A lot of folks have taken advantage of more time at home recently to pick up new skills and hobbies. In my case, I have started learning more about 3D printing. I bought an entry level 3D printer about a year ago to have something fun to do with my grandson during the summer. The model I chose is so easy to use, that its Amazon page shows a photo of a grandmother and her grandchildren using it. The only problem I found is that the bed is tiny, only 150 mm x 150 mm.<\/p>\n
Because I want to print ear savers<\/a> for healthcare and retails workers, I bought a bigger and better printer with a 300 mm x 300 mm bed. Not only do I have a larger printing surface, I also have dozens (maybe hundreds?) of physical and virtual knobs to turn to get this thing printing well. After futzing with the leveling every evening for two weeks, I finally caved and began using glue stick on the bed to help with adhesion. It\u2019s now printing the ear saver straps perfectly, but I do feel a bit guilty about using glue. One person on a Facebook group dedicated to 3D printing said, \u201cIf you have to use glue, you are doing something wrong!\u201d It feels like adding a nolock hint to a T-SQL query. I promise that I\u2019ll keep watching videos and reading articles to learn more about printing, but, in the meantime, I just want to get those ear savers printed!<\/p>\n In addition to seeing lots of people taking up 3D printing as I am, there are people learning new hobbies like knitting, crocheting, cooking, painting, gardening, woodworking and more. It\u2019s also a great time to improve technical skills. One of the things that I have always loved about working as a developer or database administrator is that there is always something new to learn. (Well, I have also hated that, too, since I feel like I am always so far behind on what I need to know.)<\/p>\n Lots of folks are stepping up to offer free online technical training and events, so it\u2019s a great time to pick up new tech skills. I recently presented a session about T-SQL for beginners at a new online conference, Developer Platform Discovery Days (videos<\/a>). Another group is hosting an online conference about SQL Server internals with more advanced sessions next month called EightKB<\/a>. Redgate, the owners of Simple Talk, are offering four free courses from the Advocates Team. The classes are:<\/p>\n It\u2019s a great time to learn a new skill or improve your existing skills if you have the extra bandwidth while staying at home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enjoyed the topic? Have a relevant anecdote? Disagree with the author? Leave your two cents on this post in the comments below, and our favourite response will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The competition closes two weeks from the date of publication, and the winner will be announced in the next Simple Talk newsletter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lot of folks have taken advantage of more time at home recently to pick up new skills and hobbies. In my case, I have started learning more about 3D printing. I bought an entry level 3D printer about a year ago to have something fun to do with my grandson during the summer. The……<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47125,53],"tags":[5843],"coauthors":[11292],"class_list":["post-87105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","category-featured","tag-sql-server-monitoring"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87105"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87111,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87105\/revisions\/87111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87105"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=87105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Commentary Competition<\/h4>\n