Showing posts with label resolutions. Show all posts

First of the year

Ignoring global events, 2016 was an interesting year for me. Personally, I manged to achieve, and more importantly learn, quite a bit: I switched jobs, started learning Scala (full time), started learning and working with machine learning, entered my first BBQ competition and my first Chilli cook-off competition. I also submitted my first proposal for a conference talk - it was not selected in the end, but I was pleased to have at least submitted it, and one of my goals for 2017 is start public speaking (conferences/meetups) so will hopefully continue to submit talk proposals in the hope that one gets selected by the end of the year.

There are probably lots of things that I had in mind to do at the start of the year that I didn't manage - such as finishing my education side project, but never mind.

The new tech stuff I have been able to learn has been a product of moving jobs, so that's cool, and I'm very happy with what we are doing there at the moment, but with the two cooking competitions I signed and paid up to enter both of them early in the year on a whim, and that provided the motivation and deadline to force me to practice, prepare and actually complete them.


2017

So here are a few goals I am aiming for in this coming year:

Machine learning - let's start with a realistic one. I want to become a lot more competent and experienced in the ML field. It's an exciting area right now, and something that is only going to get more prevalent, so I am really happy to be somewhere I can be involved in it from the start of a project and get to know it better.

Writing - A little different this time. As a goal to aim for, and also just to see the wider process I want to write a book. About meat. I have lots of ideas already, it will be relatively short but at first at least it should be an e-book whistlestop tour of hows and whys of cooking meat.

Kickstarter - I am currently working on an android app for my boy (5 years old), and it made me think about how I could make it more accessible for other kids to make their own apps. So I might kickstart it once I have made some progress. Again, mostly for the experience of running a kickstart project rather than actually expecting to get the money to do it.

Public speaking - As mentioned, I would like to get into this. So if I manage to get a proposal accepted before the end of the year, that would be cool.


On to the next one!
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2015. Plans & resolutions

As it is a new year again, I have been toying with the idea of some sort of resolutions, but it's hard to come up with anything really meaningful and achievable.

I thought about (and am still thinking about) creating something every month - which has the nice fallback that even during a hectic month, I should have a chance to at least cook something, so even if it ends up being 12 months of just creating some meals, at least its something to aim for.  There are lots of projects that I have either started or keep meaning to get underway which would be good contenders for the monthly fun.

One of the stretch-goals, kind of in hand with the monthly objectives is towards the end of the year it would be nice to setup another company - doing what is still undecided!  Hopefully I suppose the plan is that this will be the result of one of the monthly projects, but let's see.


Possible things on the list..
  • Made of these - a family/private photo app to capture, annotate and privately share photos of your family
  • My lego Pi robot - a year later, I still haven't had a chance to sit down and concentrate on getting even my lego dc motor working with my Pi
  • CREAM - personal finance management app - previously mentioned before
  • a whole bunch of food ideas
  • unknown ideas - still interested in the enterprise, education or public services space


More generally, the aim is to be more pro-active and productive.. I have signed up for the Stanford Machine Learning course on Coursera, that has just started last week - but I'm not sure I will have the time to complete that on schedule (a good start to the year, right?!) so will maybe complete that over a longer time period - I completed the Stanford Algorithms course last year in my own time, and that was pretty good.


Anyway, it's approaching the end of January 2015, so what have I done:

Cooked a bunch, and started a food blog



So yeah. I cooked a bit, made up some recipes, and finally setup a food blog. I am really enjoying that so far, as the blog is helping motivate me to be creative in cooking.


Created/Updated a friends site


An aspiring singer friend of mine recently appeared on the BBC's The Voice (TV show in the UK) and was keen for his site to be updated.  It's just a basic Twitter Bootstrap template, but it was fun playing with js settings and general layout to get the stuff online. Check it out here.
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A Programmers Resolutions

The last week or two there was an article linked on HN about 12-month long resolutions for programmers - It was a nice read, so check it out

I would love to say Im gonna do them all, but there has got to be a very slim chance of that.. but there are a few i would like to complete, and some that I will complete just because it happens to match my other plans for the year:

(For more details, or examples of what the OP meant by each point jump through on the link)

  1. Go analog- So yeah, I'm gonna do this one. I love cooking anyway, and always looking to do more of that, and it just so happens I got an awesome BBQ over Christmas, so just waiting for some dry weather to get that out and start spit-roasting some meat. I would love to start a cookery blog, but given how long it takes between posts here, that might be tough.
  2. Stay healthy - would like to try, as always. But we will see.
  3. Embrace the uncomfortable.
  4. Learn a new programming language - Yes, Flutterby released I plan to sit down and learn. Probably a functional language.
  5. Automate.
  6. Learn more mathematics - would love to..
  7. Focus on security.
  8. Back up your data - Im sure I will do this, with so many cloud data offerings this is gonna happen (and already has in places).
  9. Learn more theory.
  10. Engage the arts and humanities- In another life there are loads of other things I would like to have been (wine taster, music producer, phtographer/film maker, movie critic) - and I try to embrace these other things when I get the chance, so maybe I will set up a movie blog for a month.. (watch this space!)
  11. Learn new software.
  12. Complete a personal project - Its on its way, Flutterby! this will hopefully be the January resolution hit at least.

 Check out the link. Has some interesting chat.
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