LAN Party Games that Run on a Potato and Any Platform

When I picture a typical land party, I imagine a bunch of passionate geek gamers bringing in their massive desktop weapons or laptop desktop replacements. Machines with powerful GPUs enough to run NASA spacecraft and cost as much as one.

An AI-generated image of a LAN Party on the Highway

However, what if your peers only have modest machines with an integrated GPU? Essentially, a 'normal' laptop. Imagine hosting a party with those, no one will be able to run these modern demanding games and no one will be enjoying the slideshow and crashes in their games.

So I'm including here a bunch of games that can run on a potato but still provide a fun experience without the need of a 20-pound computer. Of course, no one is going to be wowed by the presentation, but fun will ensue anyways.

I came up with a few arbitrary criteria that these games should have. First, the game must be less than 25$ CAD and easy to procure online. It must run on my mule netbook Latitude 3190 that only has an Intel UHD Graphics 600 as the iGPU reasonably well and be playable. Also, it needs to run on Windows, macOS and Linux either natively or via some compatibility layer like Wine or Proton.

Finally, I won't try to make the list exhaustive, however, I do want to try and make some variety with some genres. Not every party game needs to be a first person shooter. One more rule is that I will only include one game per genre. But, I will leave a list of games that are similar without description.

Quake Live - First Person Shooter

Classic FPS arena shooters games I find to be an enjoyable because of how easy and accessible they are. No fiddly mechanics or complicated rules. However, it still comes with a ton of customization options and almost a hundred maps. Several games modes like Free-for-All and Capture-The-Flag will keep the replayability high. A game that will easily take over even the longest marathon LAN parties.

It is available on Steam for 10.99$ CAD and I've been able to run it even on my backup 10 year old desktop that runs Linux through Valve's Proton.

Similar Games: Counter-Strike, Xonotic, Cube 2: Sauerbraten, Red Eclipse, Warsow, World of Padman, Urban Terror, Halo CE

Live for Speed - Racing Simulator

I've never been to a session where people were playing racing games, apparently the genre isn't popular with the typical comic-book geek. However, they provide a very difficult challenge of keeping a car on the road and for some hilarity on turn one T1 where everything goes wrong.

Live for Speed has been in development for over 20 years and the developer has maintained its modest graphical style so it runs even on lower-spec systems Scawen even tests that his game runs on Wine.

While it works pretty well with a mouse and keyboard, a gamepad is recommended for more precise control.

LFS comes free as demo version which includes, in my opinion, the best track in the game, Blackwood, and two very well-balanced road cars. The full game is a bit expensive at ₤36 but I'm including it here because the demo has enough content to keep the fun going for hours.

Similar Games: Speed Dreams, rFactor 1

0 A.D. - Real-Time Strategy

I know almost nothing about Real-Time Strategy games because I have no idea how to play them. However, I know that they are extremely popular, especially in Asia. Player of these types of games are extremely competitive and parties all over the world are hosted just to fight for the win.

Unfortunately, I don't play RTS games but I totally understand the appeal so my experience is a bit shallow and heavily relied on research to find some of the best games.

0 A.D. is completely open-source and free, and runs on multiple platforms including Windows, macOS and Linux. Amazingly, it is still being developed to this day.

Similar Games: Warzone 2100, League of Legends, Dota 2, StarCraft, Age of Empires 2, Brood War

Tabletop Simulator - Board Games

Board games can be a fun way to spend some quality time with friends but you need the actual set. Also, you can't play with people across the world. This is where Tabletop Simulator comes in, a physics sandbox designed to emulate board games.

The game has so much expandability with a massive repository on Steam's Workshop so you'll be hard pressed to not find a board game that you and your friends will like. Remember, however, it is up to you to implement the rules and TTS doesn't have an engine that keeps track of the rules. So that means, you can flip the board out of anger with no consequence.

Tabletop Simulator sells at 21.99$ CAD on Steam but you can buy four copies for 66.49$ CAD. It runs natively on all three major platforms.

Similar Games: Zillion of Games 2

Garry's Mod - Physics Sandbox

What happens when you take a masterpiece game like Half-Life and remove all the rules and story from it. You end up with an incredibly entertaining sandbox where you can do whatever you want.

