel the ground. My boots also have very stiff soles, so that seems to help. The worst ones were some more cushy Saucony Exodus 3s, as they just felt spongy and hurt my knee a bit more, I think. So this whole "feeling the ground" business seems to help, at least.

It always felt a bit counterproductive to take away the support and cushioning by trying out minimalst shoes, but writing out the above made me think. Maybe it's just the kind of counterintuitive thing that could work... I'll might have to rethink this.
Alphaville wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:29 am
i was just thinking about this mystery pain... a real puzzler but maybe stride related since there's nothing wrong structurally?

also was thinking about what you said re: pain from inactivity. and walking is good as is stimulates cartilage growth... issue is how much maybe because too much of anything will hurt.
My stride (walking and running) has been analyzed by the runner's shop and a personal trainer and apparently there's nothing wrong with it. After looking at the videos you posted, I'm not so sure anymore, though :/

The balance is also the most difficult thing. Historically, I've done well with walking an hour or two per day, every day. But that was when I was squatting and deadlifting year round. Since I stopped it seems like my knees just can't take the continuous stress anymore. I'm doing much better with dedicated walking and resting days now.
Alphaville wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 9:29 am
anyway idk this was just 2 ideas for consideration not an attempt at a prescription or anything (not saying "this particular one is for you", just "maybe worth exploring options") since you already do glute/hamstring work which stabilizes knee tracking.
Thank you for your input. When I said I want to "ignore" the knee, it was more about not giving it undue bandwidth, as I tend to obsess about the pain then. But I think I'm at a point where I might want to start the next round of wild experiments. Right now I'm trying mobility, stretching, foam rolling, core and posterior chain training and taking it slow. Why not throw some new shoes and a different stride into the mix :lol:

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

oh and i forgot to ask! you dont currently have itbs yes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliotibial_band_syndrome

because that's a knee-not-knee thing also

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

How did you know :D?

I get some light ITBS on most days right after a long hike. That's the burning, tension-like pain on the outer thigh that's really obvious and I mostly manage to stretch it out in the morning. I suspect that the left side is maybe a bit more chronic and not as easy to notice, as the knee pain often starts at the outer side, which seems to be a sign of ITBS, too.

But yeah, I'm mostly treating myself for ITBS at the moment, as that seems to help the most right now. Maybe that's it, maybe not, but at least it does something.

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

NuncFluens wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 11:40 am
How did you know :D?
my wife used to get it and thought she had "knee problems" :)

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Finances:
I got my pay rise this month. They tend to pay too much for the first month until they figure out exactly how much I'm supposed to get. So I'm not sure this is the final amount, but I got ~250€ (11.6%) more. This should make it quite easy to keep my savings rate high, even if I spend more money post-corona.

I also kinda accidentally joined the class war and am now involved in this GameStop business, so I don't have a very good idea about where I stand right now :/ Currently, I'm only invested with ~4% of my net worth, so I'm not really in any danger. We'll see how things play out.

Adventuring
I tried this "glidewalking" that @Alphaville linked to in hopes of fixing my knee somehow. It felt awkward at first, but then it kinda clicked and wow - just wow! Life-changing stuff. It kinda feels like what I did during my peak in mid-2019, but I never had the language to actually cue me into the right technique. Now I do and it's the best thing ever. I can't stop smiling :D

Anyway, I hiked 12km at 6kph today, which is super fast for me. I completed my monthly goal of 75km of hiking and my knee is golden. I'm still a bit hesitant to call my knee "healed", but I'm not far from it :D

Mycology
The neverending story. After new clusters of mushrooms sprouted all over, I expected things to go well now, but not so. All the little mushrooms grew to 3-4cm size and then dried out. I am now keeping humidity even higher than before, and things are looking a bit better, at least. Since new mushroom clusters are still sprouting I might have a few more tries...

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

haha! this is great news! all the best with it

NuncFluens
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Review of January 2020 (little late)

Post by NuncFluens »

Finances
Best month ever! Due to my pay raise I saved 1700€ which is a new best.
Since I spent a bit more than last month, my SR is still at 71%, though.
I've also discovered Sankey diagramms, so here's one for this month:

Image

The good:
  • We decided to not drink all throughout january, which saved me some money.
  • Corona is still going strong (not that that is good), so overall spending is still pretty low. I expect to spend more on going out, the movies, etc. once things turn around, but for now it's pretty good.
The bad:
  • This month saw a lot of one-off payments that dragged down my savings a bit. This includes the hikers' assocation yearly fee, quarterly meds, etc.
  • Nicotine! I've decided to at least cut back on this and ordered some lower-nicotine products to phase it out.
Gamestop
I've decided to try a few more risky things to improve my life overall. So going into this I was very clear that it might not work out. And it didn't. Overall, I lost ~2 months savings rates, which kinda sucks. The losses can still be used to offset some taxes, so I'll probably get some of it back in some form. I've also learned a few things about the market in general and about myself in particular, but can't really say if it was worth the 3k€ in the end :/

Work
The neverending presentation slides have been found worthy, and a public presentation was set up. For this, we have these regular institution-wide training presentation meetings so people can test their skills in a real world (well, online) setting. Although I was very well prepared, I still managed to get a 20-minute long panic attack all throughout the presentation. Nevertheless - there was a survey at the end and I managed to get the best grades anyone ever got in that setting, so... success!?

