Weekend fun...YouTube learning style

So, first thing's first. I think, for as long as I've had my blog, I've referred to my husband as Himself. This isn't in any way a slight against him. This is to respect his privacy, as he once asked me to do. However, he has told me that I don't have to do that anymore. I've stopped doing it on Facebook. So I figure if I use it there, where I have a much greater reach, I can use it here. So, my husband's name is Tims.

Yes that's spelled right.

Yes, it's deliberate. It's a family name.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way..............

(Can you tell I'm in love with the period today? I promise, I'll quit now.)

(Maybe.)

Tims has been watching a lot of vidoes this weekend. Many of them are from the YouTube channel for Jamie & Adam Tested (channel found here.) If you watch Mythbusters, or have at least heard of the show, the Jamie and Adam from Tested are the same Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage. They do some neat stuff, talk about really cool things, and in general are just awesome.

I was minding my own business and listening to music when I looked up and saw something that caught my attention. My earbuds didn't go back in all weekend because not only was he watching the Tested videos. He was watching stuff about games, robotics, and engineering. It fascinates him and though I may not understand much of what's being said I find it interesting as well. He's also very good about explaining things for me.

Including what a CPU is and GPU is. That was a fun example. This video shows it Mythbusters style. (It took me three watchings and a little prompting from Tims to figure it out.)

I spent my weekend trying to write and managing a little bit. I also was doing a lot of research about random things like house buying and alarm systems for houses. Also what age are you allowed to purchase a handgun versus a rifle or a shotgun. And if stun guns are illegal in certain states or what regulations and laws there are around them.

It turns out there are a lot of different opinions on stun guns. Who knew?

Basically, most of my weekend was spent learning new things and coming up with more questions that needed to be answered. It was fun. I hope to be able to keep learning things as the week goes on. Writing will happen, but maybe in a new and different way.

Reading history for fun

I love history. I've loved it since I was a kid. My favorite time periods are Ancient Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt, and the Dark Ages, Medieval, and Renaissance Europe. Get up past the Industrial Revolution and that's where I start to lose interest. It's not that it isn't interesting. And U.S. History is something I should take some time to study. I just prefer the older time periods.

I'm researching something now that I've never looked at before: the Persian Empire. The one that spanned a good chunk of the Middle East, Egypt, and into Europe. It was one of the largest Empires that ever existed, holding sway over around 50 million people at its height. It began to weaken and then fell when Alexander the Great came in but it was the first of its kind.

I'm doing this research as part of my world building for my books, but even if I weren't reading it for that I'd still be reading it. Himself suggested it and it got me hooked from the start. I'm wanting to go to the library as well as reading online and see if I can find historical books that talk about the Persian Empire. I want to know more than I'm finding online.

This is what I do. I find something that catches my attention and I research it, whether I plan on using it in a story or not. I checked out a book recently about Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth I's grandmother. I wasn't researching anything. It was to satisfy my own curiosity about the woman. I've deviated from my chosen period of history in the past as well, digging into the days of the pioneers and learning what life was like for them. Living around parts of the Oregon Trail, and even being able to take a day trip into Oregon to see the big Oregon Trail museum helps.

I pursue these things because I love history. Himself loves coding and hunts down what he can as information on that. I've seen him spend hours on projects where he's hunched over his keyboard doing things that are complete mysteries to me. He's told me what he's doing and I still don't understand it. But it is one of his favorite things and what he wants to learn about.

What's one thing you like learning about? What do you spend your time reading about?