This is the kind of game where you create your own fun whether you want to blow things up, make a Rube Goldberg machine or set fire to wooden structures. Of course, it comes with full Steam Workshop support where you can find thousands of props, maps and weapons limiting things to only your imagination.

Garry's Mod is available on Steam for 10.99$ though I also recommend getting Counter-Strike Source along with it because some of the props and addons need them. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Similar Games: Minecraft

open.mp (GTA: San Andreas) - Open-World

Grant Theft Auto, for those who lived under a rock, is a open-world game that combines multiple elements from different genres such as FPS, beat-em-up and driving. Essentially, you're a criminal that is yielded weapons and have the ability to steal cars and drive. Most people play in a sandbox mode where they do whatever they want such as wrecking havoc in the city while there is also a story mode which follows an action-adventure style playing essentially as a criminal.

While GTA V is one most of the popular multiplayer games according to the Steam statistics, it still needs a pretty decent machine to run. However, GTA multiplayer experiences did exist before for San Andreas with the SA:MP mod. The mod was left stagnant eventually but fortunately a group of open-source developers came up with open.mp as a drop-in replacement to continue these tantalizing multiplayer experiences.

Unfortunately, San Andreas isn't available through the normal means anymore so you either need to buy a physical copy off eBay or get it through other means. It runs well under Wine on macOS and Linux. In fact, the game is so modest in it's requirements that there are versions for mobile.

Alternatives: Midtown Madness 2

RetroArch Netplay - Classic Games

For your classic gaming fix, you can still enjoy an amazing multiplayer experience with friends. And since emulators run classic systems, you don't have to worry about performance. There's a huge selection of great games for various consoles. I'm plugging in my TopRoms Collection to get you started.

RetroArch and other emulators like Dolphin have made it extremely easy to set up Netplay, a multiplayer program for emulators, as easy as picking a room from a lobby interface just like many other multiplayer games. This used to be incredibly complicated but now its headache free.

The emulator is available here for free and it's fully open-source. Not only does it run on Windows, macOS and Linux but also mobile platforms like Android and dozens of other systems.

Armagetron Advanced - Snake Game

What happens when you take Tron and turn into a fast-paced arcade snake game? You get Armagetron Advanced, where you play in a 3D arena driving futuristic bicycles leave a trail of walls behind you. Try to trap your opponents into them and don't crash into yours or that of others.

There's not much to say about the game due to its simplicity. It comes with excellent netcode so it will run even on poor networks. The game is open-source and free, running on all three major platforms.

OpenRCT2 - Tycoon

This is a game that has a special place in my heart mostly due to the nostalgia factor. However, building a theme park is quite an enjoyable experience for me. There are so many types of props that you can make your park as fanciful or simple as you want.

OpenRCT2 is a reimplementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 with multi-platform support, increased stability and a neat multiplayer feature.

In order to run OpenRCT2, you need a copy of the original game that you can get from Steam for 10.99$ or DRM-free from GOG for 8.13$. Of course, it runs on all three major platforms.

Alternatives: OpenTTD

YSFlight - Flight and Combat Simulator

Flight simulators are typically games that need a ton of horsepower to run due to their amazing graphics and complex and realistic gameplay. However, one developer, Soji Yamakawa, in the very late 90s, thought that there should be something more accessible.

Enter YSFlight, a combat flight simulator that has very simple graphics and sound but still provides the same kind of fun of flying in the air in addition to its combat mechanics. Setup is minimal, simply requiring you to pick your plane and map, and you’re good to go. It will also recognize your joystick quite quickly too!

YSFlight is available for all three major platforms and has been recently open-sourced. You can get many addons from here.

Alternatives: FlightGear, IL-2, Falcon

OpenLieroX - Artillery

Imagine the Worms game, but in real-time. This is what you get, OpenLieroX. It is based on the original Liero game but with a ton of extra maps and weapons.

Dig your way through a sand trap or use your weapons to make a big opening with a bomb explosion. Frag the other players in the free-for-all mode or play in teams. It is fun that will last for a really long time.

OpenLieroX is open-source and free, running on all three major platforms.

Alternatives: Teeworlds, Warmux, Worms Series

tetr.io - Falling Puzzle Game

I still have memories of the flash game Tetris Friends, an official version of the game with multiplayer support and a ton of single-player challenges. The controls were very solid generating some very exhilarating and exciting gameplay. Unfortunately, a few years ago, it was shut down.

