Welcome and happy new year! In Kaius' plans for 2015 post I floated the idea of hosting a reoccurring thread in which users comes together to share in the progress of their 2015 goals and motivate/support those around them. It received support, so here it is!
I took the liberty of compiling the main goals of everyone I originally tagged or who responded to the comment. The document can be seen here. Anyone with the link has editing privileges, so feel free to make amendments if you wish. If you're not included then go ahead and add yourself or let me know your goals and I'll do it for you!
One question I have is about how often do you think this should reoccur, Weekly? Once every two weeks? Monthly? Let me know. I don't want you to feel too pressured by this or anything
Shoutouts, let me know if you wish to be adder or removed: nowaypablo, ghostoffuffle, kleinbl00, thundara, veen, OftenBen, lil, thenewgreen, swedishbadgergirl, doesntgolf
1. I will run twice a week a distance greater than 3 miles in an effort to train for the Tar Heel 10 miler cliffelam -you should join me in that run. This is April 18th 2015 2. I will never eat any fast food. Ever 3. I will consume two drinks no more than two nights a week 4. I will go to bed by 10pm at least 3 nights a week 5. I will meet my sales goals by October 2015 6. I will have a revenue producing startup by EOY 2015 7. I will complete two albums, one of which being the Hubski Collaborative Music Project. Also, mk -tomorrow I fast till Sunday.
Friend my ass on endomondo, beyotch. Or Myfitnesspal. Same goes for everybody else.
Someone added me on Endomondo, is it you TNG? Anyway I think I'll start a new training programme soon. Add me! https://www.endomondo.com/profile/18351120 Edit: Endomondo Premium is now $30 for a year.
I will stick it, so it appears at the top of the thread.
Done. I already did an edit (of-off). I have never worked on a google doc, but it appears to "save" instantly. Very cool. Now I have to figure out some goals and add them. I really believe in goal setting and have lectured and written on it. Here's a long and quite interesting thread from hubski (Feb. 2013) on our ambivalence towards goalsetting. I'm trying to figure out where my goals went. Here's some possibilities: 1. My goals are so integrated into everyday life that I can't stop and unpack them. 2. I've fallen into a comfortable, but kiss-of-death complacency that I no longer want goals. 3. I've been so preoccupied with propping up the reality and maintaining the well-being of certain family members, that personal, professional, or creative goals have fallen to the wayside. 4. All of the above? (still musing) Edit Still thinking about these things. After reading 4. Keep daily habits. Write every day. Read every day. Do some sort of exercise
on blackbootz post, it reminded me of a time in my life when I had a list of goals like those and would check them off every day. It was an interesting time.
I find my goals fade when they're no longer remaining a step ahead of themselves. A good move in chess isn't just about the movement of one piece, but also considers why you're making such a move. What future moves is it facilitating and are you accounting for your opponent's potential reactions? If you just move turn by turn, you risk crumbling or at least often finding yourself confused about your current position. It's the same with goals in life. I've stated one of my 2015 targets as 'learn to code'. But above that is the fact that I want to get into audio work for games, and having at least some knowledge in the relevant languages would be a huge benefit. In the distance is potentially creating my own interactive experiences. In that way, a goal becomes multi-faceted and isn't just simply reasoned by 'just because' or 'it seems like a good/the right thing to do'. I guess another way to put it is to think macro and then divide into micro. I posted this old proved a week or so back:“A vision without a plan is just a dream. A plan without a vision is just drudgery. But a vision with a plan can change the world.”
Go to /r/gamedevclassifieds. Compare audio for hire vs. audio wanted. The day I joined, there were five audio schmucks looking for work. Not a one of them mentioned knowing any code. In episodic television, audio and video post are about 1:1. In reality television, audio and video post are about 1:10. In video games, it looks more like 1:50. And that's why I'm teaching myself WWise, FMod and Unity.But above that is the fact that I want to get into audio work for games, and having at least some knowledge in the relevant languages would be a huge benefit.