Going forward it seems like I'll be much more "out there" than before. I've been added as a technical advisor to a few ongoing projects and will be attending some meetings all over the place over the coming month. I'll also have to give that presentation a few times and might have to develop some in-person training courses that will then be offered to our project partners. I've resisted this change up until now, but am slowly getting comfortable with the idea. We'll see how that goes.

Adventuring
I managed to reach my goal of hiking 100km total over the whole month, but still had nagging knee problems more often than not. After trying this new hiking technique (glidewalking) I felt great and was excited to maybe have solved all my problems. My next hike went pretty badly, though, as my whole left hip was in a tight knot for the whole 8km I managed. No idea what happened, as everything (including the knee) was completely fine the next day.

So this is still a process, but the worst "layer" of knee pain is completely gone now. There are still a few niggles here or there, but the mystery pain is definitely gone. I'm excited to hit the trail once more this afternoon and see how this develops.

Mycology
All my mushrooms died again and I'm slowly running out of ideas. The humidity seems to hold steady, so maybe I'm messing up the fresh air exchange or the lighting. More research will need to be done, but I'm demotivated right now. I've started a fully new second batch, however, which might be ready to fruit in about 4-6 weeks. I hope to have it all figured out by then.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Congratulations on the good month! The chart looks great!

wolf
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by wolf »

Congrats on the new best month!

Last year during the COVID-19 stock market crash I lost also money in the thousands. Then, a few months later I reflected honestly. I knew I had to learn the lessons, otherwise I risk doing the same mistake twice. Therefore I encourage you to reflect honestly about your recent market involvement. c_L helped me to reflect back then and gave me some ideas to think about. You can still see his post viewtopic.php?p=212462#p212462.

How do you track your monthly hiking distance? electronical? by map, paper and pencil? or ...?

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

i feel guilty for saying nothing about your gme position because in my view at that point that stock had nowhere else to go but down. nevertheless i bit my tongue because who am i to say with the little experience i got.

nevertheless i'll say now: if you're gonna trade, i highly recommend reading jim paul's "what i learned losing a million dollars". great little book.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

wolf wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 10:52 am
Last year during the COVID-19 stock market crash I lost also money in the thousands. Then, a few months later I reflected honestly. I knew I had to learn the lessons, otherwise I risk doing the same mistake twice. Therefore I encourage you to reflect honestly about your recent market involvement. c_L helped me to reflect back then and gave me some ideas to think about. You can still see his post viewtopic.php?p=212462#p212462.

How do you track your monthly hiking distance? electronical? by map, paper and pencil? or ...?
I've been 100% in ETFs for about 7 years and thought that maybe I should risk a bit more. Although I knew that the Gamestop situation was a very long shot, I might have gotten caught up in the hype. So that's definitely a weakpoint of mine, it seems. During the whole thing I also researched stockpicking/value investing, but I'm still not completely sure if I might not just stick to ETFs during the accumulation phase.

As for tracking, I only use the non-premium version of the Adidas Runtastic app on my phone. It tracks the route with GPS and calculates distance, time, pace and a few other things. I'm not sure if they offer monthly metrics or something, as I just transfer the key metrics to an excel sheet.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Alphaville wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:01 am
i feel guilty for saying nothing about your gme position because in my view at that point that stock had nowhere else to go but down. nevertheless i bit my tongue because who am i to say with the little experience i got.

nevertheless i'll say now: if you're gonna trade, i highly recommend reading jim paul's "what i learned losing a million dollars". great little book.
Oh well, I knew it was more of a lottery ticket, so I wasn't really shocked or anything. It stings a little bit, but I don't lose any sleep over it :lol:

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Alphaville
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by Alphaville »

NuncFluens wrote:
Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:19 am
Oh well, I knew it was more of a lottery ticket, so I wasn't really shocked or anything. It stings a little bit, but I don't lose any sleep over it :lol:
for added humor think of it as just going into @white belt's pockets :P

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Well, it stays in the (ERE) family, at least :lol:

white belt
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Re: Review of January 2020 (little late)

Post by white belt »

NuncFluens wrote:
Sun Feb 07, 2021 5:13 am
All my mushrooms died again and I'm slowly running out of ideas. The humidity seems to hold steady, so maybe I'm messing up the fresh air exchange or the lighting. More research will need to be done, but I'm demotivated right now. I've started a fully new second batch, however, which might be ready to fruit in about 4-6 weeks. I hope to have it all figured out by then.
What are the details of your setup? Species, substrate, fruiting temperature, humidity, etc.

