Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.
Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.
Electronics / microcontrollers.
Took just a few months to go from, “I can make a wifi connected weather station for like $20 in components!?” to “oscilloscopes cost how much?”
Has there already grown a noteworthy Arduino/ESP Community on Lemmy?
There are quite a few but none are super active.
I’m really happy I don’t have enough space for that stuff. Otherwise I would be poor. It’s hard enough to keep myself from buying another old computer.
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I would love to read about this $20 weather station! Do you maybe have a link?
Mine is pretty basic but is built on the shoulders of giants. Also that $20 was from pre-pandemic / pre-chip shortage prices. I’m guessing it’s more like $35 now, or maybe high $20s from ali express.
I use Home Assistant for home automation. It has a now official addon called ESPHome for easily configuring esp devices and adding them to Home Assistant.
I bought some cheap dev boards off amazon and thankfully they worked an esp8266 microcontroller with IC2 headers and a microusb port already onboard a bmp280 that measures temp, humidity, and barometric pressure a lux sensor with a plastic dome over the top I soldered them together on a prototyping boardAll the components were supported by esphome, so I just needed to write the device config and then flash the devboard via esphome (in a web browser) over the built in usb.
I 3d printed a housing for it, but you can also buy boxes. It needs airflow but also needs to stay dry. You can use a spray sealant to help avoid corrosion from ambient humidity. I skipped that step because I want to see how quickly it becomes problematic… and I should probably check on that.
Just an fyi bmp280 is not real temperature but an estimation based on air pressure.
You can get a cheap oscilloscope that uses USB and your computer. https://www.sainsmart.com/products/sainsmart-dds-140-40m-200m-s-virtual-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer
Not that I have an electronics problem
yeah I got a fancy lab power supply but stopped at oscilloscopes, those things are expensive.
it’s still cheap and fun to do a lot of stuff, but now I wanna build a sound-card based oscilloscope.
I haven’t bought an oscilloscope yet either, but I keep window shopping.
Good soldering gear already makes me wince. I couldn’t imagine paying $500+ for an oscilloscope.
Fortunately I’m more interested in the software side of things… thank God nobody charges for programming toolchains anymore.
Can you recommend any good soldering gear for an intermediate level? I’ve done plenty of soldering over the years but have always used crappy low end products. It’s always been a struggle to properly do a clean-true solder (not just heating the solder like I see everywhere) even though I try to meticulously maintain my equipment. I’m hoping that it’s just the equipment I use and a higher end one will make things a breeze like I see the professional’s use.
It’s really a pain in my ass. On top of maintaining the equipment I have whole setups I’ve constructed to hold wires and equipment snugly so I can properly apply heat. I purchased a high temp kit but it’s cheap as well and still sometimes run into the same problem, with the smaller components and projects though I’m afraid to use it and overheat something that can’t handle it.
I’m not really the right guy to ask - I don’t have that much soldering experience, and I’m a broke college student - but I’ve found the Pinecil to be Pretty Good™ for my use case of “occasionally soldering things to microcontrollers.”
It accepts power over USB-C, so no need for a bulky (and expensive) base station like a Hakko or Weller. (You do need an AC adapter capable of pushing 65W PD, but if you’re into electronics you probably already have something like that just lying around.) Proper temperature control is also nice compared to the cheap “plug and go” irons.
YMMV, I upgraded to it from a Home Depot butane iron (yes it was as bad as it sounds) so…
Pinecil works OK for small things, but struggles on larger joints because of it’s low power and small thermal mass. Personally, I’d prefer one of the many Hakko/Weller clones for a cheap solution.
Thermal mass is a valid concern, but the v2 can pull 100w from an appropriatly beefy usb-c adapter, and 200w+ from one on the new usb-pd spec (testing is ongoing for that though)
My tips for solder gear are
- get temp control
- get one with easily swapped tips… Of an industry standard size. It’s super helpful to have multiple tip sizes
- clean your tip with brass sponge!!!^1
- cheat mode: use liquid solder flux, Kester 2331 ZX
- follow Sparkfun’s soldering tutorial.
1 I taught a bunch of elementary kids how to solder. We only had water sponges and within minutes nobody could solder right. I had one brass sponge and it made instant difference. Now the tip could actually conduct heat properly. It is seriously an unexpected total game changer.