The spiritual resurrection came out a few years ago as tetr.io bringing back essentially most of the gameplay of the defunct Tetris Friends. The presentation is excellent with your choice of relaxing or intense music and so much customization. It features excellent single player modes that keep track of your progress while also allowing you playing the game with other people on the Internet. The dynamics follow the official Tetris guidelines.

Tetr.io runs on the browser though there is a desktop version that again, runs on all major platforms.

Alternative: A List of a ton of Tetris Clones

Conclusion

So there you have it, a list of games to consider for your next friendly LAN party. However, since these games are not demanding, your party room won't turn into a sauna and people can bring in their regular laptops with the platform of their choice.

I tested all the games on my mule that I mentioned earlier. It runs a derivative of Arch Linux and was able to play all the games on it pretty smoothly. On my actually daily driver, which still has an integrated GPU, it doesn't break a sweat.

I hope you enjoyed this list and inspired you to run your own casual people friendly LAN party! If you have some suggestions of your own, feel free to leave a comment below and share with the community!

Why you shouldn't start a blog

So you want to get onto the blogging train? Thinking what lies ahead is a replacement for your boring office job? We all have strong delusions that easy money is just around the corner as a side gig. However, anything that starts as fun becomes a job when you get onto the treadmill.

My blog started around April 2017, having no idea what to expect. My only real goal was expressing myself and talking about subjects that I’m passionate about. I broke all the rules. First, I didn’t pick a niche that would narrow my topics. Second, I didn’t give a crap about SEO and at the time of starting, I didn’t even know what it entailed. Third, I never put ads, affiliates or sponsorships on my blog. I do have a ‘donate’ button on the side somewhere, but no one has ever clicked it.

I get a decent amount of readers that I want to please and projects that I’m working on. Some of my posts have gone viral I’ll admit and I get a good volume of emails about my blog post topics or projects. I’m making an impact on some people apparently, but I’m not making money. And I don't care.

This blog for me was mostly about expressing my freedom. I bravely talked about elements of my personal life, controversial topics and subjects that no one cared about. I knew that someone might read it, but probably a few people at most. With where I am right now, I’m pretty content with what my website has become. It has become the portfolio that I show off to those who want me to get onboard their team.

Reasons not to blog

Throughout the past few years, I’ve been teaching people how to start and write blogs, what platforms to pick and how to maintain a good writing style and most importantly practice. However, I noticed that people’s intentions seemed inadequate and honestly, unrealistic. I started to collect their ideas and putting the in the worst reasons to start a blog:

Writing for Popularity

I know it’s really tantalizing to become famous and be known in various communities driving recognition for yourself. However, keep in mind you’re competing with millions of blogs, with people who have the same desire for notoriety. Every day, someone pushes the WordPress button thinking that have found a topic so narrow that no one has ever discussed it before. However, unless you’re a university researcher who is used to searching for very particular studies, an average search engine user is probably not going to even find your blog. You might be on page five of Google search results, but do you really think that people will go that far to find your supposed gem?

It is very important to write for your audience no doubt, but getting so specific will turn off many people off because it just doesn’t feel right to read. You’ll be working hard coming up with clickbait titles but it will cause your visitors to bounce back very quickly as the article doesn’t fulfill the promises that your title made. Those so called top ten lists might make for a lot of clicks, but people will skip headline to headline and promptly forgot everything you wrote. Even memorable images won’t stay in their head.

Writing for Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization is a hotly debated subject within the blogging community. The perfect storm of keywords, headers and design choices should make your post be the first one on top of search results. However, it probably won’t and consider how unlikely someone is going to be searching for “motherly tips to deal with pets during the pandemic” rather than “covid symptoms”.

Again, like I said before, write to entice and engage your readers. Keep them in as you get them interested into subjects you’re passionate about. Compose for them because they should be your number one priority. The ‘customer is always right’ philosophy really fits in well here.

Keep in mind that getting people visiting your site is only a small part of the endeavour. You want them to read what you want to say and come back over and over again. Give them a good reason to stay and participate in your discussions.

Think about it, who’s going to read your posts? A robot or a person?

Writing for Money

This is many of my students dream, someone quit their boring white collar job for miraculously making 100k$+ per year income. I’ll admit that I know some people who have done it but they’re very few. As with smartphone apps, clothing products and what not, there’s a huge luck factor and survivorship bias that comes into play.

