Nothing serious, but I track all the games I play. According to stats, I completed 30 games and spent a total of 4d 15h 32m playing games this year.

I do experiments mostly on my computer/phone but once I had a small digital clock that was powered by 2 cups of cola. it had a battery that generates a tiny amount of electricity from chemical reactions, and the cola was used as an electrolyte. then I connected some wires and it worked. pretty epic.

I experiment with everything all the time. Try new approaches to things, see what worked and didn’t, adjust and try again. Cooking, exercise, social interactions, lovemaking, if I can evaluate it I run little informal experiments on it all the time.

Best quantitative example is exercise. I track lots of cardio metrics with my gps+HR watch so I can see in real time what I am doing to my pace vs heart rate. I track my estimated 1RM for various lifts across different training programs and methodologies and have found one that produces the best results for me. My watch also tracks sleep and I’ve found that 2 drinks affects my sleep while 3 drinks wrecks my sleep.

I often do experiments involving randomness, art, math, NLP, cryptography and programming.

In my most recent experiment as from yesterday, I created a novel ciphering method. I mean, I guess it's totally different from known ciphering methods (such as Vigenere, Caesar, Playfair, ROT13 and so on) because I couldn't find anything similar.

Some examples follow:

• "phyphox" is ((1,8,8), (6,6,5), (5,4), ø, ø, (1,2), (0,0), ø, (2,1), ø) (in the way I'm using it for now, the cipher will always result in 10 tuples containing a variable amount of tuples, with ø indicating an empty tuple; there are lots of output formatting alternatives: here I’m using an one-liner mathematical representation in order to be compact).
• "asklemmy" is ((0,1,5), (1,9,1,1,2,3,3), (0,5), (1,2), ø, (1), ø, ø, ø, (1))
• To make it more obvious on how it works, the entire alphabet sequence ("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz") results in ((0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,1,2), (0,0,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,2), (0,1,0,1,2,2,3,4,5,6), (0,1,2), (0,1,2), (0,1,2), (0,1), (0,1), (0,1), (1,2))
• And "aaa" is ((0,1,1,1), (0,0), ø, ø, ø, ø, ø, ø, ø, ø)

I'll keep a puzzle spirit and I won't explain it for now. The only hint is that the previous examples consider the English alphabet as so: A=01, B=02, C=03, all the way until Z=26 (yeah, the leading zero matters to this ciphering method). If you're a programmer, think in terms of pointers, or even better, an unidirectional linked list. If you're a mathematician, try to visualize a graph.

The cipher doesn't rely just on its principles, it also needs a corresponding mapping set (which can be alphabetical but can also contain non-letters, even emojis or hieroglyphs; the order will matter), and it also needs to know where to start the traversal path (the given examples start at the zeroeth tuple, but it could start anywhere). It's both deterministic (because there's a single correct path) and chaotic (because the result depends on other variables such as the mapping set, the initial position to start traversing, which element to take (whether the first or the last, FIFO or LIFO) and what numeric base to use (the examples used base-10, but it can be done as hexadecimal, octal, binary, or virtually any numerical base)). So I guess it has a lot of potential, not just for cryptography.

Sure I'll go. I grow vanilla as a side project to many other things. I've done some controlled backyard experiments with replication between my vineyard and another in my community to look at the impact of temperature on growth rates.

We plan on publishing but I've got enough day job publications going at once right now that a hobby paper is something I have a hard time justifying the time for, but the data is done and collected. We just used one and paper.

This was years ago now; I did an experiment to test various AA battery chemistries in real-world conditions to determine if the price difference was worth it. This was tangentially related to amateur radio, I first got the idea from overhearing a conversation on 2 meters.

I used rechargeable Ni-MH, zinc oxide "Heavy Duty" batteries, alkalines, and lithiums to play a lot of video games on my Nintendo Wii. (the batteries in the controller) I found that the Lithum batteries performed less than twice as long as the alkaline batteries, nowhere near worth their price. The "Heavy Duty" batteries were less than half of the alkalines but that actually made them more cost effective. The Ni-MH batteries had the shortest single charge of them all, I forget what it worked out to be the break even point.

One thing I did note was the Lithium batteries were noticeably lighter than the Alkalines, so if weight is an issue they may be a viable option.

This is a really interesting thread, OP - well done, and thanks for the app recommendation

I keep track of prices in cost per kg (or liter) so I am not fooled by shrinkflation and so that I know when a good sale is, without having to remember all prices. Basically just have a giant spreadsheet with the numbers.

I enjoyed using phyphox while on a plane recently. I found it fun to track the pressure and to see how it loosely corresponded to my own subjective experience of ascending vs descending.

I can't recall any "useful" things I've used the app for, but I really enjoy having it — it makes me feel powerful. Like, it's nice to think that if I did have some ideas of experiments to run, I could. It feels fitting to be able to access the sensors, because there are many ways in which our electronic devices nowadays aren't (or don't feel like) our own, so this feels like a small amount of clawing back power, even if I'm not using it for much.

I checked out phyphox and it's so cool. Gonna show this to my wife who is a high school science teacher. Young students love running experiments like these. When you give a curious mind a tool to measure the world with, and set them loose, good things happen. Thanks!

I've used phyphox for lots of stuff. It's great for looking at raw data from your phone's sensors but there are also a lot of great experiments built in to the app. The university that develops it has a playlist showcasing them all, it's a great way to spend a weekend.

I track lots of things, all the time; my body composition, performance at specific tasks... As for experiments, I've done a few:

• Tried to see if I could 3D print small channels and fill them with metal using electroplating (couldn't).
• I also made a DIY ultrasound imaging device and tested it. Did actually produce some images, but it wouldn't penetrate very far in tissues.

A fun experiment I did recently was to measure the speed of sound with my oscilloscope. I wired up a speaker and a microphone at a known distance from each other, connected the oscilloscope to both sides and measured how long it took between sound trigger & reception. I came within several meters/second accuracy which I think is a nice result for a basic home lab setup.

I also track a lot of metrics around the house using Home Assistant. Temperature, humidity, power usage, light levels, heating, but also stuff like total meters of filament used, total objects printed, system metrics. I like statistics and it's fun to compare months/years and clearly see the results of improved isolation for example.

Probably not the answer you are looking for, but I run a ton of math on gaming. Doninos, Warhammer, Magic the Gathering exct. I used to play in a lot of tournaments. Not professional, I do not want that stress. But, I usually placed top 4.

I build an off-grid solar power set on my back yard and tracked it's results for two years. It was only 500W in 3 directions (east, south and west)

It first charged the batteries and then used the rest to heat water if no direct use was present.

Learned a lot and noticed that many ideas and mental images about it were bullshit. Still usefull if applied to right applications.

Not gonna buy a bigger set and will use the existing ones to just heat water till they give up.