As for the brand… Whatever Sparkfun or Adafruit is selling is legit but more budget friendly. I took a look and Sparkfun has some good options from Weller.
I got a Weller WS81. It’s been good except the first wand didn’t like too much side pressure (user error really). Otherwise it’s been totally solid for years. They cost a lot less when I got it. Yikes. Get the cheaper WE1010 or the other red one.
An Aoyue might be ok. My Aoyue hot air rework station has been solid for the past several years assembling several hundred boards.
Hope this helps
PS as an experiment I once tried using a dollar store soldering iron… Cheap POS. No temp control. As long as I used a brass sponge it was easy to use.
Weller makes great gear that just lasts
I would totally recommend a good precision pencil-style iron. They are somewhat expensive (400$ to 600$), but super nice and easy to use. All the power supply and control electronics is in the base, making the actual iron super light and easy to use, furthermore the hot part is tiny, so it’s much easier to avoid touching it when doing fine work. Despite the small size of the hot end, they do very well on large parts, and are able to heat up instantly.
Same. I’m lucky for software to be my hobby/career. It’s practically free. Contrary to popular misconception, it doesn’t require any kind of special or more powerful hardware (for most dev, at least). Maybe $150 for a second monitor, for sanity, but that’s not actually necessary.
…I mean, I do have good hardware too, but that’s for my gaming hobby, not my software hobby.
To be fair, if C++ or Rust is your thing… let’s just say I’d have a Threadripper if they weren’t five grand.
I once had to (repeatedly) compile a C++ codebase on some Lenovo shitbook. It ended up being so infuriating (thirty seconds, minimum) that I wrote a few load-bearing shell scripts to
rsynceverything to my desktop, build it, and copy the binary back… which was ultimately about five times faster.Man, I wish I could have just used MicroPython for that project.
Lol I feel ya. I ended up making and selling electronics kits to fund the hobby somewhat.
I have been using cheap vintage oscilloscopes the whole time.
Not sure what they go for now but $100 for a 20MHz scope and $200 for a 100MHz was what it was several years ago. Cheapest I got off a buddy for $40. I am still using that one.
Sometimes I fix broken ones and sell them. One time I got one that they thought was broken but turned out it was just the basic settings. I like trying different ones so I have gone through a dozen or so by now.
Now* that I think about it, o-scopes are a whole other hobby lol.
Anyway. Yeah by the time you get the test gear and enough sensors and microcontrollers and whatever it adds up.
Right now I’m working on a power supply design for a 50W class D stereo. Found out big toroidal transformers are not cheap. Oof. And enclosures big enough (especially if labeled “amplifier” or “stereo”) are ridiculously spendy.
This sounds like the point where you dive into the next rabbit hole of making enclures. At least I could see that happening.
I’m looking to make some wooden enclosures for some things myself.
Just be careful or you might go fullDIY Perks after long
My next project is to make an oscilloscope clock
Erk. I got into this. What’s the tipping point that gets you eyeing oscilloscopes? I’m at the fiddly smd stage.
My next step is custom boards and smds, and an oscilloscope seems like a good way to diagnose when reflow goes wrong. I already have had some fights with I2C using dev boards. But really I’m eyeing one because I have allusions about doing fine calibration on analog sensors.
I should add that I’ve been talking myself out of an oscilloscope for 2+ years now. I don’t REALLY need one.
Self-hosting apps / homelab
Getting used enterprise gear is not prohibitively expensive, but the electric bills balloon very quickly.
I currently bought an old desktop from a friend that I use as my Homeserver.
- I bought 3 HDDs for storage
- I rent a VPS
- I rented Proton to host mail for my domain, but switched to netcup groupware because that sucked.
- Some domains
- Electricity
Wow I thought it was way more.
One time costs: ~500€ Monthly costs: ~15€ Plus electricity, but I have solar. I assume it’s about 150€/year
But I’m a cheap selfhosted, but eventually, I will have a huge ass Enterprise Level Rack in my basement.
We need a r/homeDatacenter on lemmy!
Pretty sure I’ve seen a few home lab communities already, one on lemmy.world even
Already aware of some of those! They are really cool.
