Last post I mentioned that I have a fair amount of projects rattling around in my head. What I think I’m going to do is start to write down my thoughts on these projects here, which should serve to do two things: first, it will give me something to write about; and second, it will give me a place for “brain dumps” every now and then, so that I can refer back to them myself.

Not having an “office” at home is really not working out for me. I’d love to have a whiteboard where I can sketch out things, or put little reminders, or thoughts that I have. It’d also be great to have a desk again, with a real work area, instead of just sitting on my couch. Anyway, perhaps jotting down my progress on projects here will make up for this deficiency (at least a little).

So, I have some projects. Well, “projects” may be too strong of a word to use for some of them, but the point still stands:

  • I have an Arduino and various parts to do nifty electronical things;
  • I have a ton of books to read;
  • I have three or four video games that need to be started and/or finished;
  • I have had the idea to build an SNPP server application for a while (with hopes of it being able one day to replace the absolutely terrible application we use at work);
  • I want to learn Ruby on Rails;
  • I want to learn how to program in Objective-C;
  • I want to build an ASP.NET front-end to some PowerShell scripts we use at work for Exchange administration;
  • I want to learn more about how operating systems function by writing my own.

That last one is the one that is at the forefront of my mind at the moment, mainly because it’s the last project idea that got pushed onto my brain’s stack.  I love learning new things, especially about computers and how they work–it’s why I’m in the field I’m in. Yes, I’m aware that writing an operating system is a monumental undertaking. Yes, I know that most projects to write an OS never come to fruition. I’m not looking for this to be something anyone else uses; its sole purpose would be for me to learn how things work under the hood by doing it myself. I can read existing code all day until I’m bleary-eyed, but (as stated last in the last post) I tend to skim things nowadays and not fully grasp whatever I’m reading. By doing it myself I hope to gain a deeper understanding of what exactly is going on.

Of course, this desire may only last another week; who knows. But at least it gives me something to write about.