Original link: https://codechina.org/2022/07/life-is-short/
My father is a worker in the oil system, and my mother is called a family member, but she is actually a farmer. I grew up in a resettlement unit for a single-earner family called a farm. You can also understand it as a kind of compound in the urban-rural border.
Our oil unit has a total of more than 20,000 people. There are 7 or 8 farms, and they have a series of schools from elementary school to high school, police stations, hospitals, and so on. Judging from the 20th anniversary gathering of our high school classmates, the classmates over 90 stayed in this unit, or other related oil units. Or enter related industries, upstream and downstream units.
I am a special case. I wrote programs after graduating from college and have been writing for 20 years. It wasn’t until the first two years that I stopped writing code and made a living by writing articles and making videos.
My father graduated from elementary school, and my mother has not graduated from elementary school. They used to have a very clear plan for me. When I was a child, their idea was to go to high school and go to university if they studied well, and to go to technical school if they didn’t study well. In fact, at that time, the allocation of technical schools in our unit was not bad.
Later, of course, I hoped that I would be admitted to a university, because technical schools are completely useless, and it is better to graduate from high school in recruiting units, and college students are more popular. However, when it came to my college entrance examination, although the high level was average, it passed the undergraduate line, which is now called the second line. How to choose a volunteer, after some consultation, my parents asked me to apply for Southwest Petroleum. This school is not the key point, but it is also the second school in the oil industry, and my score is enough.
A cartoon changed fate
So, I went to this university. Logically speaking, the next script should be graduating from college, entering the work unit of his parents, buying a house and a car soon with the help of his parents, and getting married on a blind date. This is the life path of most of my classmates. Many classmates are now colleagues of each other, married junior girls, or married seniors. Many grew up playing on a farm.
After I left college, however, I took a completely different path. It is not difficult for graduates of our school to enter our unit. But I don’t want to go in. Because I don’t want to do oil, I don’t want to engage in machinery, although I study petroleum machinery.
What changed my life was actually a cartoon called Star Wars, or McCree One. This cartoon has buried the impression of the omnipotence of computers in my young mind. So in the era of the rise of learning machines, I frantically asked my parents to buy one and write countless programs in Basic. My parents bought me a computer when I graduated from high school. For four years in college, I did almost nothing but taught myself how to program.
After leaving the university, although I was at a loss, I didn’t know how the dragon slaying skills I had learned were all-powerful. Don’t even know how it helped me get a job. But I already know that I don’t want to be in the oil business, I don’t want to do petroleum machinery, I don’t want to do any work, I just want to write programs.
At that time, computers were already on the rise, but in a relatively isolated place like Tianjin, it was not as prosperous as Beijing. I can only find a company to start from the network management. It was not until I went to Beijing that I became a professional software engineer.
A meal that changed fate
In 2002, I was still working in Tianjin. A college student who has a good relationship with me came to Beijing on a business trip, and had a dinner with Yibangzi’s friends in Beijing. He also invited me to attend. Beijing and Tianjin are very close, and we haven’t seen each other for 3-4 years. So I happily went to the appointment.
During this dinner, I met a lot of friends who I am most familiar with in my 7 years in Beijing, Huo Ju, Han Lei, Dayuer, yayv, etc.
But on a scale of 20 years, the biggest impact this dinner had on me was knowing a word called blog. In fact, when I was in college, I liked to write some small articles, small poems and so on in the school forum I set up by myself. Later, because of this, I also met a female netizen, and finally met my first love girlfriend through her. The two are actually online dating, separated by mountains, one is in Chongqing and the other is in Nanchong.
Because she also likes to write something, I was also inspired to write at that time. Often the paper love letters she writes to me start with a dozen pages. I also often write a lot.
But my literary level is very low and I don’t read much. There are other hobbies too, I never thought writing articles would become a career for me. It’s just that from that time on, I especially like to write. I can’t imagine that my stuff can be published or published. Where is the level after all. Whether publishing or publishing, there are higher standards.
When I got to that dinner, I learned about the blog. In fact, you can understand that there is no threshold for online publishing. Regardless of the level of your article, although there is no manuscript fee, there is no threshold.
So soon, I started writing my blog. I also started to become long-term friends with early bloggers in China. Although many people have no desire to write as much as I do now.
However, since 2002, although intermittently, although the writing is not very good. I have always positioned myself as a writer.
Until 2012, I opened a WeChat public account. In 2015, with the encouragement of Dahui, I began to write seriously. In 2015, I started to write several blockbuster articles, and I even earned 200,000-300,000 yuan from writing for the whole year.
I was just beginning to feel that writing, from my personal hobby, could become some kind of livelihood. Incredible.
In 2018, I stayed at home for half a year because of depression, lost a job for half a year, was seriously ill for half a year, and lost some connection with the world. After my illness, I turned my main business into writing.
So, an occasional dinner, nearly 20 years later, changed my destiny.
Changes brought about by an American drama and a popular article
Maybe in 2005, Han Lei said he was watching a Hong Kong drama, and I liked it after watching it. Later, some people said that this was actually studying the American drama “24 Hours”. So I looked for “24 Hours” to watch, and I was astonished.
In fact, we have watched American dramas when we were young, such as “The Garrison Expendables”, “Growing Pains”, etc. Although they are good-looking, they have not left the impression that an American drama is far superior to a Chinese drama.