Yeah man, it's all just about having that edge that'll let people know you're the 'real deal'. Experience with the relevant engines and language is definitely just that, imo. I remember last time I checked out the audio for hire submissions on that subreddit and they were rather lacklustre. I'll be keeping an eye your progress updates with WWise etc, they're things I'll need to get my head around at some point.
From what I've been able to gather, it's about having a one-stop shop where you can get all your shit done. Take that 50:1 ratio. There are a couple different ways to look at it: You're either going to be one of four people working in a massive AAA house with 200 pixelmonkeys or you're going to be the only guy at a AA shop with 50 pixelmonkeys. If you're at the AAA house, you get to specialize. But how many audio guys at AAA houses only know the mixing aspect? Or the composing aspect? And most of that they farm out anyway. Take the little shops with one guy or five guys or eight guys. None of them are pure audio. And really - why are they going to grab your sound design rather than whatever samples they can slam into Cryengine or whatever? Since you're going to need to roll up 5 or 10 or 50 of them in order to stay gainfully employed, you're going to need to be pretty versatile. My working assumption is you're going to be in a much better place if they can hand you a ball of code and say "audio this" and come back in a week or two. That comes from knowing code, not knowing Pro Tools. Audiokinetic has free training, by the way. And cheap certification. FMod is a little more but I've got several thousand dollars worth of samples from Sound Librarian so I'ma see if they might maybe cut me a deal.
One of my best friends is organizing Indievelopment next year, a conference here in the Netherlands on indie game development. Last year there was a talk on generative audio in games, with the guy working on No Man's Sky. Might interest you, even though the presentation is dry and the sound is (ironically) not so great.
edit: since when did we get Vimeo embed support?
So first, this will probably interest you when it comes out. Second, there's a wiki of open source game's here. Personally I can vouch for Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Battle for Wesnoth are fun, though I don't know how fun they'd be to score. Hope some of that helps. There are also games that aren't free but have open engines that can be worked on when you purchase the game. So, semi open, I guess. If you don't have a problem with that, Mount and Blade is super fuckin fun and would be awesome to play around with. There's a whole Samurai mod. It's bomb.
Hey me too! Tried earlier this year and it didn't go too far because of other projects and then trying to keep my grades up, but I really want to try and learn it this time around (shoutout to insomniasexx for being an amazing source of knowledge on these things). Currently: Downloading Ubuntu, a Virtual Box, and then going to install Ubuntu in the VB and then setting up LAMP and everything else in Ubuntu. I think that will work for now so that I can use Linux instead of Windows and make it easier to follow along with The Odin Project. It's the most amazing resource I've found so far, part of my problem earlier this year was Codecademy and textbooks weren't doing it for me, but this site seems to go above and beyond those. However, it teaches Ruby instead of Python so I'm going to have to find some other place to learn that after.It's the same with goals in life. I've stated one of my 2015 targets as 'learn to code'.
General trick to learning to program is pick an easy language, pick a throwaway project, learn a few skills (structuring programs, basic data structures, functions, library calls, classes) by doing. Drop it like it's hot and never look back. Repeat for new, unlearned skills.
I'm currently running through the Python course on Code Academy as I heard that's quite a good language to start with. Ideally I want to pick up C/C++ and Java, but Code Academy don't have those languages and I couldn't find an alternative just yet. I really like having the interactive, code as you learn environment.
Python's great because it's easy to read, quick to get started with, and mostly intelligently designed. The two main types, lists and dictionaries, are part of the syntax, so instead of writing: "LinkedList<Integer> a = new LinkedList<Integer>(); a.add(1)" (Java), implementing your own or looking for a library (C), or whatever the hell it is in C... in python, it's just: "a = [1]". The same is true of dictionaries (HashTables in other languages), and many other basic operations (Reading / writing files, quickly saving objects, basic parallel programming...). The complexity is abstracted away, which makes nicely for quickly jumping in to making something that just works. This all is a debt, to some extent though. You'll learn about time complexity and why you might want you want to represent a "list" using one of many structures (Arrays, linked lists, doubly linked lists, skip lists, binary trees, ...). You'll learn about 32-bit integers and floating point approximation and realize that 1.0 isn't exactly equal to 1.000000000000000000000000000000001 and the latter might pop up when you weren't expecting it. You'll learn about the stack, memory allocation, and garbage collection and compilers and JIT compilers and realize python was never designed to be the speediest car on the block. If you stick with it long enough, all these debts will eventually need to be repaid. But in the meantime it's pretty nice as a way to get a hang of making simple things that works while you learn about the places where there be dragons. I came in the C++ -> C -> Java -> Python -> Lisp -> Assembly route, and while it's definitely helpful to know certain aspects of each, my opinion is that it's much more satisfying and easier to learn when you get a full program or two working before you start worrying about registers and caches and memory leaks.
