Goals for 2017 and a bit about 2016

It’s that time of the year again. Time to look back and look forward.

Previous years: 201520142013, 2012, 2011, 2010.

2016

So what happened last year:

  • We finally moved! Building a new house was a huge and stressful project that took way longer than expected. It’s good to have this (mostly) of our plate.
  • I got some “makes” done and documented. As usual, a lot less than I would have liked, but it’s a start. I also have a bunch of unfinished ones which may re-appear next year.
  • Most of my spare time was spend on my 3D printer. It was fun and 2017 should be the year I actually get something done with the printer (except printing toys, which I’ve done quite a bit of)
  • I was able to do some cool stuff for my consulting client. Some highlights: Build a Spring Boot app from scratch and move Jenkins to AWS.
  • I read 16 books, which was 4 shy of my 20 books goal. I’m happy with the selection I read. I could have gamed the system by reading shorter books, but I’m glad I didn’t.

USS enterprise

2017

So what’s up for 2017? I have some general targets of things I’d like to do, but knowing how things go, I may end up going in a completely different direction anyway:

  • I want to print something that also involves my passion for electronics. I’m currently thinking of a quadcopter or a robot, but nothing has been decided yet.
  • I have signed up for Udacity’s AI nanodegree. Last year I started Coursera’s 3D Printing specialization, which was really cool until they stopped producing the course halfway through (without any explanation). I hope things go better with this one. In any case, I want to apply AI and deep learning principles in practice. Maybe by joining a competition on Kaggle.
  • I started rewatching  Star Trek the Next Generation. This year will be the 20th anniversay of the airing of the first episode.
  • I’d like to reread the first 6 Dune novels I read a long time ago and tackle on a few of the new books (the ones not by Frank Herbert). Given my reading speed and the fact that I want to read other books, this is not going to be done this year.

So … lets get going!