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Teario
A hopeless case

Goals for 2016

This year I’ve tried to keep down the list of things to achieve. Knowing that in previous years there has always been at least one thing that I haven’t managed to accomplish and that usually some unexpected accomplishments come along too, I’ve tried to leave room for that to happen this year.

My list for 2016 looks like so:

  1. Release Kraken
  2. Get Paying Kraken Customers
  3. Go Scuba Diving
  4. Visit at Least 3 New Countries
  5. Rebuild Personal Website
  6. Release Ogre
  7. Release Fenrir
  8. Blog More
  9. Run 350 Miles Or More
  10. Learn to Ride a Motorbike

Kraken

Though I previously stated that I’d banked on Android/CarPlay to be standalone systems for Kraken to run on, I do still believe it has a lot of potential. The current landscape of apps to help recover stolen devices seems to be many services focusing on specific platforms or devices. For example, Cerberus is a huge success story on Android but has no presence on iOS. Similarly HiddenApp have offerings for OS X and iOS but nothing for Windows or Android. This is a space I think Kraken can fill, so rather than using a different service for each device or platform you want to protect you can just use Kraken for everything.

This year I want to get Kraken out on Android with some paying customers. This will provide me with the feedback I need to iterate it and focus on the useful features before expanding it to other platforms. Similarly I’ve set the rather low target of 10 paying customers. If I can’t achieve this by the year end then that tells me there are problems to address, or there is simply no space in the market for Kraken.

Diving

For quite a few years I’ve thought this would be a good hobby to take up. So far I haven’t made any time to actually try it out though. After some discussion with my sister, who is already an experienced diver, I decided this is the year to actually give it a go. We made plans to go diving some time mid-year, so first I want to get a few practice dives in. Living in the midlands I wasn’t sure how easy that would end up being, but after a bit of research it seems there are plenty of dive schools nearby.

Visit New Countries

One of my lifelong goals is to not just visit, but experience every country on Earth. I have some quite rules about when I can consider that I have visited a country enough to cross it off my list, for example only going to one city or only being there for a few days does not count. It’s not actually a hard set of rules as every country is different.

Back in 2010 I travelled over land from Paris to Beijing which was a really exciting and enriching experience to have. Since then I’ve been itching to get out there and see what else the world can offer but felt I couldn’t do that whilst also turning up to the office 5 days a week. Sure, there is the possibility of heading out after work on Friday and getting back late on Sunday but I don’t feel like that’s long enough to really experience a city, never mind a whole country. A while ago I spent a week driving to Croatia and back for a charity event and although I could list the countries I had visited, I felt I hadn’t actually experienced any of them.

So this year I want to make time for visiting 3 new countries. These are likely to be single city visits but with enough time to really explore and get immersed in the place. To come back with an understanding and an experience of what makes it stand out but also with ideas on what to see and do on future trips.

Rebuild Personal Website

I’d really like my website to be a place documenting the things I get up to in my life in general. That is initially why I created it, to share the things I’ve created, the places I’ve been and the goals I’m aiming for. It seems that despite starting out with this intention, I only even make the time for it when I’m applying for a job and need to show what I’ve worked on in relation to the application.

Now I want to spend some time getting this right. Although it will still show commercial and hobby software projects, it will also have this list of goals and my progress toward achieving them, a map showing my travels and hopefully anything else I feel I’ve done which is interesting enough to share.

Release Ogre Alerts & Fenrir

These are two projects I started toward the end of 2015 that I really want to release soon. I think Ogre Alerts has the potential to make a good impact on helping to identify and recover stolen property. The project itself is a kind of register for stolen items (mainly vehicles) and for reporting suspicious items that may be stolen. I’ll go into more detail on this in a later post.

Fenrir is a simple tracking system that I’m building for my car. My plan is to open source both the client and server components so other people can potentially get a head start on making their own vehicle trackers. I’ve spent quite some time on forums where people recommend various commercial tracking systems which are all great services, but it is also obvious that initial or monthly costs is also a preventative factor for some. So my hope is that by making Fenrir and open sourcing it, the cost barrier can be greatly reduced.

Blog More

When I look at my past blogs, usually I start out the year with a “I’m going to write loads more!” and then maybe another post 6 months later after finishing an interesting project.

This is kind of the same thing, except by making it a goal and setting a minimum of 12 posts for the year I should actually achieve it. 12 doesn’t sound like a lot, just one a month, but I think that’s achievable for me and any more may not be. I do enjoy writing blog posts and usually write one per week as part of the internal process we follow for work. I just find it difficult blogging on my own time and need to turn it into a habit.

Not only is blogging a good habit to develop, it’s also a good process for ensuring the other projects are kept in check. If I’m not spending the time on the other projects that I should be, I’ll have fewer things to write about. Knowing that I started 2015 full of gusto for getting stuff done and then completely went off track for a few months, I’ll be glad to let this keep me focused on the other tasks that I’ve listed here.

Providing focus isn’t the only reason for trying to write more though. Writing itself is a skill I’d like to improve upon. When I read some of my own posts back sometimes I feel they are mostly a structured list of facts than an interesting piece that draws readers in. The more practice I can get to develop a better writing style the better.

Run at Least 350 Miles

Running is another habit I’d like to get back into maintaining. Many years ago I was running 10+ miles a few times per week. Now I think I would struggle to complete a single 10 mile session. 350 miles seems like something achievable if I complete 2 3.5 mile sessions each week.

Google/Android used to have an interesting feature which I think was part of Latitude where it would calculate your total distance walked in comparison to the distance from Earth to the Moon. In a similar fashion, 350 miles is roughly the distance from Liverpool’s China Town to Antwerp. I spent a significant part of my youth in China Town and during that time, imagined I’d spend my adult life living and working in Antwerp.

Learn to Ride a Motorbike

This has been on my list of things to do for a while. I made some inroads when I took my CBT a few years ago but that was actually just to get some experience before taking up Enduro. More recently I saw images of a Scout Sixty and just decided I had to have one. This year I want to get my bike license and pick up something second hand to get some road confidence with before picking up the Scout next year.

Other Goals

There are some other goals I’d like to achieve this year that I haven’t included in the list. I’m trying to keep to what I know is achievable and anything else is a bonus. Some of the other things I’d like to do is retake my maths GCSE and start work toward an A-level, try Skydiving, make good progress on the restoration of my VW Squareback and release one of my game projects on the Play Store.

Of these, the most important to me is the maths. At primary school this was my favourite subject but I lost interest during secondary school and I’ve regretted it ever since. This is more of a long term goal to go from a GCSE D grade to A in GCSE and A-Level, no matter how long it takes, so it didn’t seem like one for a checklist like the other items above.