Cheers for rundown! I just got done on learning about about comparators, boolean operators, and conditional statements. So far, not too far astray from the likes of some Excel formulas. I'm sure it wont stay that way for long though. I get what you mean about learning to actually make something before delving too deep. I might spend some xmas money on a subscription to this. It seems like it has good tutorials on there and actually teaches you to make stuff as you go along.
I'd put mobile programming under its own umbrella of skills, since it usually involves learning device-specific languages, libraries, and design principles. All useful, but many are mostly useful within that context. Just keep in mind that things have been moving fast in the mobile (And also web dev) world and that much of what you may learn will change as the platforms change their security designs, the companies adopt new performing languages (Looking at you, swift), markets change, and products / operating systems fall out of favor.
Yea? (More please. :)It was an interesting time.
Goals: 1. This year i would like to start running again and would love to train for and complete a marathon before years end. Very ambitious. 2. I would like to start a small business as a side project and nurture it along. It doesn't have to be big or fortune making, just something of my own. 3. And lastly but most importantly we are expecting child number 3 in a few months. Getting ready for and enjoying his or her arrival will be a huge part of next year.
01/Jan/2015 Health Goal: So I started back running last week, its been over 6 months since my last run and around 2 years since I did it regularly. I am following Hal Higdons 10k novice plan which assumes some level of fitness before you begin (able to run 2-3 miles comfortably enough), while I can manage that distance without too much trouble I am having a few niggling pains in knees and ankles. I will probably repeat week 1 of the plan again next week before moving to week 2 to give my poor legs time to toughen up. To help with all of this I started following a Keto diet earlier this week to help lose a little weight. So far it seems to involve wrapping everything in butter and bacon, I can't really believe its a diet. Project Goal: On the project front things are far less tangible, I have ideas for things but nothing that fits within the goal of a small business. Regardless I love tinkering and building things especially if it means learning something new. I bought a whole bunch of arduino components before Christmas, something I haven't really done anything with before. I want to try making a few simple projects involving thermometers, screens, buttons, clocks etc. If nothing else it will be fun and that pretty important in my book. I do have another idea which will involve some programming, its for a tool useful to developers working with HTTP. I'll sit on it for a while until I do some more research. Family Goal: Bought a new buggy and some other bits and pieces. Not a lot we can do yet apart from some prep work around the house. Going to build a lego tower with my son now :)
Other: I have made a lot of progress toward each goal because I have been on vacation from work. That all comes to an end in a few days and I think progress will slow down significantly which is a real shame. It's also one of the reasons for goal number 2. Work is something that needs to be done to pay the bills but when you get a break from it for a week or 2 you also see the cost it has on your life and the things you want to do. I do not expect following updates to be anywhere close to this length.
12/Jan/2015 Health Goal:
As I feared, work has severely hampered my available time for exercise. I have not been able to run since returning as it is dark when I leave in the morning and when I got home in the evening. That and the fact that its cold and windy, I love running in the cold but cold&windy is painful, cold&windy&dark is a tough sell. I made it out for a 2 hour walk in a forest yesterday just to do something. On the positive side the Keto diet is going really well, I have managed to drop a few pounds already which is great. I maintained a low carb, high fat diet very easily so far as it means lots of fish, cheese, eggs, chicken, bacon, salads, oil and butter. We even made a low carb pizza with a mozzarella base. No beer, just the odd glass of red wine. No bread, pasta, rice etc. I have not counted calories or really analyzed how much carb/protein/fat I have been eating that much. I don't feel hungry or tired, the food is great and its working. Not sure I'd stay on it at this level long term but it has changed how I view food quite a bit. Project Goal:
Nothing to report from a personal project POV. In work I have a massive, career making, high risk/reward task on my hands to complete this year which could have my name in lights if I pull it off. That will be my main focus for the next few weeks/months. Family Goal:
Need to sort out cots, bottles and a bunch of other stuff but apart from that eveything is going smoothly.
