So I think I’m going to declare failure on my 100 hours project. While I did announce Mission Accomplished, and got peyote done as a decent first step, I subsequently lost all enthusiasm for the project. Despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I logged 100 hours, shortly after mission accomplished I completely fell off the wagon. I was hoping it could spark a flame and lead to a long term continuous effort.
Some culprits, in no particular order:
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Performance. I got peyote to perform decently, but I don’t think I can retain the processing model and achieve processing’s frame rates. The major culprit is that Numpy is poor at location by location array access. Not Numpy’s fault, just not quite the right tool. And I’m not really into doing the deep dig needed to speed things up, if it even can be done.
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Work. Over the last month and a half we’ve had some big pushes at work, with about another three weeks to go, at least. Makes me want to just sleep on the way home.
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Family. My wife was out of town for a couple of extended stints (3-5 days) which means I wind up driving in to work a little more than usual, or having to take the bus during more crowded trips. Throws off my short hacking windows. Not to mention I have a little guy I have to try and keep up with right after getting home.
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Opportunity. I could only work on peyote on my laptop. Limits the opportunities to do little micro hacks.
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Lack of Vision. I thought getting into creative coding would come naturally. At the end of the day, I really didn’t have anything concrete I wanted to work towards.
Summer’s coming on, so I may get more consistent time to work on a new personal project. Some things I’ll be looking to do next time around:
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Better Task Management. I’ll probably use some kind of issue tracker or todo list to help retain little micro tasks that can be knocked out quickly.
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Streaking. No not the naked kind. Setting a goal of n consecutive days of working on the project. I’ve been doing that as a personal goal on another venture. I’m now amazed at how the thought of missing a day seems sacrilegeous.
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Web Oriented. Just so I can get the satisfaction of seeing something living, breathing, and publicly accessible. Also, not being desktop based should allow for opportunities to make progress from a wide variety of machines.
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DVCS. I think I’ve learned enough of
gitto be halfway dangerous. Using a distributed version control system (DVCS) should also increase progress opportunities. -
Sports. If it’s one thing I follow religiously, it’s sports. Might as well take advantage of the enthusiasm.
But enough of my bitching.
Blame no one. Expect nothing. Do something.