I like to be continually learning new things. Or at the very least get better at the current things I am doing, or relearning old things I have gotten rusty at. This year is no different, except I am pushing the boundaries of what I am comfortable with a little more than I am used to and also experimenting a lot more with new and ‘cutting edge’ technology. I really feel that this year has a bunch of “game changers” coming out that I am really excited for. The following is a brief list of items I’ll be devoting various degrees of time and focus towards:
Spanish
I’m still sticking to memrise and duolingo, though I am admittedly doing very little duolingo and not as much memrise as I used to. I still practice everyday, but I do see myself sliding on this a little bit. Truthfully though, I am ok with letting this slide a bit as long as I replace it with something else with a high potential gain.
Web Design
Web design is evolving. For many years, to make anything remotely decent it was a complicated beast usually involving Photoshop, followed by a pain in the butt PSD to HTML conversion. If you couldn’t afford Photoshop or a designer you were mostly out of luck. But things are changing, fast. New UI toolkits have popped up offering responsive layouts that work on desktops, mobiles and tablets that don’t look half bad and are easy to use. My favourites are Bootstrap 3 and Semantic UI, which are both immense time savers. And now there are new tools coming out that will automatically turn your designs into HTML and CSS. Webflow is one that lives in the browser, which I spent a week messing around with and was very impressed. Google has a beta one out that was pretty junk when I tried it and have since uninstalled. However, I am most looking forward to the standalone desktop app Macaw which is scheduled for release in the next couple of months.
Web Development
Meteor is amazing and has been a game changer for me (and I believe will be a huge one going forward for many). It makes server and client side coding so much easier on so many fronts that I don’t even know where to begin. They really nailed so much of the framework down that it really makes coding so much faster and more efficient. It hits version 1 in the next couple of months, which means there are breaking changes coming. That’s what I mean by ‘cutting edge’, there are still warts that you have to work around and deal with, but nothing insurmountable and so far it’s easily been worth it.
Noflo looks interesting. It’s a visual drag and drop interface far, far different from the conventional terminal style used in programming for over 50 years. The paradigm shift is huge from traditional programming and could prove to be extremely interesting and even better. A game changer? Perhaps. I would love to give it a fair shot but the learning curve does appear to be quite high and there isn’t much information, demos or documentation out there. I’m definitely keeping my eye on this as their hosted UI recently got successfully funded on Kickstarter and is scheduled to launch sometime this year.
Famo.us rendering engine has got me excited. It promises to make the UI fast and responsive in a way that the browser is not able to do or handle because of limitations within HTML5. We’re talking native application performance but in the browser. I will likely spend considerable time on this when the beta becomes publicly available sometime in the first quarter of this year. Combined with Meteor, I think cross device web and mobile apps will be a treat to build.
Body and Health
I had a fitbit for a while and was never really impressed with the data it provided. But since then, a lot has changed and a ton of new and improved gadgets have surfaced. I would love to find something that provides more useful and accurate information, such as the basis, amiigo, or w/me. There’s a new strength one called Atlas on Indiegogo right now that looks interesting, too. Why? Cause data is good, yo.
I need better sleep. Or just better napping. Or faster time to sleep. Or better quality of sleep. Lucid dreaming would be cool, too. I’m still toying around with sleep because I know for a fact I could do it better and the importance of sleep is greater than anything else I have in this list. I tinker with it a lot. Take napping, for example. I know that if I nap for an hour, the last 15 minutes I’m just lying there wide awake. If I nap for 45 minutes, I wake up groggy. 30 minutes seems to be the sweet spot for me. I know that between 2-5 pm is when I take a dive in energy and that is the optimal time for me to nap. When I do, I wake up refreshed and I am ready to roll. There are a whole new bunch of sleep masks, gadgets and apps that promise to help promote better sleep. I think I’ll wait and see what the verdict is on any of these before I consider purchasing one.
For strength, 531 has been good to me. There’s also grease the groove for pullups that I just started up. As for body composition – I’m just going to try out different nutrient timings and caloric loads. Aesthetics aren’t that important to me, but it’s something I should not neglect for prolong periods of time regardless.
BJJ – Just keep showing up. This has been a huge thorn in my side. I dream about BJJ constantly. Literally multiple times throughout the day and when I close my eyes at night. And yet, every single time I have gotten back onto the mats to train I have been derailed via injury or life altering event. To say it has been frustrating is an understatement. This year, I hope to break that trend. What’s different? I’m stronger, a LOT stronger. And with that, I believe I’ve added more durability, too.
Honestly, that’s a lot and there are a few more floating around in my head (I’d love to play around with the SDKs for the Myo and Oculus Rift). I will likely fail and give up on a number of these. This is expected and part of the process. For example, last year I tried my hand at Dart and Angular, but Meteor came along and just kicked their asses so hard that I didn’t need to go down those routes any longer. It’s the process that matters to me, and the chance at discovering something awesome or getting better at something that excites me that I look forward to the most. The lesson? Try lots of things. Stick with the ones that excite you. And have patience.