That's a shame about your running. I know my mum sometimes braves the dark with the aid of a head torch. I was about to say that I wish I had a forest near me to walk but then I remembered I'm about a 10 minute train ride away from the Peak District. I definitely need to go sometime soon. Good job in the diet also! I'm trying to put/keep on weight so it seems our diets are quite opposite. It sounds like your job has got your work cut out for you. Good luck in the task, it always simultaneously amazing and slightly terrifying to be working on such a project that you describe.
I think by the time the diet is finished in a few weeks it should be bright enough to go for a quick run after work. Its more postponed for a bit rather than cancelled. The work project is a doozy on many levels but it is exciting. You need that fear to keep your head in the game sometimes.
25/Jan/2015 Health Goal: The weight shedding continues unabated. All told I am down over 4kg since the start of the year which is great. I'm not quite into flat tummy territory yet but getting closer. I don't have a goal weight as such apart from a vague "middle of the green" BMI score. In my own head I have "six pack" as the real goal :) The diet itself has been pretty easy to follow, after almost 4 weeks I have no real cravings to speak of and have not cheated. Here's an album of some meals I have been enjoying. Preparation is the key, I eat 2 meals a day, lunch and dinner. Lunch is primarily salad with some dressing, eggs, meat or fish topped off with cheese or mayonnaise. The macros I am following is less than 25g carbs, 100g protein, 150g fat (or more) each day split across the 2 meals. Honestly I have not measured those at all apart from keeping an eye on the carbs to ensure i consumed less than 25g per day. The diet works like most diets, calorie deficit, which means I should probably be counting my calorie intake more closely but meh. I don't feel hungry, my energy levels are good and the weight is coming off. So far so good. edit: I forgot to mention that I do measure one thing every 2-3 days and thats my Ketone levels. Even though I am on very low carb amounts my ketone levels normally range in the 1-1.5 mmol level which means I am in Ketosis but not as high as some others are. There are a couple of potential reasons for this, one is that i am eating a little too much protein which i am converting to glucose or I am more efficient than the average person at converting the trace carbs i consume into glucose... Who knows. Anyway the levels appear to be fine so far. Its funny, my health goal and project goals have a similar trend. While my health goal is going really well in terms of weight loss, I have made no real progress with my running training apart from the odd short run once a week.
Project Goal: The project goal is also going well in one direction. My work project is moving along nicely and I am well placed to benefit from it should we pull it off. On top of that a new opportunity related to it has raised its head and I am considering going after it. There is some restructuring going on and gaps are opening for a prestigious role. I have a good wind behind me right now and it might be time to strike. I'm a poor chess player but I know enough that making a move at the right time can win the game.
Family Goal (goal is so not the right word here): Going great, we had a scan this week and everything is going great. My wife is managing her illness pretty well considering, we need to manage her condition closely but things seem to be fine so far. I spent all day in the attic rooting out baby clothes, bottles, sterilizers etc in order to figure out what we have and what we need to buy. Pretty good haul, a small bag of baby clothes goes a long way, you forget how tiny they are after a few years. Other than that I am doing a lot of house work (laundry, cleaning bathrooms, throwing out old junk we don't need), my wife normally does this when I work but the work is a bit too much for her now so I leave her rest while do the scrubbing.
I have friends who do keto -- if you're just starting the biggest thing to remember is that if you ever eat in public you basically have no choice but to consume carbs, which to my understanding wrecks the process and you have to start over. So there's that.
Yea I don't eat out all that much and to be honest if I go to a nice restaurant then I'm going to cheat and eat the damn carbs. Life is too short and all of that. On a normal week it shouldn't be too bad I hope. The biggest thing is lunches for work and preparing them in advance so that I don't cheat and hit the local deli. I think that can be covered with some planning. Lots of salads, eggs, fish, meat, cheese etc.
