News years resolutions for 2014

new-year-2014.md

New Years Resolutions for 2014 (work in progress)

Here are some things that I would like to accomplish in 2014. This list might be too long (as I keep adding to it) and might need to get sorted into minimum goals and stretch goals. Something else I might want to consider is how can I add a system to this, so that rather than setting a specific goal, I have a system that helps me achieve things I want.

Minimum Goals

• Achieve 600 hours of instruction in Mandarin (380 hours on top of the 220 I have now).
  • Self study for one hour most days
  • Engage in at least one face-to-face conversation either in person or on the internet every week
  • The extra hours from conversation should make up for any missed days of self-study.
• Read and complete the examples in The Art of R Programming and Machine Learning for Hackers.
• spend at least 40 hours studying x86 assembly language.
  • Seek out learning resources from people to see what has worked for them (rather than grab a tutorial at random)

Stretch goals

• Learn the 100 most frequently used Mandarin characters.
• Learn how to do my DBIR introduction in Mandarin.
• Create one public data visualization using real-time data.
• spend at least 40 hours studying malware analysis at least 10 of which are actually analyzing malware.
  • Part of this can be hours of assembly language study

progress 2014.md

Mandarin Hours

Jan 4, 223.63
Jan 11, 230.3
Jan 19, 237.31
Jan 26, 242.5
Jan 31, 246.75
Feb 28, 273
Mar 31, 295.2
Apr 30, 327
May 31, 361.4
June 30, 384.1
July 31, 419.85
August 31, 458.34
September 30, 501.75
October 31, 536.35
November 31, 568.42
December 31, 600

Mandarin Characters

November 31, 274 characters (Skritter)

Art of R

Jan 4, Chapter 6 (completed)
May 27, Chapter 8
June 30, Finished the book

Machine Learning for Hackers

Jan 4, Chapter 3 (completed)
May 27, Chapter 4
Jun 1, Chapter 5

Hours of x86 Assembly

Jan 4, 0
Jan 11, 1
Jan 19, 5
Jan 26, 10

Hours of malware analysis

Jan 19, 2
Jan 26, 4
Feb 2, 7
Feb 28, 12
May 3, 20
August 31, 25
September 31, 32

Public visualization

Completed in February.
Got a couple of these done actually.

Interesting when paired against mine (still very much in draft).

Not sure how I feel right now about the need to make them specific. Feels like an "employee performance agreement" or whatever.

I like what you did about R and ML. Sounds like that's a sort of approach that will work well for you specifically.

It is an agreement, an agreement with yourself.

I suppose so. I just have an allergic reaction to anything that smells of bureaucracy...