It's been a while since I last wrote about what I'm working on. My work at Amazon has been taking most of my time, especially over the past year. Other than that, I branched out into mind-hacking for a while which was fun, albeit a bit dangerous at times if you don't "mark the trees" to retrace your path back.
I've been really getting back into programming in C and server-side Javascript, which happen to be my two favorite languages, so I'm happy to get back the focus of being able to sit for, say, 6 straight hours and just write code and design things. You lose that a bit working at big companies where there's a lot of randomization, and less opportunities to write multiple versions of the same thing to pick the best approach, due to shipping dates committed to by a much larger group of people. But you accomplish way more because you can move faster without necessarily sacrificing quality. My biggest learning from Amazon as a developer I'd say would be the use of libraries for not writing everything from scratch. BTW on the topic of server-side Javascript - NodeJS, npm and CommonJS have really matured a great deal since I last lurked in the CommonJS mailing lists in 2009, and that's a great step ahead for Javascript becoming a language of preferred choice.
In terms of personal projects, I've been playing around with writing a neural network (to use the term loosely) that spans multiple EC2 instances, where nodes run as individual processes that can probabilistically fork and communicate with each other. I stumbled upon the Oculus Rift while working on that, since I needed a set of VR glasses to visualize the neural network in 3D, and it was insane! I haven't used VR glasses before, but if you look past the lens-magnified pixels and blur, the feeling of being present elsewhere was very very good. At $300 for the developer kit, I think it is well worth the money. I don't care too much for the Facebook acquisition, since I highly doubt Mark Zuckerberg sees Facebook as just a social network and would be surprised if the social aspects get kludged into a VR headset. The raw number of possibilities with the Rift is so immense that there is interesting stuff for everyone, beyond just repurposing a social network to work in 3D with head-tracking. Good protection against Sony's muscle, is my best guess.
I've restarted my study of Physics, and I hope to research alternatives to rocket propulsion this year in my spare time. I still don't have the money required to make this more than a hobby, but I'm an optimist and hope I can fund this interest at some point in my life. I'm currently taking classes for Muay Thai and Boxing, which is the hardest I've pushed my body and is really fun. I think I should learn driving at some point too, which is ironic for a guy with dreams of traveling to space. I spent many months last year teaching myself improvisational guitar playing, especially with scales and modes for playing solos, and combining different influences from a really wide range of bands from the world. It's a really good way to relax, and I continue to believe that everyone in the world should learn an instrument to play music on.
I hope to post more frequently in the coming months with what I'm working on.
Until next time
