u/max_bakes56

I do freelance presentation design, mostly pitch decks and board decks for small consulting shops that can't justify a full-time designer. Started logging my hours in March because a client asked how I price things and I realized I honestly didn't know where my time went.

The numbers so far (March through July):

• 34 decks total across 11 clients
• Average deck used to take me 6-7 hours start to finish
• Now averaging 3.5 hours
• That's roughly 90 hours saved over 5 months, which is close to two full work weeks

Where the time actually went before: not designing, but staring at a blank slide trying to figure out how to phrase a client's rambling bullet points into something that reads clean. That was always the slow part, not the visual layer.

What changed it: I stopped writing first drafts of slide copy myself. I feed the client's notes or transcript into Oria inside PowerPoint and get a rough structured draft I can edit, instead of typing from a blank canvas. I still redesign everything and rewrite half the copy, but I'm never starting from zero anymore.

Team is still just me, so these numbers aren't from cutting headcount, just cutting the boring part of the job. Curious what's working for others doing client-facing decks, especially anyone handling higher volume than me.

Been doing lampwork for about eight months now and I feel like my actual bead shaping has improved a lot, but one thing that keeps frustrating me is the hole quality. Sometimes I pull the mandrel out and the hole is clean and centered, and other times it's a bit off-axis or the glass has shrunk around the mandrel so tightly that I'm fighting to get it free without distorting the bead.

My current process: I dip my mandrels in bead release, let them dry for at least a couple of hours, sometimes overnight. I'm working with soft glass (mostly 104 COE rods) on a minor bench burner. I heat the mandrel tip before starting to gather, and I try to keep the bead rotating pretty consistently. Into the kiln at around 960 F when done.

A few specific things I'm not sure about:

The bead release thickness. Mine usually ends up somewhere between a thin slip and a paste. I've seen people say it should be like heavy cream but I honestly can't always tell if mine is there or not.

How long I'm keeping the bead in the flame toward the end. Sometimes I wonder if I'm cooling things unevenly right before I go into the kiln, which might be causing the glass to grip the mandrel differently on one side.

Mandrel diameter. I mostly use 3/32 inch mandrels but recently grabbed some 1/16 inch ones for smaller beads and the tight mandrel problem got worse on those.

If anyone has figured out a reliable routine for consistent holes I'd love to hear the details, especially around bead release consistency and whether the brand actually matters as much as people seem to think it does.

Been working on nalbinding for about six months now, mostly using wool that I've spun myself or bought as roving and prepped at home. The stitch is starting to feel natural, Oslo mostly, and I've gotten comfortable enough that I can do a few rounds without stopping to check a diagram. The part that keeps tripping me up is joining new lengths of yarn.

The felted join is what everyone seems to recommend, and I get why. When it works, it genuinely disappears into the fabric. But I'm having trouble getting consistent results. About half my joins felt together cleanly and the other half end up as a little lump that I can feel even if I can't always see it. My guesses so far: inconsistent fiber prep, not enough moisture, or rubbing too aggressively in the wrong direction. Probably some combination of all three.

A few things I'm curious about from people with more experience:

• Does fiber type make a huge difference here? I've been using a fairly coarse Corriedale and wondering if a finer or longer-staple wool would felt more reliably.
• How long do your overlapping joins actually need to be? Mine are probably around three to four centimeters and I'm not sure if that's too short.
• Is there a way to test the join before you commit and keep stitching, or do you just find out later?

Also open to hearing if anyone uses a different joining method entirely. I know felted is the traditional approach but I'm not precious about it if something else gives cleaner results.

Okay so I need to vent somewhere that people will actually understand this.

Got to the chimney section last night around 9pm, which is already pretty deep into a run for me. Took maybe 45 minutes to get there from the start, which is honestly an improvement over where I was two weeks ago. Felt good. Felt in control. Then I slipped on the transition out of the chimney, panicked, overcorrected the swing, and watched the guy just absolutely ragdoll all the way back down to the orange hammers section at the bottom.

The thing that gets me is the silence right after it happens. No dramatic sound effect, no game over screen. Just the ambient noise and the guy sitting there in his pot like nothing happened. Bennett Foddy does not care. The game does not care. That neutrality is somehow worse than if it mocked you.

I tried again. Made it back to roughly the same point, maybe a bit past the orange hammers, then slipped again on the transition that always catches me, the one where you have to reposition the hammer grip to get up onto the curved ledge. Same fall. Different panic. Same result.

At some point around midnight I realized I was gripping my mouse so hard my hand was cramping. That felt like a sign to stop.

The weird part is I went to bed not angry exactly, more just... unsettled. Like I have unfinished business with a rock. I know the movement is learnable. I have seen people glide through sections that take me twenty attempts. My brain understands that the controls are consistent and fair. But there is a gap between understanding something intellectually and being able to actually execute it under pressure, and right now I live in that gap.