You’ll likely need to sell more than just your blog to make some acceptable amount of money, assuming it has a good value proposition. These can include things like books, swag and other material that is actually tangible. It takes effort (and money) to get things like this going and it’s a risk anyways.

Things like ads, sponsorships and affiliates will actually end up annoying your readers. Unless you have something as popular as Facebook, no one is going to click on your ads. Keep in mind for things like technical audiences, they likely already have an adblockers that even strips referral URLs.

Passion at Your Pace

If you do things at your own pace, you’ll be avoiding the content treadmill that many prolific content creators suffer from and complain about. You have to be really consistent with your product and constantly produce articles. Your hobby will essentially become a job and you might even miss your previous white collar job.

We all have something to say whether it’s mundane, important or just plain funny. Let your blog be the avenue to self-expression and discuss what’s on your mind. After all, shouldn’t everything be done with passion and love rather rather than regurgitating the same stuff that everyone else is. Perhaps, for me, as it is for many other small blogs, it’s a way to express your freedom and talk to your audience no matter how small it is.

By forgetting all the weak ambitions above, you might find yourself getting what you’ve been dreaming about!

Something to think about and reflect on.

Healing the wounds from Sonic Origins

Sonic Origins was shaping up to become the definitive way to play our favourite classics from the Genesis era. The official trailer demoed tantalizing animated cutscenes amidst footage of the remasters running in beautiful widescreen at 60 fps. We fell for it.

We obsessive Sonic fans waited until midnight of Sonic’s 31st anniversary (the release date) to grab a downloadable copy of this new compilation. However, what was supposed to be a sleepless night of a fan’s wet dream slowly became a bad trip of a nightmare.

Most reviewers and YouTubers were left with mixed feelings unimpressed with the game’s lack of polish. Veteran Sonic players saw much more subtle flaws that brought the game further away from what was supposed to be a compilation holy grail.

I don’t need to go into details, but most of us were left with sour taste from Sonic Origins feeling like we wasted 60$. The bugs, missing details, inaccurate physics and of course the butchered prototype tracks. It made us so angry and hurt our feelings. We were left with many painful cuts and bruises.

Sonic and Amy inflicted with wounds and bleeding. From Tumbler Blogger *chinchilla*

Many have tried to patch the holes in Sonic Origins but eventually realizing that it’s not moddable enough to fix the papercuts. Sega got the sale figures they wanted so they have no motivation to correct the many bugs in the game. Stealth from Headcannon revealed that Sega sent them into development hell.

Fortunately, fan gamers have already built remasters which fill in the gap quite nicely. You can still enjoy these games in a more polished and modern format without all the oddities found in Sega’s rush job. These are the treatments to your wounds and the definitive way play to these games in widescreen, at 60 fps and with drop dash.

If you really liked the animated cutscenes, you can still watch these fantastic animations online from beginning to end. And don’t worry, you can find much more concepts, drawings, manuals, interviews and music than the tiny sample of bonuses that Origins included over at Sonic Retro.

Of course, if you can’t get enough of these platformers than you should take a look at the matchless spiritual successor made by Christian Whitehead et al. Sonic Mania

I’ve resurrected my Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9) install!

I purchased a large collection of addons back in 2009-2015 for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 of a large variety and with much money. When FSX was released, all those addons were not compatible with it and became obsolete. Back then, FSX required very powerful computers and the poor performance made me return back to FS2004.

Later on, Lockheed-Martin picked up from where the ESP platform was left from Microsoft and released newer and improved versions as Prepar3d. The software was continuously updated breaking the addons that were purchased for the simulator.

Whenever an upgrade was released for the addons, developers often made users pay an upgrade fee. This is assuming that the addons are not abandoned by the developer.

I eventually moved on to X-Plane 11 by Laminar Research at the time where the addon market for it was starting to boom. Many simulations were very in-depth, study-level and so realistic that even pilots could use it for training. I purchased a couple addons for it. I was confident that I didn’t need my old sim anymore and deleted all my installers for FS2004 mods. My backup hard-drive failed and lost everything. I wasn’t upset because I thought I would only play X-Plane from now on.

When Flight Simulator (2020) came out, it revolutionized the way scenery was generated using photogrammetry and satellite imagery to generate a world so accurate that you could see your house in the game. However, this game is still in it’s infancy without a proper SDK. Hardly any serious addons have been release for it.

