Dec 31 2013

Every year I try to do a “year in Review” blog post, and every year I realize I didn’t keep good notes. Sigh.

Overall, this was a pretty… meh year, to be honest. :/ Don’t get me wrong, a lot of really, really good things happened, but as far as my grand strategic life goals go, this year was pretty much treading water, and in some cases, regressive. Oh well.

So instead of doing as much of a review, I’m going to instead discuss what I’d like 2014 to be like:

Better tracking

In general, I don’t think I accomplished all I wanted to because I didn’t measure it at all. I’ve found that Beeminder has helped me track one or two of the things that I’ve really wanted to accomplish, and so I plan on making lots of use of that. It’s not perfect for everything, but it helps.

Reading

I have so much I need to read. I think I’m going to start by recording chapters in Beeminder; books are too granular. I don’t think that a book every two weeks is an unreasonable goal, and I may turn it up if I get in the swing of things.

Writing

I really need to finish off the hypermedia book, and the Rails 4 in Action book. R4IA should be easy, the hypermedia book will be harder.

Software

I want to contribute to Tor this year. I’ve been putting off contributing to Tor due to my paranoia about NSA stuff, but really, at this point, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m probably on all of those lists anyway. They’re watching everyone.

In order to do that, I need to up my crypto game. I’d like to finish off the Matasano Crypto Challenge, and read a bunch more things.

I also want to make lots of contributions to Rust this year, if not the language itself, the ecosystem. There’s so much work to be done.

Body

I’ve been trying to stay relatively fit, and it’s been okay, but I really need to get back on that train. I got a copy of “Starting Strength” for Christmas.

Languages

I’m consistently embarassed that I only speak one language. I’ve been working on some German, and it’s been okay, but I need to take it more seriously. I’d also like to pick up the basic Japanese I had before.

Conclusion

I think that’s it, at least for now. Let’s hope this next year is a good one.