But homelab aint datacenter (yet) ;)
Would be cool if we found some kind of use for the community of people that likes to host network infrastructure. We could be a cdn or share compute, with the power of the federation!
I ran a “midrange” Sun at home for about ten years. The electric bill was painful, but I never had to turn on the heat in the winter.
But the summers :(
27°C at home during the hotter days was atrocious.Yeah, hot days were bad.
I’m glad I quickly stopped “homelab” after my old laptop that I used as a server in a cupboard died. Switched to a rented root server for all my selfhosting needs since.
Yep. Half height rack, a couple servers, UPS, switch, etc.
And I still keep looking at used gear. Being in Silicon Valley there is always a deal to be had.
How much do you pay for electricity and how much for internet and what speeds?
Knitting. Super cheap to start, you can pick up a set of needles and some acrylic yarn for under $20. But when you start getting into nice yarns and bigger pieces, you are spending hundreds of dollars on yarn alone for a blanket or a sweater. And you want nice needles in all sizes as well as all types (double pointed, regular and circular)… more hundreds of dollars.
Moral of the story is if a friend knits you something with nice yarn, please appreciate it. Lots of effort and thought went into it.
Knitting is expensive for me because I love to start projects but I’m not great at finishing them. Good quality yarn really isn’t cheap.
Weaving in the ends is the devil. I hate finishing, but I really enjoy starting 😭
I really, really love knitting. I’m not good, and I have a hard time finishing projects (tragic case of batterscain. I jump from thing to thing.), but the actual knitting itself? OMG, I love having something to do with my hands, and that something actual makes a real, tangible thing? Somehow magically out of a ball of string? What‽ It’s lovely.
It’s insane, though, how people who don’t knit/crochet will just treat a knitted or crocheted item like it’s a cheap Walmart graphic tee. They do not respect the work put into it.
Yeah. I knitted gorgeous socks and scarves in hand-dyed merino for some good friends. Come Christmas they obviously thought, oh MrsDoyle likes knitting, let’s get her something knitting related! A selection of the cheapest, nastiest acrylic in hideous colours and some needles. Oooooh. Thank you so much.
Yeah protip never buy a hobbyist anything unless they tip you what they want.
Yep. I’m into fountain pens, and I’ve received cheap feather dip pens on two separate occasions. Didn’t have the heart to tell em.
Ouch… Yeah. As a general rule of thumb, if I’m buying someone something craft related it’s either because I know enough about the craft to get them something truly nice, or I get them a gift card to their favorite craft related place. Outside of that, I’ll just ask them what they want. Lol. I enjoy a bunch of different crafts, including wood working. A friend once got me a set of chisels when they found out I liked wood working. … They were plastic with just the very ends being metal, and would break if you looked at the harshly. Lol. The thought behind it was sweet, but they had no idea what they were doing. Lol.
The story had a bit of a happy ending - I paired the yarn and needles with a “learn to knit” book, and donated it to a raffle a club I belong to was holding. The winner of the kit was thrilled!
Oh that’s an awesome idea!
We’ve been discussing the need to get some of our yarn to a new home. There’s so much, and it’s just never going to be used as there’s just literally too much.
Nice interrobang usage
Thank you for noticing!
Just started crocheting, and I’m just holding myself back from buying all the yarn, it’s gonna get bad
Whatever you do, don’t go looking for yarn on Etsy. Fuck, I’ve said too much.
TOO LATE.
My mom knits and she spends way more time unraveling thrift store finds to salvage the yarn than she does actually knitting stuff.
Oh yes. Yes. I went to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival a few years back. I live nearby, but met people there who’d come from all over - Europe, Japan, the US. All three days sold out. The yarns were so beautiful! And oh so expensive. But you were there in person, fan-girling with you favourite dyers and pattern designers! Spend spend spend. The nearest cash machine ran dry. Such an expensive hobby. But I can’t stop.
I’ve found my people… as I cry into this shawl project on my lap, of merino fingering yarn I paid to have imported because “you want to support small yarn producers” telling myself, “it’s not soft enough. Just throw it away and buy that cashmere/silk blend that you know feels like butter.” 🫠
Coffee.
I blame James Hoffman entirely.