Anyone else find that the falls that send you furthest back are not the ones on hard sections but the ones on stuff you already know how to do? That is the part that really stings.

So I've been driving this thing for three years with a sluggish idle and a flat spot right around 2500 rpm that I just kind of accepted as "character." Figured it was just what a 40-year-old engine felt like. Turns out I was wrong and the original carb was simply worn out beyond reasonable adjustment.

Pulled it off last weekend and the throttle shaft had so much side play you could basically wiggle it by hand. That's where all the unmetered air was sneaking in. No amount of idle mixture screw fiddling was ever going to fix that, which explains why every tune-up I'd done over the past two years only helped marginally.

The swap itself took maybe two hours including cleaning up the intake and double-checking the timing afterward. First start it fired right up and the idle settled at a steady 850 without hunting. Took it out on the highway and that flat spot is completely gone. It actually pulls now, which sounds obvious but genuinely surprised me after so long driving it in that half-dead state.

A few things I'd pass along if anyone's dealing with similar symptoms:

• Check throttle shaft play before blaming jets, floats, or anything else
• The fuel inlet fitting is easy to crack if you overtighten it, so go slow there
• Timing and carb adjustments really do need to happen together to get the best result

Anyway, three years of mild frustration resolved in a Saturday afternoon. These cars reward patience and eventually punish neglect, and apparently I had let that carb slide for too long.

So I picked up a neoregelia compacta at a local market about a year ago, and for the first few months I was treating it almost exactly like my other houseplants. Watering the soil, letting the cup dry out, wondering why the colors looked a little washed out. A few people here set me straight and I feel like I actually get bromeliads now in a way I didn't before.

The biggest shift was understanding the tank vs. the soil differently. The soil (or bark mix, or whatever you're growing in) really just needs to be lightly moist and well-draining. It's not the main water source. The tank, that central cup formed by the leaves, is where the plant actually drinks from. I flush mine out about once a week now to prevent the water going stagnant and getting that rotten smell. Fresh water in the cup has made a visible difference in how the leaves look.

Light has been the other big learning curve. My neoregelia sits about two feet from a south-facing window and the banding and red coloration have deepened noticeably since I moved it there. Before it was across the room and looked kind of greenish and flat. Bromeliads seem to really reward you for giving them more light than feels intuitive indoors.

A few other small things that helped:

• Rainwater or distilled water in the cup makes a difference if your tap water is heavily chlorinated or softened
• Fertilizing very lightly (quarter strength, foliar or into the tank) a few times during the growing season seems enough
• Don't stress too much about humidity unless you're growing tillandsias, the tank bromeliads handle average home conditions pretty well

Curious what substrate people here are using. I'm currently in a mix of orchid bark, perlite, and a little potting soil, but I've seen people go almost fully bark and I wonder if that's better long-term for drainage.

Been doing needlepoint for about two years now, almost entirely on painted canvases where the colors are already laid out for me. Recently I decided to try working from a charted design for the first time, mostly because I wanted more control over the palette and found a geometric pattern I really loved.

The experience has been humbling, to put it mildly. With a painted canvas I can just sit down and stitch without thinking too hard, which is honestly part of why I love the craft. With the chart I keep losing my place, miscounting, and having to frog sections I was pretty happy with. Three weeks in and I have maybe a third of a small 5x7 piece done.

A few specific things I am trying to figure out:

• How do people track their position on a chart without going a little bit cross-eyed? I've tried printed copies with a magnetic line guide and also working from a tablet, and neither feels quite right yet.
• Does the counting get more intuitive over time, or do experienced stitchers still count pretty carefully every session?
• Any particular stitch styles that are more forgiving for counted work? I've been using basketweave almost exclusively and wonder if that's making things harder.

The finished look of charted geometric work is something I really want to achieve, so I'm not giving up. It just feels like learning the hobby from scratch again, which is a strange feeling after finally getting comfortable with the basics. Curious whether others went through a similar adjustment period or if I am just making this harder than it needs to be.

Picked up curling last fall through a learn-to-curl night at a local club, mostly because a coworker dragged me along and I had nothing better to do on a Thursday. Expected to slide around, throw some rocks, laugh at myself for two hours, and never go back. Instead I signed up for the beginner league the following week and have been going every Sunday since.

The thing nobody really tells you before you start is how much of the early learning curve is just about your body position and balance, not about the rock at all. I spent the first month basically fighting the hack and trying not to faceplant in the delivery. The rotation at release felt completely unnatural at first, like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach. Once it started clicking though, it was genuinely one of the more satisfying physical feelings I've had learning a new sport.

Sweeping was the other surprise. Watching it on television it looks almost decorative, like something to keep players busy while the rock travels. Actually doing it, reading the ice, communicating with the skip in real time -- that part is way more demanding than it looks. My first few games I was basically useless with the broom because I had no idea what I was seeing or how hard to actually push.

