Life TODO Part I - Not That Kind of Pie

<life updates>
I've just finished up with a three month long project at work which means the past week was a little melancholy for me. I've gotten pretty chummy with my teammates and I'm going to miss working with them but now I'm off to new places with new people. I'm sure I'll feel the same way after the next three months goes by and I'm moved around again.

But before we parted ways and after presentations were over (read: when we weren't in full panic mode and trying to kill each other) a few of us were hanging around the office, chatting, and we got on the topic of goals and cool things we'd like to try out.

The result of all this office chitchat was a bucket list. Well, more like a to-do list of things I'd like to accomplish before my 27th birthday. One important thing you should know about me is that I love lists. I will make lists for the sake of checking things off. In fact, if you look at my Google docs, they're all lists of restaurants I want to eat at, movies I want to see, places I want to go etc.
</life updates>

So, I just wanted to use this post to elaborate on one of the items on my "bucket list" and go into detail on projects which might inspire you to make your own long term to-do list.

Item 1 - Get a nerdy hobby. 

Exhibit A.

This is hardly a lifestyle that anyone should strive for. In fact, the human race would quickly die out if we all embraced this level of tech obsession. Whether from lack of exercise, a decrease in babymaking activities, or the invention of Skynet, that is up to you to ponder.

But when you're working in the technical field, you'll often find yourself surrounded by coworkers who have a myriad of nerdy hobbies and who love to tinker with all manner of electronic equipment. They're the ones who come in on Monday morning bragging about how they dismantled/configured/hacked/pimped out their, or an unfortunate friend's, iPhone. Or how they spoofed the MAC address on their modem to match their neighbor's and stole their internet. What noobz. (ISPs like Comcast look for duplicate MAC addresses now, so don't bother trying this. Unless, of course, you keep tabs on when your neighbors aren't home...). There's also cool things like battery firmware hacking so you can make your adversary's computer burst into flame (theoretically speaking, of course).

Then you have the other half of the workforce who feel that spending eight hours a day in front of three computer monitors is enough, thank you, and would rather do something else with their free time. Like drink or run marathons. These are the people who come to work to collect a paycheck.

However, there is something to be said about learning outside of work, other than proving your technical prowess (read: l33t haxx0r skillz) to your office cube-mates. It's about rediscovering your curiosity and sitting down to figure something out for the fun of it which is quite different from those times when your boss dumps a project in your lap and you can feel every tick of the second hand on the office clock like a sledgehammer to your soul. Remember how adults used to tell you to do something you love? Yeah. How did it come to this...?

By exploring work-related interests outside of work, you're forcing yourself to remember why you liked this stuff in the first place. In fact, you liked it so much you had 4+ years of schooling on it and spent countless interviews convincing HR reps that it was your ultimate passion in life.

So, to cutting to the chase, you've obviously figured out that I'm not talking about cultivating my World of Warcraft skills here. I'm also not talking about this:

Exhibit B. 

I decided to start cheap and slowly build up my set of tools and gadgets. But I also wanted something a little trendy and fairly easy to get started with.

So I just bought this adorable thing:

Delicious.

What is it? Say hello to the Raspberry Pi!

Great, you say. Now what IS it?

Well, it's basically a single board computer. It's got connections for video, audio, keyboard, mouse and power (of course). It uses an SD card for memory and you can install a special flavor of Debian on it called Raspian, although there are other OSes you can install on the initial boot of the device such as Android.
In short, it's a tiny computer that you can program to do your bidding.

The fun part is I get to plug it into my giant TV and use it a kickass monitor. However, while it's fun to use it like a normal computer, there are much more creative things you can do with it than check your email and read wikipedia articles. 

This is one of the cooler applications I've seen:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/4271

Be sure to watch the video!

If and when I build anything awesome, you can be sure I'll post it. I've definitely got robots on the brain.

Next stop, PiBorg!