I realized that I was stuck with a bunch of addons purchased a while ago that I wasn’t using anymore. A sense of guilt ran through me because I felt that I spent money on nothing. I didn’t want to keep spending so much money (addons are getting more expensive these days) every time I upgraded. Therefore, this year, I decided to resurrect FS2004 and get all my addons back. It wasn’t that easy.

Screenshots

Finally! I’ve managed to resurrect most of my FS9 addons on Windows 10. The reason I did this was because I bought so many addons for FS9 back in 2009-2015 and I feel like I was putting them to waste if I didn’t use them at all. It took me two days to get most of my addons installed. I still have more to go. It's about 55 GB so far.

This time, I made backups for all the installers and keys on OneDrive and on an external hard drive. Despite all of this, I figure some addons are going to be eventually out of date.

Difficulty of Installation

Here’s what I discovered installing such an ancient flight simulator on a modern system:

  • Most FS9 products disappeared around 2016 from stores.

  • Addons with plain and simple installers that don’t phone home still work.

  • Flight1 Wrapper doesn’t always work with Windows 10. This is a known issue. Therefore, I’ve lost some addons.

  • Some vendors don’t provide downloads for legacy products anymore.

  • I had to contact some developers to get the legacy installers.

  • Manually generated keys are not done by the developers anymore.

  • Many products aren’t supported anymore (this is understandable).

  • Some activation servers are no longer online.

Due to the above, I had to resort to piracy to use products that I actually bought. I had to go through shady websites often in languages that I don’t understand. I sought refuse with VMWare, uBlock Origin, Sandboxie and VirusTotal to hopefully catch any malicious software. It made me reflect our reliance on online services these days. Once they’re gone we lose the software and our data.

What I miss from FS9:

  • 2D panels which are really easy to read and navigate through. They look ugly compared to virtual cockpits but they’re so much more practical and pragmatic.

  • At this point, after more than 20 years of hardware evolution, frame rate is incredibly high. I can run it at 4K at 60 fps all the time in any scenario.

  • Excellent and busy AI traffic with the proper addons. Easy to spot with labels above them.

  • Probably the simulator with the most freeware addons.

  • The collection of payware addons is much more varied, you can essentially find scenery for any location on the planet and a huge variety of obscure planes.

  • You can have windows of other views and put them on a separate screen.

  • You can have windows of some gauges and put them on a separate screen.

  • No VAS issues. Still need a patch to increase it to 4GB because by default, with more demanding addons, the sim still crashes.

  • Flight Path view and Replay.

  • Planes for early history are there such as the Wright Flyer.

  • Flight Lesson material is in depth and well documented.

  • Incredibly fast load times and startup.

  • Meigs Field

  • The graphics look way more natural than modern FSX and F3D. I find that the addons for the latter tend to look more cartoony and too vibrant.

What I don’t miss from FS9:

  • Gauges refresh rate is terrible, especially compared to X-Plane’s ultra-smooth panels. It’s even worse in VC where some planes where the refresh rate is probably 2-4 FPS.

  • No good camera tool for moving around and effects. There’s only F1View and Active Camera but they leave a lot to be desired.

  • Flight Dynamics are absolutely terrible. It feels like you’re flying on rails and turbulence doesn’t do much.

  • The virtual cockpits look so bad. Almost everything is 2D and you can really tell.

  • So many separate executables for load management and other features. They’re integrated into the sim in new simulators.

  • Comparing to the amazing scenery from MSFS, FS2004 looks extremely dated and horrible. Autogen is utterly terrible. Terrain resolution leaves so much to be desired. I can’t believe one pixel is used for 4 meters squared. Scenery drawn further away is blurry mess and mesh looks terrible.

  • Mesh is so low resolution outside of the US. Addons that add extra resolution are buggy because of improper airport altitudes and flat airports.

  • Almost all decent scenery is payware.

  • Again, it’s ancient software now.

  • Compared to modern addons, system depth isn’t that deep.

  • Need an external tool for flight planning. Forget about SID and STARS with the default one. I use SimBrief as an alternative.

  • The incredibly invasive anti-piracy mechanisms. Some they even detect false positives and do something like delete folders in your FS9 install or delete the addon. I had to use virtual machines to test some of them. I’ll leave this detailed in another post soon.

