The calendar flipped over a few weeks back and 2020 is in full swing, which means it’s time for me to finally complete and release my to-do list for the year. I don’t think I can still wish anyone “Happy New Year”, but hopefully that doesn’t get in the way of the ethos of the post. I’m looking forward to this year as a chance to build on a strong 2019 and continue learning and getting better at the things that interest me. It is the first time in quite a while that I’m feeling stable heading into a year, which is really exciting and gives me confidence.
In general, I want to continue improving and learning and execute more of my own projects using the skills and knowledge that I acquire. I am assigning some of the more technical goals into specific quarters of the year for me to focus on them, while other goals will remain more open regarding when I work on them.
Financial:
- New credit card and savings accounts to get better returns
- Create a financial plan to enable better and quicker decisions on new purchases
Technical:
I am going to try something new this year and assign things I want to do and learn into the four quarters of the year. The projects and classes are fairly straightforward - I try to complete them in the allotted time. I think that will be easier for the projects since I can drop them down the priority list fairly easily, but it might be tougher for the classes. The Q4 classes are a little less predetermined to allow me to bump them if the other classes take a bit longer (or if I want to flex to another project).
The languages may be more confusing - I am not trying to learn all of those languages in full this year. I already know a pretty good amount of Python and have some residual R knowledge left over from a few years ago, but want to dip my toes into more languages. My main source for these languages will be O’Reilly books I have access to via my ACM membership.
- Q1
- Project: NBA salaries distribution across position and age
- Class: Data Structures and Algorithms in Python
- Language: Python
- Q2
- Project: Fantasy baseball and football tools
- Class: Bayesian Methods for Hackers (second try!)
- Language: JavaScript
- Q3
- Project: Field Control score revamp
- Class: Ethical Hacking in Python
- Language: Nim
- Q4
- Project: NCAA D3 basketball stats pipeline
- Class: Ethical Hacking Pt 2 or something from Complexity Explorer
- Language: Julia
- Miscellaneous
- NBA player clustering - this has been done before but there are things I want to build off of it that I haven’t seen in public
- NBA draft model - same as above.
- One thing that could boost both of these efforts is relying on others to provide the data so I don’t have to build a pipeline in addition to the modeling. I think that’s an important lesson that I’ve begun to internalize more - just because the forerunners of basketball analytics had to do that, I don’t.
- Poke around the Data Engineering Cookbook
- Maybe learn a bit more about Abstract Algebra
Social/Lifestyle:
- Continue learning more Italian/Spanish through Duolingo and watching shows in those languages. I think I’ll try to get to at least one Duolingo event to test those skills.
- Books that I’m planning on reading this year include wrapping up some fantasy series and assorted non-fiction:
- Sprawl Ball
- Everything & More
- Basketball (And Other Things)
- Fall of Hyperion
- Children of Dune
- Range
- Hello World
- Broken Earth Trilogy
- Not order take-out or delivery at all this year because of the wasteful packaging.
- Volunteer twice in the year, and at least one of them on my own and not organized by my company.
- Switch all my personal browser usage over to Firefox.
- Start using a password manager on my personal machine.
- Make some purchases that seem, at least to me, to line up with being an adult. Buy a new suitcase so I’m not just using a duffel bag every time I travel. Get a drying rack for clothes so I don’t have to hang them from random spots of my room. Etc etc.
- Be able to dunk consistently again. I’ve only been able to dunk on occasion for the last several years, and while it won’t be easy to get back to that level after hurting my ankle, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get there.
- Understand iCloud better because it never makes any sense to me. It says there’s no room, but then doesn’t show what’s taking up the space.
Outside of these things I do want to be more active on this blog, including expanding on some of my basketball thoughts. It’s an exciting list and I’m looking forward to tackling it.