Within a year I went from:
Drinking instant coffee at home, but really enjoying “proper coffee”
To
Buying a cafetiere (~£15) + preground coffee
To
Buying a Nespresso (~£60 on offer) + pods
To
Buying a budget espresso machine (~£120) + preground coffee
To
Wasting my money on a cheap manual coffee grinder (~£50) + beans
To
Immediately replacing it with an entry level Sage grinder (~£170)
To
Buying an entry Level “proper” espresso machine (~£700)
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink, but by that point it was also about learning a new skill, learning how different aspects of the process affect the end result and learning how to make all sorts of different espresso-based drinks.
My girlfriend thought I was nuts at first, but a year or so later even she agrees it was worth the investment. I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
The problem is now though that I’m a waaaay more critical of coffee from coffee shops, because I spent a long time making bad coffee whilst learning!
Mechanical keyboards. The next one is my endgame, I swear. Just one more groupbuy for those keycaps. It never truly ends.
That’ll only happen if you build your own boards and stuff. Not like me! I just got a simple Moonlander with some custom keycaps, dampeners, and red switches rather than my initial brown. After that, I realised that the Kinesis Advantage 360 is the way to go, so I’m fully settled now, not like everyone else … right?
I’ve had the Advantage360 for 6 months or so and it’s life changing when typing for 10 hours a day. Haven’t gotten around to relearning on Dvorak or Colmak layout as I learnt qwerty on the 360 first.
And then it turns out some horrendously ugly piece of plastic (like the Kinesis Advantage 360) is better for actually using.
My first “good” keyboard is my current one, which is a Ducky One 2 Mini with MX Cherry Browns I bought really cheap 2nd hand. It has been almost 2 years I’ve been using it and I recently got a coiled cable for it. I was cleaning it the last time and I started to wonder how hard it would be if I wanted to change my switches and fell into a hole where now I want to desolder everything and install sockets. My spouse got lubs for his stabilizers (he has a Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja with MX Cherry Blues) after watching a few videos… We just started diving into this deeper and deeper after using keyboards from the time cherry still had the patent up for so long. Yeah, we are screwed.
thats what I thought when I built my quefrency, then rev 5 came out, then now rev 6 is coming out, now I have my first proto* one I built lying around, and I have a rev 4 at home and a rev 5 at the office for work, need to figure out how Im going to get that rev 6, each one I build better than the last even though I thought my second one was going to be my end game haha
One IBM Model M that I got for free and I’m set for life.
Ditto on that. Thought I was content with my first ergo but one thing after another led to an artisan keyboard with CNC backplates and plates, 2 year long group buys, and artisans to match the whole theme that costs the same as the keyboard. At this point I’m so far in the hole that my artisan keycap collection cost more than my keyboard collection.
It’s just another one of those hobbies that has many moving parts so you can optimize and personalize each part.
mechanical keyboards go two ways, you start shelling out for way overpriced cncd metal or wacky boards or you become a pcb designer and make a board that could be used for camping
I never got the appeal of mechanical keyboards. If you actually have to type all day, a proper flat keyboard like in the old MacBooks ('09-ish) is way nicer and costs much less.
That’s extremely subjective. I definitely don’t feel like flat keyboards are nicer. These days I use a split keyboard with an angle and I will never go back.
Your experience is not universal. I type all day and if a client/employer gave me one of those flat keyboards I would quickly quit and go dig ditches instead.
If you actually have to type all day, you get into ergonomic mechanical keyboards 😎
I have a laptop (HP Elitebook G6) as a workstation at work which I use to type reports on site and a varmilo with linear switches in the office.
At home I have a GMMK Pro with Kailh Box white switches.I can type on my laptop but I still prefer my GMMK pro over it thrice and I enjoy my varmilo in the office because of the numpad. Else I’d bring my GMMK pro there (with quieter switches).
In the end: This hobby is very personal and one may like linear while another likes clicky and in the end both spend 500€ on hardware but all do one thing: They enjoy what they type on :)
Growing cannabis (legal here in Canada)
…anyone can grow weed. Growing GOOD weed is an art.
I unintentionally grow weed because I made some tincture for grandma.
Now it just grows on my garden and I can’t get rid of it.
One of it’s many nicknames is ditchweed for a reason. It’s a weed like any other. The US spends millions per year burning it out of ditches on the side of the road all around the country.