  • Need to run as administrator for most addons to work.

  • No HDPI support. Everything is tiny.

  • Selecting aircraft don’t always work

  • Default ATC is useless. (I mean, it still is in X-Plane 11 and MSFS2020.

  • The game is unstable and needs constant restarting.

After being spoiled by X-Plane and even more with MSFS, the FS9 graphics are really really starting to look dated. 

Conclusion

It feels like quite an achievement to get all this running and definitely worth the time. I now have access to most of the software that I purchased and learned to love in the past. Looks like this will keep me busy for a while.

I still play and enjoy X-Plane and MSFS and have a collection of addons for them too. I don’t believe that you should pick one simulator and live with it. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple ones as long as you have the disk space!

Recommended Addons

  • Level-D Simulations - The 767: This is a good balance between a study level and a casual simulation. Very easy to learn with nice documentation and example flights. Quite old but a classic.

  • iFly Jets - 737NG and 747: The old PMDG airliners have been discontinued. This is a good replacement and up-to-par with the current PMDG simulations.

  • Leonardo - Fly The Maddog SP2: Probably one of the most complex simulations for FS2004. It is a discontinued but if you look hard enough "online" you'll find it.

  • PMDG - MD-11: This is probably my favourite airliner simulation. You can find DVD of it on eBay but also "online". PMDG discontinued it because apparently, it didn't sell really well. I call bullshit on this and believe that it is due to a developer debacle. The main developer (Lefteris Kalamaras) of the plane left and they couldn't support it anymore. Here’s some help.

  • SSTSIM - CONCORDE: Very detailed Concorde with a very immersive feel. Simulates the majority of systems but not all of them. This is more in-depth than the PSS one.

  • Aerosoft - Piper Cheyenne: A really in-depth dual turboprop simulation.

  • RealAir: Citabria/SF-260 and Spitfire: Simple planes but very realistic flight dynamics. Plane rolls-over in stall and probably the only simulation that I've tried that simulates sideslips.

  • VRS - F/A-18E Superbug: If you ask the developer very nicely, you will get a copy for FS9. This is the most in-depth military aircraft even more than the DCS version.

  • PILOTS - FS Global Real Weather: This is a great replacement to ActiveSky Evolution. It's still supported and works with FS2004.

  • Matthias Neusinger - FS Recorder: A million times between than the integrated replay in FS9. Much smoother.

  • Pablo Diaz - HDEv2: This is freeware, you can find it on AVSIM. It enhances the sky colours and clouds dramatically. I find it to be less cartoonish and subtle than REX.

  • FSAddon - Glacier Bay Alaska/Canada: Another freeware that you can find on AVSIM. It replaces a good portion of Alaska and Canada with more detailed mesh, textures and landclass.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Traffic: My favourite AI traffic enhancement. I find it stable, provides good density and good performance. There are many freeware alternatives on the Internet.

  • Flight One Software - Ground Environment Professional: Replacement ground textures. Looks much better than the default but it won't work around the terrible ground resolution in FS9.

  • Flight One Software - Ultimate Terrain: Highly improved landclass, rivers, roads, etc for Alaska, Canada, USA and Europe.

I Want To Be A Generalist

I decided to become a generalist.

Discovering My Interests

It took a while to discover a very important aspect of my life. I didn’t want to have laser focus on only one aspect of the world, something that I was stuck in for a long time. I realized that I want to do a bit of everything and that was being more honest with myself. I felt like I escaped this illusion of life that I had and everything became so much more interesting.

Looking Back Into the Past and Now

The Past of Polymaths

If you search some notable persons on Wikipedia, you’ll notice that they hold multiple denominations such as scientist, philosopher, inventor, artist and so on. What you realize, these people have been from the deep past where being a polymath, someone who’s an expert in many areas, was actually quite standard. Despite the limited access to knowledge and no Interest, these people travelled far and wide to expand their knowledge eventually writing about it in exquisite texts that are so insightful that they are still canon and reference material today.

Our Present Of Specialization

In the past few hundred years, academia has developed a ride towards specializations. We are thought from elementary school that our way to success will involve picking a narrow field, mastering it and finding a job in that area. Although our school adventures starts with a balance of several subjects, as we progress through the grades, things start to narrow down. Once you reach the PhD level, your worldview seems really narrow and it’s seems that your subject is all you can talk about. As our modern times go by, it seems that the specializations are becoming even narrower to the point of making our views on aspect of life very binary and shallow.

