Friday, December 28, 2012

2013 Resolutions

Well, I guess updating this blog more is a good place to start!

Let's see. I think this year I'll go for a multi-pronged approach. Let's start with the physical.


  • Get to the gym more often. Lift twice a week (general upper body stuff).
  • Prep for the upcoming biking season. That means legs twice a week. Work back up to a mile of lunges at least once a week. Time to drag out the rollers as well!
  • Go on some bike trips. Maybe something along the lines of Ride the Rockies again, maybe a multi-day mountain bike trip. Maybe a solo hiking trip... 
  • Try and get a mountain bike tour organized with my brother!

Moving on - how about the shop skillz? We'll start with the design stuff. 

  • Learn a CAD package. I've chosen Rhino for the Mac which looks like a really nice product. I'll start by trying to reproduce some of the drawings from Elmer's Engines
  • Practice some basic skills, like threading on the lathe, layout, etc. 
  • Learn to braze!!! I received a Victor oxy-acetylene kit for Christmas. I've got a bunch of old bike parts laying around, and some projects in mind...
Eat more brain food. We'll start with Math:

  • Review calculus. I've been going through the khan academy's differential calculus classes. Keep doing that (and find some that go into a bit more detail). 
  • Review some of my old engineering kinematics and modeling texts (to work in conjunction with building up shop skillz).
  • Review linear algebra (to help understand some of the more esoteric maths used in machine intelligence algorithms)
On to Computer Science:

  • Work on matrix transformations in 3D until they're second nature. I'll want to do this so that playing around with the next bullet point will be easier/more fun.
  • Do some cool stuff with Cinder (the creative programming framework).
  • Play around with some machine intelligence algorithms. I've picked up a few interesting books on the topic. It'd be fun to apply them to some projects...
ROBOTS!!!

  • Yeah - more shop stuff. I've got an arduino, a motor shield, and a couple of scavenged motors to play with. Why not try and make something fun?
  • I've also become fascinated with the 3D printing movement. Seems like a natural thing to play with.

And finally, Music:

  • I've got a bunch of instruments around the place that I haven't played in years. My silly resolution for the year is to learn at least one song on each of the following:
    • Banjo - maybe something like Cripple Creek?
    • Classical guitar (this is something I've played quite a bit - I'll have to resist the temptation to go big until I'm back in shape!)
    • Acoustic guitar - maybe a nice Gillian Welch song
    • Electric guitar - (starting to see a theme here...)
    • Mandolin - I'm thinking "I'll fly away"
    • Fiddle - I'd love to find an arrangement of this - Beulah Land
There - that should do.  I'll try and post weekly progress on these goals, and any other musings.