OT: Your accomplishments in 2013 and plans for 2014

[John Colvin]

On Wednesday, 11 December 2013 at 19:45:25 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
wrote:
> I thought we'd enjoy a bit of reminiscing of the past year and 
> talk
> about our plans for the future, whether it's something personal 
> or
> D-related that anyone is willing to publicly talk about. It 
> should be
> a fun topic, or so I hope! :) So let me begin..
>
> Generally this has been an awesome year for me. This year I've 
> become
> a part of the D core team, which is not something I even 
> planned for,
> but I'm really grateful it happened. It's an awesome team to be 
> in!
>
> Another thing that happened, is that after many years promising 
> myself
> that "this year" was going to be the one where I get in shape 
> and live
> a healthy life, it turns out that 2013 was that year! I've lost 
> 20 Kg
> (44 lbs) this year and now my BMI is in the normal range at 
> around
> 22.4 BMI. It was 28.4 BMI at 95 KG (209 lbs) at the start of 
> the year.
> It wasn't just frequent exercise that helped me lose weight. I 
> started
> eating healthy food, and now spinach, kale, beets, and other
> vegetables are a permanent part of my diet. I wouldn't dream of 
> saying
> this last year, but steamed veggies are absolutely delicious!!
>
> As for my future plans, I'm hoping to land myself a nice
> programming-related job next year. I've never had a programming 
> job,
> most of the paid work I ever did was physical work, such as 
> drilling
> through bricks, rock, concrete, installing and repairing air
> conditioners, installing central heating systems, lighting and
> electrical work, and stuff like that.
>
> I also want to and plan to study algorithms this year. Whenever 
> some
> algorithm-related discussion popped up in the newsgroups I would
> typically avoid giving any input as most of the conversation 
> would go
> over my head. But I'm gonna bite down and study hard, I really 
> want to
> "grok" it.
>
> Ok, so who's next who wants to share?


2013:

Got myself accepted and funded for a Physics PhD to do research 
in to data-analysis techniques for magnetic-containment fusion.

Completed my research masters, as a matter of fact I'm making the 
final corrections to my thesis now.

Started the PhD and I'm learning at a greatly accelerated rate 
compared to previous study. It's great.

Learned a lot more about various bits of programming, thanks 
mostly to D and its community. Cheers :)


2014:

Learning. Learning learning learning.

Research. Research research research.

I'd love to get back in to playing music regularly. Coding and 
reading textbooks/papers every waking hour is too much.

Get in shape. Again, too much time reading and coding.

Complete a few of my D related projects. I'm terrible for 
starting things and then abandoning them before they properly 
take shape.