Losing Your Advantage

The biggest disadvantage of specializing becomes the fact that what you learn might be irrelevant in just a few years in our fast paced world. If you studied about fourth-generation programming languages, well guess what, today it’s almost irrelevant and few career opportunities will allow you to use this out of date skill.

Leaving My Comfort Zone

Just like many, I was brainwashed to believe that the only way to success and fame was through university. As time progressed, I felt like I wasn’t being squished into a really narrow corridor. The illusions provided by past school became disillusionment.

I went to lounges for graduate students to learn more about their lives. Technically I wasn’t allowed to be there but the people I met were friendly and very open. I started to realize that their entire lives were dedicated to something very narrow. I tried to initiate discussions about something else but it would be awkward and unnatural. It wasn’t until I discussed their favourite subject. They lit up and had so much to say.

Exiting the Path of Specialization

The diplomas handed out at a long party started to seem irrelevant to me. It didn’t even mean I was good at something. I was just complacent ready to be obedient at some job. As one of my physics professors said “when you get a diploma, it just means congratulations! you've memorized fifteen books”.

This whole idea started to become a nightmare for me but for some reason I kept soldering on. The culmination of finishing my courses lead to a very anti-climatic event when I was handed my piece of paper. It was the result of 5 years of boredom that I spent so much money on.

After a long of only doing one thing in my life as a software developer, the shallow perspective of life made me feel incomplete. The world seems so full and colourful, good and bad, things. I left the shackles of my tiny little field and decide that I would like to know a bit more about this planet we live on.

New Careers and Hobbies

I decided to leave the software engineering to try other things. I wanted to do a bit of everything. After trying to bud myself into a field that I had no credentials, I’ve become a technical and content writer, as a freelancer. I left myself to do technology gigs despite my departure from programming doing mostly IT services. I’ve even started driving for Uber with a 10 hour shift every Saturday.

Volunteering was something I took on. I explored taking part in humanitarian efforts, animal conservation and even eccentric meetups. I’ve managed to start my own social club that’s been solid for more than two years with weekly meetings and over 600 members.

Many of these activities took much of my time and didn’t pay near as much as my old software consulting career, maybe even half. However, I feel more content with what I’m doing not only because of the enhanced freedom these opportunities provided but also erasing boredom due to the fact that I was doing something different all the time.

I’m not done yet on seeing what other things I can do. I have on my mind things like real estate and home decoration. Another thing that tickles my mind has a big stigma behind it. Becoming a cuddle therapist…

Fear

I didn’t know how to face my desires and the changes required to move on to something else. The risk was really big and the uncertainty uncomfortable. I was trying to hold something full-time while I looked but I was started to focus less and less on it. Instead, I was exploring the other avenues and doing many interviews that lead to failure. I felt like I had to go back to software but I eventually got my first writing gig. It was a roller-coaster because I was doing something I wasn’t qualified in but after finishing the projects, I was proud of what I did. The impact on the company was obvious.

Irrelevancy

This is a purely anecdotal experience. I noticed that many people worked in fields that have nothing to do with their diploma. Theologians becoming software developers. Electrical engineers doing sales for life insurance. Mathematicians stuck in a job filing tickets for a broken payroll system. Social scientists feeding city hall with wasted time. Uber drivers with advanced diplomas in mechanical engineering. And so on.

Job search has become so difficult that finding something that exactly matches your studies is really difficult. No matter your level of education, there’s a high chance that your intelligence won’t count compared to another candidate who’s less qualified but has more charisma and cheat his way through the interviews.

Learning and Learning to Learn

Academia

While some people want to collect diplomas like Pokémon cards, I thought that academia was probably the worst way to learn. The main problem is cost but also the outdated nature of the form of education. Most of your time was swallowed by boring lectures and endless assignments. Even worse, it cost so much money to the point where in some places around the world, you need a mortgage to study.

Unfortunately, depending on your field and work arrangements, some might be still asked to provide that magic piece of paper. Apparently, it’s a right of passage proving that you learned and mastered something. Nothing could be further than the truth however. Most students worked for grades rather than learning. Cheating is abundant. Professors are incredibly incompetent because they have no experience in the real world. When you escape university after a grueling four to five years, you realize that you’re not ready for the real world.

