plan out my 10 weeks

Here’s the list of projects I came up with. These are all old project ideas, which I’ve either deferred or worked at very slowly because having a day job was taking up my time.

• Produce a small video: “The Hipster Christ”. Jesus comes back as a Mission District hipster and tells people to stop buying insurance and stop living in suburbs.

• Web site: morefacts.com or something like that. Provides factual information to provide context for news stories. For example, if 150 people die in an earthquake, I want to know how many in the same geographical area die on non-earthquake days. If people say there’s a terrible economic crisis on, I want to know how it compares to the 1970s or the 1930s.

• Web site: debatewiki.com. I already own this domain. A web site for people to debate issues in a structured, respectful manner.

• Web site: decisionero.com. Support for collaborative decision-making, wiki-style. Finally, an easy way for book clubs to decide what to read next and where and when to meet next.

• Web site: http://flashburrito.com. Already live; needs some more polishing. Working with pair programmer found on craigslist.

• Web site: booksummaries.com or something like that. Terse but engagingly written summaries of non-fiction books, so you can just get the cool ideas and skip the narrative.

• Web site: http://insuranceangel.com. Happy articles about insurance, written by a friend of mine. I already own the domain, and a super-rough, preliminary version is at http://yourinsuranceangel.com.

• Make a subscription-oriented web site of some sort. I think this is where some decent money is, which I want as income while I’m in grad school. I don’t have so many web-site ideas of this sort, but this is where I want to focus my exploration.

• Book: The Why of Algebra. Explains what algebra is good for and why all those algebra rules and definitions are made the way they are. In progress, co-authoring with math professor/friend.

• Study for my Tier 1 examination in math at Indiana University. Lots of real analysis and abstract algebra.

• Write a simple algebra engine in Scheme. This is the first step toward my planned research at Indiana University.

• Make a basil-infused vodka.

• Do some touristy San Francisco things.

My job ends in about a week. That leaves me with 10 weeks to work on my own projects before starting the Ph.D. program. I want to use that time well.

Currently I’m working full-blast at the job, but I’m going to reserve a few hours this weekend to make a big list of projects I’ve been wanting to do. Then I’ll pick several and plan how to work them into the 10 weeks.