Hi rezzeJ, thanks for setting this up! How about instead of using a new thread for each week we individually reply to this post with our goals for the year, whenever we want to add an update we simply reply to our own post with the details. It allows everyone to keep their own schedule, it will track all our updates in a log within one post for easy review... Thoughts?
I think the benefit of a reoccurring thread is that it will give people a motivator somewhat to work towards each 'x' amount of weeks. A sort of accountability to everyone else who will be taking part. Not that anyone is forced to post each time, of course. But yeah, I don't know about anyone else, but being left up to my own schedule can often result in becoming unproductive. Plus, with this running throughout all of 2015, it might become a bit overrun and/or hard to follow comment wise. I think discussion would be facilitated through a reoccurring dynamic. That's just my perspective of course, if others feel your suggestion would run better then I'm all ears. Cheers for the feedback!
1. Quit smoking cigarettes. I've already quit for something like 10 months, but in the last month since I've been back home and around old friends, I've smoked on the occasional night out. I'm gonna stop that. 2. Stick to a workout plan. I'm thinking about this /r/bodyweightfitness general work out plan that also includes running. I can't help but feel that no matter how tiresome a workout is with crunches or push-ups, I'm almost cheating if I don't include a run that makes my lungs scream. 3. Stick to using YNAB, or You Need A Budget, and be honest and critical when using it. It's a piece of personal finance software that has been great for me in tracking my spending and somewhat keeping a budget. I still need to be better about not spending, but also should focus more on the income side of the equation. 4. Keep daily habits. Write every day. Read every day. Do some sort of exercise, even if it's a minute long handstand or some stretching. Brush and floss. Note to self: when adding to the list of daily habits, be thoughtful, intentional, and sparing, but don't be afraid to add. Thanks rezzeJ. This is good for me to get thoughts written down.
Great name, rezzeJ. I've thought about my goals for this year. I like to limit my goals to specific ones, as they're much more likely to actually be achieved. 1. Graduate in July with my bachelor and the Honours programme 2. Go on a roadtrip with my best friends this summer (if I can afford it) 3. Write / make 10 things for veenspace 4. Listen to one audiobooks and read one book a month 5. If I have time left, run (at least) twice a week P.S. I wish to be adder.
Having this posted at the top of my feed reminds me to add to the Google Docs spreadsheet. I'll eventually take it off-line into my own notebook. I'm not sure what a monthly check-in should look like. Perhaps rezzeJ could ask people to report on one of their goals once a month. This will give people a chance to choose one of the goals that they want to talk about and re-evaluate it: Is it a good goal? is it specific and realistic? Is the bigger goal convertible into shorter to-do lists. For example, like a lot of us,
one of my goals is to be healthier. Today I picked up info about a local yoga school and zumba classes. Sometime this week, I will try the yoga club and if I like it, I'll sign up. I like the way Kaius divided his goals into Health, Project, Family, and Other goals. It's urgent to keep health and family in mind while pursuing our projects. I'm working on those divisions as well. Also blackbootz, sorry I didn't answer your question. I am still thinking about what to say and whether I want to resume that level of motivation. Anyway, I applaud this whole thing wherever it goes. And here's another goal: Contribute some thoughtfulness to hubski in an ongoing and frequent way. I won't be more specific than that.
I'm planing to trial a twice monthly check-in to start with. I feel like month might be a bit too long without some discussion; I want to keep things fresh in people's minds. I hadn't yet thought much about how I'd present the next thread. Your idea of a more directed post with some questions definitely sounds like a good idea. I'll have to think about what else might be pertinent. Good luck developing your goals, I look forward to hearing about them!
Please shout out to new he you post anything g regarding this. I sometimes miss posts.
tng, subscribe to the tag: #moralemenagerie - but yeah, a shoutout is often the only way to get one's attention. btw, tng, did you like my goal above: "Contribute some thoughtfulness to hubski in an ongoing and frequent way." I imagine that is one of your goals as well.
