2020: My non-New Years Resolution

UPDATE on 2020, May 6th: My github repo for my New Years resolution will not be as heavily developed going forward. I’ve started working on things that are personalized ways of approaching problems (making my own packages, reiterations of previous scripts, just a general mess). Plus, I’m working on my github etiquette. I’ve been approaching github as a storage repository for nearly any code. I plan to only commit code I am proud of moving forward.

On 31st Dec, 2019, I was sitting in Kolkata, India, on the lawn of the Kolkata Club. In front was a stage, musicians and DJs from bollywood. Around me were relatives and family, ready to celebrate the New Years with a big dinner and lots of musical entertainment. And for all the excitment around me, it felt like any other New Years. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAFnby2184o][John Oliver]] said it well when he described New Years as ‘/The Worst!/’. My track record hasn’t been great with New Years. For all the hype we put on New Year, New Me, we end up falling back into the same habits. So ironically, I came up with a goal on New Years to spite to all my failed New Years resolution; to write 1-2 scripts a week for a year in any programming language.

In essence, I’m just rebranding the 100 Days of Coding. I’ve failed the 100 DoC previously as one of my New Years resolution. I felt like I was too occupied as a grad student to spend time every day writing potentially irrelevant code. And to be honest, I just couldn’t figure out what I would code on a daily bases, it just didn’t feel like me. Being a year old, I think I’ve found a goal that I do have motivation for. Admittedly, this goal is to get a list of scripts or features that I would like to have available on my computer.

So Here’s the plan. For each week, I’m going to assign myself a script that would improve my PC experience. For the first week, I wrote a script that would sort my photos into folders by year, then city or event. Suddenly my side-hobby of photography and photo-trail became a low-effort addition to my life. For the second week, I worked on writing a Sudoku script in PyQt5. I’m not a Sudoku player and don’t plan to be, but knowledge in PyQt5 will let me eventually add a GUI interface to my photo sorting script. I have other ideas that I think would help me out professionally and personally. Most of them are probably already available on github in some form or the other, but to heck with those systems:

• A boiler-plate latex document generator Using a GUI, by selecting checkboxes, a latex document will be made with pre-rendered code. It would be a fun way to interact and potentially customize my latex experience.
• Terminal Clock/Alarm system There were several times during my master’s degree where I just couldn’t find a timer…Nearly all of my devices have a terminal, and I could use an elaborate terminal/clock alarm.
• An org/shell Calendar reminder system In my attempts to get organized, I have adopted Org for my professional scheduling. However, I only get notifications from org-journals on my phone. A better solution would be to have a script capable of reading my org-journal and give notifications when needed.
• Financial data-keeping I keep an eye on the market. I was part of an Investment club in undergrad, and I need a system to alert me of changes. However, I do not care to know the details of the market minute to minute, it just needs to update me on major swings.
• Personal packages It would be great to have personal scripts for the stuff I do often.

I’ve got a ton of ideas I would love to slowly work towards. I’m interested in eventually working towards some sort of PyTorch application, an AI that would solve the games I make, and more. Lets see what this 2020 has in store with my /non/-New Years resolution.

My github repo