I am curious what skill you want to learn in the coming year?
Digital painting and drawing. I'm already not bad at that, but I want my skills to be semi-professional at least. I have a very vivid imagination, and I want to be able to recreate the concept I see in my mind.
Computer science foundation. Right now, I'm at the stage that I know enough to explain them in layman terms, but not enough to actually participate in an active discussion or projects that rely heavily on academic knowledge. Stuff like compilers and interpreters, computer architecture, database systems, distributed systems, and OS architecture.
Another item on my list is reflecting more about philosophical and psychological matters (I read more fiction books than non-fiction ones at a ratio of 25:1, the only bibliography I've read was about George Lucas).
It's like, with woodworking, step one is often "make everything perfectly square". In carpentry, nothing will ever be square. So you just have pretty different problems to solve
Even with woodworking things end up not square and fixing/hiding those mistakes is part of the project, just using a smaller scale than carpentry.
Electricity can be done carefully and safely - just know your limits. I'd recommend at least getting comfy replacing outlets and switches. If you want to go one step further, light fixtures are also not too bad. Basically, anything where you just disconnect one widget from between two wires, and replace it with a different widget is fair game for most people. I call someone if I need new wires run or need to touch the main panels, though.
Likewise, woodworking is not as safe as most people think. Saws can bite you, as can drills, routers, etc... even rough edges on wood, or flying chunks of wood when you are teaching your 14 year old son to build a workbench and he just stands up a piece of wood next to your head and starts up a hand-held belt sander on it without clamping it.
The point being that tools that use electricity can be just as dangerous as the wires that carry the current, so plan accordingly.
Just got one recently. The difference between keyboard combos for text selection and navigation, and window switching is annoying so far, but I'm confident I'll get used to it.
Other solution would be to use something like Keyboard Maestro.
Silly me, now I have to play catch-up.
Low level computing. I purchased a kit and prepared to register a coursera embedded class. I also want to learn Windows system programming especially those related to Malware analysis (How does VM in OS work? What does a process contain? How to hijack a process? How to write shellcodes? These kinds of things).
Cold war politics and military-intelligence history. I got attracted to this field years ago after watching Godfather 3 and searched a bit about the background story. I know a few buzzwords but don't really have the $$, language capacity and time to drill deeper.
Mainframe. I didn't manage to register the IBM event this year, so it has to wait until 2022.
Sigh, too much to learn and too few time.
I want to improve my German. I made a lot of progress in 2020. It emboldened me to be more extroverted, and to try things that were once out of reach due to the language barrier. I'll keep going.
I want to become more handy. I realised now that volunteering for a halfway house might be an excellent way to do it. I don't want to just be good with computers.
That made me smile because I got really interested on those a little ago.
Also recently improved my skills on:
- Linux, the command-line and bash
- Decompiling APKs into smali to understand some "unpublished" algos ;)
- Web authentication bypassing by editing/cracking cookies
- Customizing exported SQL code to restructure a database
Next in my list:
- Generating custom G-Code
- Surface-mount devices without heat
- Going deeper into web scraping and automation
- Philosophy of math
In the end you often work really hard for a disproportionately small payoff. I've seen many people waste precious time chasing unsatisfying promotions.
It's easier to spend that time looking elsewhere.
Rome wasn't built in a day, start very small, and tell yourself your doing GREAT every time you make or save a few extra dollars, even if it's just a few cents.
Write down your "WHY". Remind yourself multiple times throughout the day why you want more money.
Remember: Money can be made or spent, Time can only be spent.
Good Luck Friend!
- dig into one of the specialisations I’d like to focus on: data processing frameworks, databases, computational geometry,
- keep improving my communication and mentoring skills.
I’m considering learning Rust, but that will depend on bandwidth among/relevance to a zillion different side project interests.
After years of using Marathon my company made the switch to K8s and I’d like to get into it properly.
Also want to learn how WASM works.
and so many says it's even better then Rails.
I do really wish to write code that is used by millions (super fast and easily scalable) and not just a small teams of engineers (I write mainly backends for my clients/contracts)
Then it is something new: I am so glad I moved to Rails many years ago (10), and now it's the first time I'm tented .... :)
- Docker.
- Spark.
- Common lisp/ Closure
my 2 cents:
the earlier the better; don't wait retirement.
writing
timeboxing