My first flush from an oyster mushroom substrate block I got as part of a beginner kit placed in my worm bin was not successful because of lack of oxygen (caps were too small).

I then tried just placing the block on an open shelf in my apartment and spritzing it with a spray bottle a few times a day to maintain humidity (just FYI my room humidity is usually in the 40-60% range in my region). Room temperature is 60-70F. The second flush has been much more successful with large caps that I should harvest in the next day or 2.

The species may be an issue. I get that people say oyster mushrooms are easy for beginners, but I actually think the high oxygen and humidity requirements make them tricky for indoors. My next experiment is going to be enoki (low oxygen requirement) in jars from a liquid culture on coffee ground substrate. Eventually I may try shiitake as well, which also has much lower oxygen requirements.

NuncFluens
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Re: Review of January 2020 (little late)

Post by NuncFluens »

white belt wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:46 am
What are the details of your setup? Species, substrate, fruiting temperature, humidity, etc.

My first flush from an oyster mushroom substrate block I got as part of a beginner kit placed in my worm bin was not successful because of lack of oxygen (caps were too small).

I then tried just placing the block on an open shelf in my apartment and spritzing it with a spray bottle a few times a day to maintain humidity (just FYI my room humidity is usually in the 40-60% range in my region). Room temperature is 60-70F. The second flush has been much more successful with large caps that I should harvest in the next day or 2.

The species may be an issue. I get that people say oyster mushrooms are easy for beginners, but I actually think the high oxygen and humidity requirements make them tricky for indoors. My next experiment is going to be enoki (low oxygen requirement) in jars from a liquid culture on coffee ground substrate. Eventually I may try shiitake as well, which also has much lower oxygen requirements.
The species is Pleurotus Ostreatus from a grow kit. I put the spawn into cooked straw and tried a few different places (bathroom, living room) but didn't get any pins for weeks and the substrate was super dry, even though I sprayed it a few times per day. They only started growing when I made a shotgun fruiting box with a layer of perlite. Temperature is at 20~22°C and I keep humidity between 70-100%, although it does fall to 60% some nights. For fresh air exchange I fan the whole box twice a day. No special setup for light, but it's standing in the living room so it's not super dark.

The mushrooms that were growing went to about 3-4cm in size. But every time the caps started to form they stalled and withered.

white belt
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by white belt »

@NuncFluens

Very interesting. I think that's the same species I'm working with as well but the block that came in my kit that was already fully colonized, so I didn't need to worry about substrate variables. That leads me to believe your issue might be the substrate inoculation/incubation rather than fruiting conditions, but there is no way to know for sure unless you test with a block that's already fully colonized so you can skip straight to the fruiting step.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

white belt wrote:
Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:13 pm
@NuncFluens

Very interesting. I think that's the same species I'm working with as well but the block that came in my kit that was already fully colonized, so I didn't need to worry about substrate variables. That leads me to believe your issue might be the substrate inoculation/incubation rather than fruiting conditions, but there is no way to know for sure unless you test with a block that's already fully colonized so you can skip straight to the fruiting step.
I've got another batch of spawn going right now, so the fully colonized block might not happen for a few months :p
I'll see what variables I can switch around until then, though.

white belt
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by white belt »

@NuncFluens

I'm newer to mycology than you so I don't really know what I'm talking about. What I did realize from reading your earlier posts and researching on the web is that growing mushrooms indoors is quite a bit trickier than something simple like growing microgreens. I knew there were a lot of steps and so I first aimed for the simplest implementation (colonized block from starter kit) as a test and potentially easy win. That doesn't make the most sense from a financial perspective, but from here I can begin to optimize my system so it does make sense from a financial perspective.

My next iteration will be enoki from liquid culture in mason jars that are inoculated on grain or coffee ground spawn. Used coffee grounds make the most sense from a systems perspective because that would be leveraging a waste stream as an input, but at the moment I don't know if I'll have enough from a friend to fill 3 pint-sized mason jars (I don't drink coffee). I also don't know if enoki will grow on coffee grounds, but it seems like people have successfully attempted it before. The jars/substrate are easy to sterilize in a pressure cooker, and with DIY self-healing ejection port lids I don't need to worry about contamination when injecting the liquid culture.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I had to cobble together the above strategy from a bunch of different online sources and I don't even know if it will all work, but that seems to be the way things go with mycology because most resources are focused on commercial production. I suspect there will be a lot of trial and error. My idea is to first get things to work on a small scale and then add complexity in later iterations.

NuncFluens
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Re: ERE Adventuring

Post by NuncFluens »

Yeah, I should have gone with the easiest solution first, it seems. Maybe I'll start from fully innoculated blocks if the second try with spawn doesn't work. I just really thought it would be easier :/

Good look with your Enoki. I tried producing my own liquid enoki culture from wild spores once, but that didn't work either :lol:

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