Side Projects
What is the difference between a side project and a dilettante's dalliance? Is it just the amount of time that is invested in an endeavor, or the regularity in which it is attended to? This blog was intended to be a side project, but the last time that I have posted was a month ago. I have written a decent amount of posts at this point, but I sure as heck haven't been consistent. It started off as a way for me to formulate some of my thoughts and stories about my cancer into written form. I haven't written everything, although there are still entertaining stories to be told. A part of it is that I feel like too much time has passed since those events, so maybe they would lose their luster. Another part of me is fearful that my entire shtick will be "guy who doesn't stop talking about the 6 months that he found out that he has cancer". That would be tiring and one note. Already my real life friends joke that it feels like that I've had this cancer forever.
The other part is that I'm still in the trap that if I write something it should be at least a few hundred words, otherwise it's not worth saying here and it is more apt for Bluesky.
I intend for this to become a side project, even if it's not posted frequently. Something about having an anonymous blog is rather fun. I can talk about deeply personal things and I can rest assured that anyone who reads it has no clue as to who I am in real life, so whatever I say doesn't matter. My blog has a prominent rss feed but I bet no one is even using that. I purposefully didn't install analytics because I didn't want to succumb to the temptation of chasing views. This is both a blessing (I don't have to worry about growth hacking of chasing trends) and a curse (a very base part of me wants to see if anyone is reading this).
Other things that I have planned in my little free time, which shall hopefully be side projects and not just diversions:
· Creating a website for my dad. He has a stage 3 cancer and is mostly just sick of people asking him about his status. I told him that I can spin one up for him so he can post if he's doing well and when his next appointment is. It'll publish to rss and send emails to folks who are subscribed. I'll host it on the same instance that's hosting this machine, my website traffic is so low that I have yet to go over my compute limits. As a fun fact that I learned recently: .how is a valid top level domain. A website with the url https://mydadsname.how should bring a smile to his face.
· Launching a separate website for a company idea that I've been mulling in my mind. Maybe it's because I run Android so it seems obvious to me, or maybe it's because I've been reading Cory Doctorow lately, but I honestly think that this idea has legs. I'll make a marketing site with a sign-up form for gathering interest, and then make an MVP prototype to get buzz. To be honest I have no idea how to attract investors because I do not have access to funds to bootstrap this on my own.
· Making a pikvm. I was looking at buying a nanoKVM from sipeed but there seems to be a lot of security concerns, and I don't want to spend $250 on the official pikvm hardware. I'll roll my own and donate to the pikvm team since they don't sell software licenses.
· Comparing hockey players to Pokémon. Just trust me on this, it'll be great. Bulbapedia and Natural Stat Trick will be my friends.
I'm excited to see if I'll be able to accomplish these things on top of my other hobbies, but if I even get half of them done I'll be pleased. I promise that I'll post about them here.