I’ve been generally offline for the last year. Doesn’t have anything to do with the pandemic or anything going on in the world. Just me not focusing on computers. An odd thing after all these years.

Some of the time has been spent thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I have been thinking about formulating a 5 year plan if only so the years don’t go by with a “where did all the time go” sort of outcome.

So, where do I want to be in a few years?

WIP

In the short term, I have three software/development projects: Vircadia, Robotics, and Basil.

Vircadia Project

The Vircadia Project is an open-source virtual-world grid, server, and viewer system derived from the High Fidelity business. I wrote the Iamus metaverse-server that handles centralized domain-server registration, user accounts, and other grid level functions.

A year ago I wrote in Vircadia Directions how I wanted the project to succeed and thus jumped in to help. A year later, there is lots of work still to be done and I have lots of other projects I want to work on.

Robotics Project

I am interested in “artificial intelligence” and I want to manifest it in the real world. To that end, I have a TurtleBot3 and a Petoi Bittle for ranging around the house.

My real focus is on their intelligence. There is a lot of AI work around neural networks, training, auditing, and otherwise doing vision and context classification. Once I get these robots working, I’ll be developing a reason for them to be around the house.

Basil Project

For many years, I have been hacking on my [Herbal3d] and Basil projects. I still think it is the correct architecture for an eventual VR and AR world but I just haven’t completed it. I keep rewriting and treaking the code.

In one vlog I watched some time ago, the vlogger promoted “Always finish your projects”. There is some sense to that as directories and workbenches full of half finished projects are depressing.

I haven’t given up on Basil.

Real Life

And then there is the garden (it’s Spring!) and the house and having relationships with the other people in the house. Reality takes up a lot of time.

Social Presence

Another question is what I should do for a social presence. When I was working, I loved being part of a group of like minded people working on a goal. I would like to build up a collection of people and be part of that collection. That means, at least to start, a social media presence.

I think that means picking a platform and then commiting to generating content. The content should also be every day or close to that to create a changing narrative that people can follow and, hopefully, join in to.

Which platform? There is this blog but there are the main stream people aggregators (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, …) as well as the less data-collecting, non-ad-supported platforms (Mastodon, WeMe, …). There are the real-time collaboration systems (Discord, Slack, …) and a hundred different categories and platforms I don’t even know exist.

Besides finding other like-minded people, the other purpose for a social presence is forcing me to do and then report something every day. It would be a forcing function to keep me making progress and doing something reportable often.

So, I need to choose a place where I’d be visible and where I’d feel like I’d need to keep up-to-date because people would see me.