Self-Learning And Curiosity

This is a path that I’ve taken a decade ago. We live in a blessed age where knowledge is so accessible. Book stores and libraries everywhere with resources ready to have explore the world outside yours. Our biggest blessing is probably the Internet. Content for all sort of interests and often cheap to take part in, in fact sometimes free. You can pick your learning style whether it’s reading a book, doing exercises online or even boring lectures if that what suits you.

It takes much motivation and discipline to learn something. However, once you get into it, it becomes an addiction. Your thirst for knowledge grows and grows.

What will fuel your learning adventure the most is your curiosity. Sometimes you look at something as simple clock and start wondering how a quartz stone can accurately measure seconds. What about the intricate workings of a society you’ve never heard of? Do you want to memorize pi to a thousand places or be a fact machine for the capitals of each country in the world? The possibilities are endless.

Best part is that you can use this knowledge to teach others and make yourself a nice career with some variety. Maybe you won’t have diploma or anything but you just need to sell yourself well. If you’re lucky, some online courses provide certificates which can be added to your portfolio.

Learning on my own has opened my eyes to so many things teaching me so many facts. My sense of culture grew massively and suddenly I was more qualified in something that I didn’t even know existed as a skill a few moments before.

I can’t let go of that anymore. As one of my managers put it so well, I’m stuck in learning mode.

Time Investment

This desire to learn on the other hand required so much time from me. I had to push myself so hard to read Wikipedia all the time and feeding myself with books. I’m entranced with books now reading one or two books every week. I’m a non-fiction lunatic that will read anything (except for biographies). I let my impulsive nature pick the book for me.

My main method of learning is definitely reading. I am a faster than average reader peaking at 700 words per minute so that speeds me up a bit. However, I spend at least two hours everyday reading.

Other people prefer documentaries, lectures, audio books and so on. It doesn’t really matter what you do as long (as you feel that) you’re benefiting. See what you’re willing to invest time in.

Don’t worry about retention but focus more on comprehension. We all forget so easily but an experience will stay with us forever.

Practicing A Skill

Much knowledge requires another huge piece of time investment. If you’re learning about a musical instrument you probably want to practice often. Personally, I’m infatuated with flight and aviation. Learning procedures in a flight simulator can take some time and so much knowledge about the plane. The quirks of landing a plane need to be measured so you can successfully put the plane on the ground.

Of course, the best part is you get to choose how much time you want to spend on something.

Critical Thinking and Creativity

Having been exposed to many subjects, you develop new ways of thinking. Your perspectives are much wider and have new ideas that came to mind that you never even imagined. This sharpens your thinking skills. In fact, you probably just start to think more often instead of being bored staring at the wall. Eventually, that forces to change your perspective all the time and think from many different angles. This fuels your critical thinking skills and you might even become a better debater.

When it comes to creativity, this is really obvious. Having many ideas presented to you on a consistent basis, you develop more curiosity. As you have more ideas in your head, they can become a catalyst for new concepts. You will activate many parts of your brain and link things together that were seemed irrelevant on their own.

Combining Many Subjects

Specialists have rarely explored other subjects in detail. They never get a chance to combine multiple perspectives in one so they miss the chance for innovative thinking and freedom.

For example, if you are familiar with Toyota’s KANBAN methodology, you might fight that it is a good software development methodology as well. Perhaps your knowledge of Non-Euclidean geometry can help with that machine learning algorithm that you are developing.

Conclusion

Learning what I wanted to learn has changed my perspective drastically. I was finally starting to discover myself just a bit more and what my desires and aspirations actually are.

I really wanted to become good at things. Many things in fact. Nothing left as a black box opening things and analyzing their internal mechanisms. I need to be balanced so I can have interesting conversations and debates with all sorts of people. As a result, I became more comfortable with myself and even enjoy my own company.

The biggest change for me is the amount of activities that I can do now. I’m never bored and always have something to explore. I do multiple and different kinds of jobs now. I volunteer and host my own things.

For those who read my blog regularly, you will notice that I’m directionless (unlike many more popular bloggers focusing on a single niche) and quite haphazard sometimes. The subjects I cover are all over the place and this is due to my unending curiosity for learning and practicing a new art. When I learn, I want to share that experience and teach it to other people.