I’d be happy to burn it for them!
A little bit at a time!
We call it “The Granny choice” variety.
And trust me it is horrible, for tinctures it is great, but for anything else not.
In Germany we will be allowed to grow some for private use come next year. I have no idea what to get yet, but I will just plant it in a planter in the garden and hope that it works I guess :D
I hope you’ll be able to get seeds and strains imported from the US and Canada. I smoked weed in Germany while I was living there in 2015 a few times and it was the worst weed I’ve ever smoked. It tasted weird, smelled bad, and didn’t even get me high. When I asked someone about it they were just like “weed isn’t as strong here as it is in the U.S.”
There are European based seed banks. Also they share a border with the Netherlands.
I think that’s still up for debate. Let’s see. But I haven’t been smoking for quite some time, so maybe my first batch is fine being on the weak side
Have you smoked outside of Germany? I only ever smoked in Germany so I don’t know how it is anywhere else in Europe so maybe my experience is the problem, but I have friends who have come to the US and said weed is way stronger here.
No, only ever smoked in Germany. That would explain how it is shown in american media
Thats growing weed.
Any tips for good weed?
If you can grow indoor and force into flower (8 to 12 hours per day light and lower the temp a bit) that will give you the most consistent crops. Bugs are likely the number one problem particularly with normal soil grown plants. I recommend doing smaller shorter grows but more per year. The shorter grows time means less likely you will have an infestation problem. Well mean smaller harvests but you can do more per year. This kind of control requires a location you can entirely remove any light sources but your grow lights.
Overall it is really hard to kill a weed plant. They grow like a weed. Thus the name. In my case, I able leave them in the grow stage for a month then flip the lights to 10 hours days to force flowering. At that point they might be a foot high but even in flower they will grow another 3 feet over the next two months. Clean out any dead or crappy branches. Also at some point about half way thru I start to remove bottom leaves and thin out a bit. 90 percent of your harvest will be from the top. They will get super sticky if you do it right. Leaves on the bottom typically get little light and use up energy. Stressing your plant is part of the cycle. Basically the low light and leaves being cut off tells the plant fall is coming and I am struggling a bit so start to flower heavily to carry on my species.
And for God’s sake, don’t over fertilizer. Most soils are good by themself or only require a small amount of nutrients. I don’t know how many people grew but get these crappy returns as they over fertilizer and as it hurts their growth, they keep think even more will make it better.
Anyhow this is just part of a good crop advice. Lots of videos. Mostly keep a clean room and other than water and a bit of love, you will get good crops.
Forgot one thing. Get feminized seeds. You can’t have males. You don’t even want your neighbors to have males. Burn their house.
“You don’t even want your neighbors to have males. Burn their house.”
This is actually quite reasonable, IMO.
(No. Please don’t actually!)
2000 into my fully automated hydroponic weed factory. Another 500 to make my nutrient solutions from scratch. Mind you that 500 dollars when making from scratch likely last 20 years of crops. It does make a good 1.5 pounds of dry weed every 3 to 4 months with the for legal plants allowed in Canada. I barely smoke so give nearly all away.
Three year prior, harvested a crop down right before going to Mexico for three month trip. Was still some shoots barely growing so for shits and giggles I turn the lights back to 22 hours per day to see if they would go back to the veg state. Have camera so can watch it remotely. Shit starts fully growing like a new plant. Anyhow COVID puts a wrinkle in my return. Ended up in Mexico for 18 months. Over that time, thing kept growing like nuts. Automation on water replacement and nutrient injection along with pH monitoring. Became sort of a how long can this thing go with near zero human intervention. Had only to send my brother in law in three times to cut it down and refill my nutrient injectors from solutions I made before leaving.
Right? When you grow, you really get an appreciation for what an amazing, and resilient plant it is.
I used to grow, but never smoked except to taste my harvest. My spouse smoked daily and heavily. I didn’t, but I LOVED coming home from work to my grow room. It was so therapeutic! Still is, but I miss my old HPS & MH lights.