Short Term 1. Finish undergrad with vigor and good grades 2. Take the GRE, and not have to retake it 3. Find a way to keep track of, and prioritize the endless list of books that I have to read 4. Finish my resume overhaul Long Term 5. Get a job with staying power 6. I will get back on the regular exercise horse, and; 7. Try to enjoy physical activity more. 8. Kayak at least one whitewater river 9. Develop confidence with fingerstyle/blues guitar
Short-term or beginning immediately: 1)Inspired by tng (thank you!), I will go to bed by 11pm at least 2 nights a week. 2) I will score >2200 on the SATs. This is very short-term and freaking me the fuck out. 3) I will put insecurity behind me. I can't just decide to put depression behind me, but I will not surrender to it and waste my time which is, at this point in my life, far too valuable for teen angst. 4) I will break and stay in the A-range (90%+) in my AP US History course by the end of this month. 5) I'll get back in the gym (for fuck's sake) without guilt or pressure so that I can maintain a reasonable and balanced routine again. I will be consistent until June. 6) No weed until the beginning of March. Long-term: 7) I will learn to create an electronically-recorded song or two in the style of SBTRKT or Thom Yorke, depending on where it takes me. Then I will put an EP up on Bandcamp.[long-term] 8) I will get into a college that will make me feel proud of myself. I will pursue the application process with no regard for unnecessary pressures from parents, friends, or teachers. I will be accepted into the best college that I can, and by best I mean the best for me.
This year I will; 1. Study at least half an hour per week day, no exceptions. 2. Stop procrastinating. 3. Do "högskoleprovet" (I think this is kind of like the SAT, but voluntary) twice 4. Get preferably 6's and at the lowest 5's on all my tests.
These are all school related, and school is basically my life right now. I have very clear long term goals ( get somewhere around 36 points on the exam, go to Aberdeen to get an honours degree in microbiology, get a masters degree, start working towards a PhD in microbiology) and for that to work out I need to get my shit together. Actually I will add another goal/thing 5. Write something every week
Assuming you're talking about IB Exams, you WILL get 6s and 7s on your tests. I was the worst fucking studier on the planet and I got 5s on 3 of them, 6s on the other 2, and a 7 in English. I am telling you, without any sort of exaggeration, that I did NOTHING to prepare for any of these. Maybe a tiiiny bit for math, and I guess I DID have to do the actual projects for Digital Arts or I would fail.
What I'm saying is if I put no effort in and pulled that off, you can put effort in and do better. Just remember that the exams are a formula that you can easily solve because it never changes. And that you can download old IB Exams and use them as practice
I am talking about the IB. That is very comforting to hear. I am mostly worried about my Biology and Chemistry scores since they are HL and relevant. My school and teachers are very helpful too, we always practice on old exam questions and the people who have taken the exam at my school usually do very well and they've said that they were very well prepared. So i think it will go well, but I also have 1. very shitty self control and 2. often shitty self-confidence too which results in me not feeling like studying because i feel stupid and then not studying because I don't have the self-control to pull myself together and just sit down and study.
But I've started using the pomodoro method and trying to just see studying as time put in towards a goal and see that as a success instead of feeling like I need to understand everything right away and preform.
I've heard about the Pomodoro before. I might try it out with something like this. It sounds like a good idea, but if I focus too much on time I'd be afraid it would distract from actually learning. I've found that it is very easy to fool yourself when it comes to learning, that glossing over something for thirty minutes feels like accomplishing a lot. Make sure that you keep challenging yourself in those thirty minutes!But I've started using the pomodoro method and trying to just see studying as time put in towards a goal and see that as a success instead of feeling like I need to understand everything right away and preform.
Will do! For me feeling accomplished means I want to do more, so it has helped me in just sitting and studying for a long time because it is broken down into half-hours and the 5 minute break helps "resetting" so that I can concentrate. I have terrible study habits by the way, so the fact that this is a step up might just be because anything would be.
I do have a lot of goals for this year but I'm trending downwards on feeling like I'll actually accomplish many of them. It's going to be a transition year and that's going to make things rather difficult on the "goal-keeping" front.