Tinkerer Toys

An ogre I created with a Blender tutorial.

My name is Ben - and I'm a tinkerer.

I came to this realization a few days ago after I bought a couple of computer books. It seems that the reason I have such a hard time getting anything done is because I'm always... well, tinkering with something! Whether it's attempting to create my own home server or putting together a model plane, I'm always distracted by something. And then I go out and buy another book so I can have a distraction from the distraction. It never ends!

It's not like I have very expensive hobbies. But they can add up fast. I tell you what I'm an absolute sucker for... kits. There's just something about a kit that makes my inner child do jumping jacks. I especially love art kits. It doesn't matter whether I have the best brushes and most expensive paints at my disposal, if I see a cool painting set at Half Price Books (a dangerous place indeed) I will lust after it to no end. There's just something about a little kit with an instruction book and some cheap paints and brushes that just reduces me to putty. Or paint by numbers, I'm a sucker for those too.

I'm addicted to computer books as well. I never finish half of them, but I can't stop buying them. The little ogre guy in the above image was done in an evening with the help of a tutorial in a book about Blender, the free and open source 3D graphics program. And don't get me wrong, I think it's good that I'm constantly learning stuff - my problem is that, due to my short attention span, I don't use half of what I learn. I'll do a few tutorials in one book, lose interest, neglect putting my new knowledge/skills to use and then I forget what I learned and move on to another book. Of course, a lot of the time, a book will turn out to be a disappointment - I was about a third of the way through a book on Unity when I realized it didn't cover gamepads or joystick input - how lame can you get?

Even as I write this, I have 2 different books vying for my attention. One is the aforementioned Blender book, the other is a book on C++ programming. I am proud of myself for sticking with the Blender book long enough to make a halfway decent model, but I know I'll have my fill soon enough and move on to the other book. And then there's that butterfly painting I need to finish. I didn't get to it today.

Eh, maybe tomorrow.

Update: I finished it!