The social side of the club is also something I did not expect to matter as much as it does. Everyone stays for a drink after the game, opposing team included. It has a genuinely different atmosphere from most recreational sports I have tried, more cooperative even between competitors somehow.

Curious whether other people who came in through a learn-to-curl event ended up sticking with it the same way, or whether it usually takes a few sessions before it really hooks you.

After about six months of struggling with curved cuts on my stained glass mosaic pieces, something finally clicked last week and I wanted to share it here in case anyone else is going through the same frustration.

The main thing that changed for me was slowing down and scoring in multiple short arcs rather than trying to draw one smooth curve in a single pass. I was always rushing the scorer across the glass and then wondering why my breaks were jagged or went completely off course. Shorter, deliberate strokes with consistent pressure made a huge difference. Also, I had been pressing too hard on the scorer, which apparently causes micro-fractures that mess up where the break actually wants to travel.

The other thing that helped was warming the glass slightly before scoring on cold mornings. My garage studio gets pretty chilly and I never made the connection that cold glass is more brittle and unpredictable. Even just bringing the piece inside for 20 minutes before cutting changed the behavior noticeably.

A few other small things that made a difference:

• Running the score line immediately to the edge of the piece rather than stopping short
• Using a felt tip to draw the curve first so I have something to follow
• Breaking curves over a curved surface (I just use a sharpie marker underneath) rather than flat on the table

Still getting the hang of tight concave curves, those seem like a whole separate skill. If anyone has tips specifically for those I would love to hear them. This hobby is humbling but I am genuinely hooked.

Bought a mid-range shoubing back in 2022 from a vendor I trusted, cracked a chunk off right away, brewed it, and honestly found it pretty flat. Slightly fishy on the nose, some earthy notes underneath, but nothing that made me want to revisit it. Wrapped the remainder in paper, put it on a shelf in a room where humidity usually sits around 65-70%, and more or less forgot about it.

Opened it again a few months ago out of curiosity. The fermentation smell had basically dissolved. What came through instead was this rounded, almost chocolatey depth with a faint sweetness in the aftertaste that wasn't there before. Same leaf, same storage conditions, just time doing what time apparently does.

The brewing itself feels different now too. When I first worked through young shou I used to flash rinse once and move on. With this more rested cake I've started doing a longer awakening rinse, sometimes two, and letting the leaf sit for a minute or two before the first real infusion. The liquor seems to open up more gradually when I do that rather than giving everything up in the first three steepings and tapering off fast.

A few things I've noticed about tasting aged shou specifically, after paying closer attention this year:

• The hui gan (returning sweetness) becomes a more reliable indicator of quality than it is with fresh material. Young shou can mask a lot with raw fermentation character.
• Mouthfeel tends toward something silkier once the rougher edges from processing have settled, though this depends heavily on storage conditions.
• Brewing temperature still matters more than I used to think. Dropping to around 90-95C rather than a full boil pulls cleaner flavor without muddying the texture.

For aged sheng I'm less experienced but I've been sitting with a 2013 cake that's been in dry storage, and the experience is almost the opposite of shou in terms of evolution. Where shou rounds and softens, this sheng has been slowly building complexity and a certain mineral quality that wasn't obvious when I first sampled it a year ago. Patience seems to be the entire discipline here.

Curious whether others track their cakes in any systematic way. I've started keeping rough tasting notes with dates but my system is pretty informal.

Been doing woodcarving for about three years, mostly relief work in basswood and the occasional spoon or two. A few months ago a neighbor gave me a chunk of soapstone they had sitting in a garage and basically dared me to do something with it. That one piece completely rewired my understanding of what I was doing with wood.

The biggest thing is resistance. With wood you are always reading the grain, going with it or deliberately against it and accepting the consequences. Soapstone just does not care. You can go any direction and the material cooperates. At first that felt like freedom, but after a day or so I realized how much I had been relying on grain to make decisions for me. When the stone gives you no hints, you have to actually know what you want before you start cutting.

Coming back to wood after a week with stone, my undercutting got noticeably cleaner. I think working with a material that requires deliberate cuts rather than reactive ones forced me to slow down and commit. The soapstone also made me much more comfortable with rifflers and rasps, which I had basically ignored in my wood kit up to that point.

The main practical differences I noticed:

• Stone dust is serious business. A respirator is not optional, even for soapstone which is considered softer and safer than many alternatives.
• Wood tools will not survive stone for long. I keep completely separate sets now and do not mix them.
• Stone holds extremely fine detail once you get into the finishing stages, in a way that softer woods honestly cannot match.

Curious if anyone else bounces between materials and whether you find the cross-training useful or just confusing. Some people I have talked to think it muddies your instincts but my experience has been the opposite.