Well it is called weed for a reason. Is definately therapeutic for me too. I started with MH lights. Without question they resulted in a better crop. I am now all LED but I had to double the specified wattage equivalence. In other words if you’re taking out a 1000 watt MH light, you need to put in 2000 watts of LED equivalence. More or less all the LED manufacturers lie when they state what the equivalence is for growing. Still worth it as you will save on power within two or three years and you are not dealing with excessive heat or burning your tops. I forgot about that full cost now that I think of it. Likely spent more than I said.
Running.
Was supposed to be the cheapest way to get exercise. You can do it right from your front door, no gym subscriptions, no specialized equipment (some people will tell you you don’t even need shoes), and it’s far and away the best time-value exercise I’ve ever found. You can get away with like 20 minutes 3-4 times a week and be doing great.
Well, turns out I love running and I love distance running so I’m now putting up enough miles to need new shoes 2-3 times a year, a nice Garmin smart watch and heart rate monitor to track my progress, sign-ups for several long-distance races each year, shorts, socks, you get the picture.
Could I do it cheaper? Yeah. But at the end of the day it’s a hobby and I like it
I bought myself a raspberry pi for my birthday a few years ago.
I now have thousands of dollars in hardware sitting in a server rack in my office. Whoops.
This is not the first post where I feel it but I love it so much that we have a lot of people on Lemmy that can talk about things not related to computers!
For me it is maybe camping.
I just tested my new sleeping bag - under 0.5kg rated to -5°C. And realised that I bought/ replaced lots of gear to higher quality gear over few years.
Camp stoves and fuel! I can buy a lot of bic lighters and cheap metal camping mugs for the cost of a dang Jetboil stove and fuel.
I love my pocket rocket, nothing like getting up early in the morning and boiling some water super quick for some coffee, then heat some more water for some quick oatmeal and sit in my chair and just decompress
When I can I just make fire. I have some camping stove, really cheap one, but I use it maybe 2 times per year.
The cheap one I have is for ethanol/ urotropin tablets.
Ok now you have to share. A decent bag at a half kilo?
It is some feather filled bag (300g). But it is not durable, the fabric that holds it is really thin.
I just picked what my older brother got (but with more filling).
At 5°C it is still in the boxers range inside. The e-shop I bought it from had some details about the sleeping bags like quality of feathers and filling quantity. This one had 900 in quality and 300g of filling.
Oh my! I spent so much on camping! I get so excited by all the gadgets that people come up with.
trying to get a motocamping setup going. Spent over $200 at REI last weekend just for a tarp shelter and accoutrements and I still have 75% of the list to go which is only NECESSARY items…
Board games. Things get expensive once you start collecting
Coffee. I’m in a coffee producing country. It could be as cheap as grabbing a bag from the coffee institute (really good and cheap), a cloth filter and call it a day. Instead, I’m on my second espresso machine, fourth grinder, second portafilter set, and have all the doodads to make it just how I like it.
I needed a new saucepan.
I’ve now replaced half my kitchen.
Fountain pens - I started with a 30 euro Parker but it seems like just one is never enough.
Truth. I started with some disposable Pilot Varsity fountain pens because someone I worked with was forging my signature on paperwork. I haven’t worked there for 12 years, and now I have a collection of different fountain pens and ink.
Started with a $50 aluminum Lamy, now I have a brass Kaweco that was about $220. I have a shelf full of inks now.
Help me….
This. At first you’re like “oh geez, $20 for a pen?” Then it’s “oh, I absolutely need to spend $400 for a custom handmade Edison or (insert your favorite brand)” sure it writes a little better than the $20 pen, but holy schnikes does it look and feel so much better.
One is never enough. I mean, you gotta have one for each ink, right? RIGHT??
There are so many options to try to see what you like. Plus, the fountain pen community is honestly one of the best. Dangerous for the wallet…
Yeah. I had to start pinching myself when I began to look at a $400 pen as a “bargain”. Still love my fountain pens, though.
Oh shit that’s like 3 hobbies in this one thread. I stopped at a (very) decent Lamy 2000 and Iroshizuku inks.
Scrolled down for this, hi all!
Reading. Bear with me…you start by getting a cheap physical or digital copy of the book. Then you fall in love with the book/author. Then you have to buy all the books by that author…but not the cheap editions…the fancy editions! You need to display these babies! And oh! They sell cool collectors items that would be perfect for the book shelf! Rinse and repeat for so…so many books. Sigh.