But “24 Hours” gave me the feeling that it killed all Chinese dramas in seconds, so I began to frantically search for American dramas to watch, and then entered the best time of my life, feeling that I had dug a treasure. My favorites of that era were Dr. House, Boston Law, Monk, and so on.
Because I love watching American dramas and writing codes, I also bought a second monitor, one to write codes, and the other to watch American dramas. I was a crazy efficiencyist at the time. But I discovered right away that I needed to stare at the subtitles or I couldn’t understand the plot. So, even though I have two screens, once the show is on, I can’t write code.
My solution is to remove the subtitles and listen and watch hard. Originally, it was mainly to solve the strange demand of watching American TV series and writing code at the same time. However, after a few months, I suddenly felt that my English level had skyrocketed, not only listening but also reading ability. Many words that I had never seen before were learned without a teacher.
Later, when I wrote the official account in 2015, I once wrote about this experience, which became my first hit ” How did I learn English (how to break through listening, speaking, reading, writing, and writing) in the fourth grade. ) “.
Then, when I made a Youtube video, when I was 19 years old, I recorded a video called “Let’s talk about how to learn English (why to establish a listening-led English learning method, and how to easily break through English listening, speaking, reading and writing) )” (If you are interested, go to youtube to search, the link will not be available). This video has also become my biggest video hit so far.
The video has been around for more than 3 years. As a result, it was discovered by Youtube’s recommendation mechanism in the last month.
Later, because many people asked me how to learn English, I made an English learning app called English Easy Read.
Then, many new followers followed me. Many of them didn’t know that I wrote programs for 20 years, and they didn’t know the popular articles on my official account. All they know is that I “teach English” and many people call me an English teacher. Another inexplicable fate was changed.
Fate changed by a shovel
When I was in college, I played 3D Max, and I also studied mechanics. But I really didn’t study mechanics very well in college. My hobby is on the computer. However, I am interested in all kinds of hands-on, creative things.
But I used to live in Shanghai as an expatriate, and I really didn’t plan to stay in Shanghai for the rest of my life, so I can only call it an expatriate. I can’t afford a house in Shanghai either. Therefore, although I have always been interested in 3D printing, I have not tried it. In the last year, I moved back to my home in Tianjin, my own house, and I finally bought a 3D printer .
I went out the other day and saw a loader, or shovel.
So, I just wanted to 3D print this thing. It can add motors, Arduino, Bluetooth, wiki, and Lego pneumatic components. It should be fun, even more fun than my Lego construction machinery.
That’s how I learn 3D printing, and that’s how I learn everything. Design yourself a real project to do it. This project is all about making a cool toy for myself.
So, I started modeling and printing. Made a bunch of stuff out.
However, I feel that these things do not meet my requirements. where is the problem. It may be that I am too unfamiliar with the modeling tool Blender. Limiting my performance and my abilities. So I decided to temporarily suspend this project to model various simple things, improve my modeling ability in the process, and then challenge this project.
So half a year passed. I started to challenge the project again. I designed a motor driven chassis for this project.
I designed the main structure for joint debugging with my LEGO pneumatics.
I redesigned the entire mechanism, starting from scratch, and even modeled the cylinder (bought it, didn’t need me to print it), and matched it to exact dimensions.
I set it up to debug the motion of the cylinder and components on the computer, and I also learned how to add bones and motion constraints to objects in Blender.
In other words, I learned how to do mechanical animation with Blender.
This is my new design, and it’s still mainly the front half of the car.
Of course, this is far from complete, only the front half of the mechanism has been designed, the rear half of the carriage and the cab have not been done yet, and various decorations and small parts have not been done yet. But it’s obviously very different from my original design.
A small idea to design a shovel seen on the side of the road into a toy that I can play with myself, which led me to learn a bunch of Blender and 3D printing skills, and it will lead me to a new direction in life, I do not know yet.
last words
The story I told today and some of the details I listed may have been seen many times by some people except for the 3D printing part. I want to tell these stories again today and list them again. It’s a new perspective, from what I personally see in my own life as more valuable and meaningful. What things have changed my personal trajectory. I’m trying to find some patterns.
First, most of the twists are something I don’t know in advance. I grew up loving programming, but until I got a programming job and established myself in the industry, I didn’t know it could actually happen. I thought my life was shaped by my parents’ expectations and understanding of the world. It’s just that after graduating from university, I couldn’t control not wanting to enter a big state-owned enterprise, and I didn’t want to go the way my parents walked. I didn’t know that until then.
I have no literary foundation, I majored in mechanics, and I did not pass CET-4. Therefore, I would not have expected that I would one day make a living by selling literature, and even someone else would be called an English teacher.
I just wanted to be a toy, and I don’t know that the goal of this toy has become so clear, so serious, so protracted.
Then, I found that the core is not the sense of direction, but when I indulge myself to pursue all kinds of things I like, it was just a hobby at first, but then I found a passion. This passion led me to spend all my time programming, writing articles, learning English, playing 3D printing and modeling. This accumulation of time and experience has brought these hobbies to a certain height, from hobbies to careers, which brings me benefits. On the contrary, it also encouraged me to think about doing a good job of them.
Originally a lot of things, and did not intend to do too well. Not going to put too much experience. But once you find that you have passion and do it well, you magnify your preferences. You can get rid of laziness and other people’s doubts, you can concentrate on it, and do things regardless of the gains and losses.
In the end, the results were pretty good.
It is also unintentional.
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