Pulled up on this dense cluster yesterday growing right at the soil line around a dying oak in my backyard. Cap color was a warm honey-brown, gills running slightly down the stem, and the whole thing had a faint ring about halfway up. My gut said chicken of the woods, but the color was wrong for that. Then I thought maybe honey mushrooms (Armillaria), which would make sense given the oak and the growth pattern, but I've only ever seen those in photos and I'm not confident enough to stake a meal on it.

Sent the photos to iNaturalist and got a few suggestions but nothing with high confidence. Spore print is in progress right now on a piece of white paper. Honestly the process of learning to ID wild mushrooms has been humbling in a way I didn't expect. Three years in and I still won't eat anything I'm not about 95% certain of.

Which brings me to the second part of this: I've been seriously considering just growing my own as a way to actually understand mushroom biology better, not just as a shortcut around the ID problem. Started with oysters on supplemented straw last year and that went well enough. Now I'm curious about lion's mane, mostly because the substrate prep seems more forgiving than some others and the fruiting conditions aren't insane.

For anyone who does both foraging and cultivation, do you find that growing your own changes how you approach wild ID? I keep hearing that learning the mycelium side of things gives you a different intuition for how fungi behave in the wild. Not sure if that's actually true or just something people say.

Been at this for about four months now, mostly self-taught from books and a handful of YouTube videos. My first spoon was carved from a piece of green birch I split off a log in my backyard, and honestly it went better than I expected. Birch is forgiving, the grain is pretty predictable, and a sharp knife moves through it without too much fight.

The thing I'm curious about is whether other beginners had similar experiences, or if the wood type made a significant difference in how quickly things clicked. I ask because I recently tried a piece of apple from a branch a neighbor had pruned, and the experience was completely different. Harder, denser, required a lot more deliberate cuts, but the finished surface was noticeably smoother right off the knife.

My current toolkit is pretty basic: a mora 120 for general shaping, a small hook knife I bought secondhand for the bowl, and a folding saw for rough sizing. No mallet, no vice, everything held in hand or braced against my knee. There's probably a safer and more efficient way to work, but I haven't gotten there yet.

A few things I've been wondering about specifically:

• Is cherry as pleasant to carve as people say, or is that reputation a bit overstated
• How much does drying time realistically affect your cracking rate when you finish a spoon green and then let it dry
• Does anyone strop between sessions or only when the knife starts visibly dragging

Still very much in the learning phase. The spoons look rough but they're functional, and that feels like enough for now.

Seam lines on flat surfaces I can deal with. Sand, rescribe if needed, done. But I keep running into trouble on curved areas, specifically on fuselages and turret faces where the seam runs right through raised or recessed detail. The moment I start sanding aggressively enough to kill the seam, I lose the rivets or panel lines on either side of it, and rescribing a curve freehand never quite matches the factory detail.

My current process is to use sprue goo as a filler, let it cure for a few days, then come in with progressively finer sanding sticks. It works okay but I always feel like I'm chasing my tail. Fill, sand, check under light, find a low spot, fill again.

The specific kit giving me grief right now is a 1/48 aircraft with a pretty prominent fuselage seam running through a section of raised rivet detail. The rivets themselves are small enough that any sanding pressure just wipes them out. I tried masking off right up to the rivet rows and only sanding the bare seam, but the blend looks unnatural because there's a slight ridge at the tape line.

A few things I'm considering trying:

• Rescribing before any filling, so I have a deeper reference line to return to
• Switching to a thinner, harder-setting filler that needs less sanding
• Accepting some detail loss and replicating the rivets with a pounce wheel afterward

Has anyone found a reliable method for this specific problem, or is it just one of those things where you accept some compromise and move on? Curious whether the rescribe-first approach actually works in practice or if it just creates more cleanup.

There's a specific mood I keep chasing and I'm not sure I have the right words for it. The closest I can describe it: you're driving somewhere at like 1am, not really going anywhere urgent, the city is half-empty, and the music feels like it belongs to that exact moment and nowhere else. Melancholic but not sad. Spacious. A little hypnotic.

Some things that have scratched that itch for me personally: Khruangbin's Hasta El Cielo, a lot of Nils Frahm's quieter stuff, Andy Shauf's The Party (especially the second half), and random tracks by Bon Iver that I stumble into at the right time. Also weirdly some of Nicolas Jaar's older work fits this perfectly.

I feel like I've been circling the same small pool of artists for too long and want to expand. Genre doesn't matter much to me. Could be ambient, folk, electronic, jazz-adjacent, whatever. What matters more is that texture and pacing, that sense of slow movement through a quiet world.

Also curious what other people's go-to "mood albums" are for different times of day or headspaces, not just this one. I find I respond to music really differently depending on context and I wonder if other people curate playlists that way or if that's a weird thing I do.