My not-so-side projects this summer

written June 6, posted despite utter lack of relevance on June 24

I’ve been ironing out some workflows that will be useful throughout the rest of the summer. I’ve finally established my notetaking scheme: Workflowy for complicated nested lists that represent complicated thought processes and models, and Fetchnotes for 1D lists of stuff to remember (todo lists, book lists, papers to read, concepts to learn, etc).

There are four major projects I want to do this summer.

1) learn and do something cool with FPGAs

2) Figure out what deep learning is and how to use it as a black-box tool (if possible)

3) Oculus Rift (or other VR platform) development. Learn about the spectrum of headsets out there, the basics of the technology, what the factors were that led to its rise a few years ago (what trends was it piggybacking on), and finally do something cool with it. I’m thinking something in the productivity space, because I personally know what I want in that area very acutely.

4) Do a Kickstarter. Without more details this statement is indicative of (in the words of a friend of mine) a “startup tard”, the type of person who says “I’m interested in entrepreneurship” yet is clearly feeding into the Social Network-inspired startup vortex of unrealistic Internet-Bubble-2.0 SoLoMo/IoT bullshit. But (hopefully) that’s not me, but time will tell. Acknowledging the stereotype is a good first step. Certain product categories make an inordinate amount of money, in my observation. I’m going to try to manufacture that success, if at all possible, while maximizing profit-to-effort ratio.

Sounds like a reasonable plan.