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PoetOfZwan

Michael Davies
37 Watchers32 Deviations
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Life Goals

5 min read


A combination of doing clear New Year's Resolutions and trying to order my life in a GTD manner has prompted me to think about what I want out of life.

Here are my life goals at the moment. Although, i'm sure this isn't particularly interesting for others to read, perhaps it may at least prompt other to look at what they want out of life too. It's quite interesting how little I am looking for out of life when you pin it down to life goals.

Accommodation/Location
- I want to get a place of my own. I currently am living at my family home, squeezing every last drain of cash I have to pay for my MSc. Thankfully, after this I will be finished and hopefully will get a job shortly afterwards. I want to rent a place (in a city) as soon as I can, then buy my own house, preferably in the US. As far as the size of my house, the current size of house my parents own would be perfectly adequate ( moderately large 3 bedroom semi with a fairly big garden).

Programming/Career
- I would like to be well known within the computing industry for writing books related to programming or for having helped develop a great application.
- Have my own personal website, that in some small way chronicles the rest of my life.
- I want to develop my own Operating System (or at least develop my own Linux distribution).
- I want to start my own tech related non-profit organisation (something like Mozilla foundation).

Golf
- I want to be a scratch (play off a handicap of 0) golfer. In my youth I always wanted to become a professional golfer and did get down to a 7 handicap. At some point in my life I want to be a scratch golfer.

Space
- I want to travel into space. I boy can dream...

The things that didn't make the list...
Love
- I dont know if their is someone out there for me (or at least someone who I can put up with and more difficultly, can put up with me!), whether I want to marry or whether I want to have kids.

Income
- Money is a necessary evil to fulfil my goals and I hope I earn enough to fulfil my goals. Money, other than for those purposes, is not important to me.

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Prioritizing

4 min read


I feel I should write an update as it has been a while.

There is not much (in and of itself) which is amazing that is happening in my life at the moment, so I haven't had much to write.

However, I have been spending the last week or so prioritizing, goal-setting and generally naval-gazing about what things are important to me and what goals I should be working on.  I feel there are a great deal of things in my life that don't matter (that I waste time on) and important things that are going round in circles or not moving forward.

I don't know if the fact that my 24th birthday is just over month away (25th of March) or because of a long time lingering feeling that I have underachieved since I left school.  Whatever, the reason, I think getting my priorities straight is a needed pursuit before I go forward.

More accurately perhaps, my post on my 2009 New Year's resolutions isn't far off the mark when it comes to my priorities.  It is more how I achieve them and motivate myself to achieve them that is the big issue.

I have been sorting stuff out using a Getting Things Done mentality (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_…) and so far I have been finding the approach very useful at keeping me on track.  Time will tell if it really helps me achieve some of my bigger goals.

If nothing else, this time has allowed me to finish a lot of little project and make decisions on a lot of lingering questions I had, which has to be a good thing :) .

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OK, I discovered some images in my scraps while I was trawling through my gallery.

I just thought I should let you all know they are all about to be nuked, at least from DA.  They are all pretty rubbish deviations, but nonetheless scarily insightful, which is the two main reasons for their deletion.

They should be up till this evening.

Hope your all having a good day :)
(It's sunny here for once)
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So confused?

3 min read
OK, I really hope this doesn't sound too moody.

Recently, I posted two new deviations at around the same time:

1. A new deviantID which didn't take me long.  Played around for a while with it, but still only an hours work.

devid by PoetOfZwan

Views: 6
Favourites: 1
+ 1 positive comment


4. A index page for a simple online portfolio.  This took me about 5 hours (most of which was playing around and tweaking).

portfolio1 icy by PoetOfZwan

Views: 22
Favourites: 0


This seems to somewhat reinforce a general trend I am noticing with my DA gallery.  My web designs get me plenty of pageviews but no one ever seems to like them enough to :+fav: or comment on them.

I'm not looking for praise.  It is just a fact that this year (as I said in New Year's Resolution's post ) I am going to be dedicating a lot of time to web design and this is something that may turn out to be a career for me.

So if you view no other deviations of mine all year, please view AND comment on my web design.  Just to let me know what you like and what you don't.

I realise web design may not be why many of you decided to watch me or fav me in the past, but if you want to change the course of someone's life this year, please do so.

Even if your comments are to say all my web designs this year suck, at the very least I will know I need to change my style or scratch off web design from the career list :lol:.

Thanks for reading I hope that wasn't too shamefully moody.  I also realise I haven't uploaded many (like 3!) web designs yet, but I felt the need to say something to you all.
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I know its somewhat belated now, but I took some serious time to try and come up with workable/reasonable New Years Resolutions.

1.  Get a distinction in my Computer Science MSc

2.  Develop 3 applications in C++/C# or Python which fulfil a particular need.

3.  Be a 7 handicapper on Stracka.  I dont get to play competitive golf, but it would be nice to know that I am atleast close to being as good a golfer as I once was.

4.  Be able to do 100 pushup.  With help from hundredpushups.com/

5.  Get 15,000 pageviews on deviantART.  A vain wish I know, but I am hoping it keeps me focused on added new content to my page.

6.  Read a book (non-academic) every month.  I will also list on the blog what I have read.

7.  Learn to drive.  Obviously need to pass theory test first!

8.  Get a rating of 1600+ on chesspark.

9.  Become a CIW Associate (by passing Foundations course in HTML/CSS) and also pass Web Languages course (in Javascript/Perl).

10.  Give up fizzy juice/soda.

11.  Have a curfew on my computer use (11pm).

12.  Decide what to do after my MSc.  A  programming job?  Teaching? or phd?  or something else.

13.  Keep posting to my DA journal regularly for the whole year.

14.  Keep my Windows XP OS installation going for the whole year.  Don't keep switching between XP, Vista and Linux distros.  Futhermore, backup my data to the internet and external hard drive and do regular images of my OS.   I am allowed to dual-boot with Windows 7.

Things I Want

In addition to things I want to change, I also want to feed my material needs:

1.  Get a digital camera.  I'm so embarassed I don't own one.

2.  Coffee Machine.  I love coffee so much, but don't have a Coffee machine and am stuck drinking crap.

3.  A quiet, cheap desktop computer.  My main laptop is pretty powerful, but its too noisy and getting a bit rusty now (2 yrs old).  Would love to read on my machine without sound of a fan in my ears.

4.  Get all the other stuff (mainly cheap) on my Amazon Wishlist!

This post (and others) can also be found on my personal blog.  If you check it out, I would be so happy :)

UPDATE: My goals have been slightly modified to make them a bit more specific.  this seemed a good idea after reading this.
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Featured

Life Goals by PoetOfZwan, journal

Prioritizing by PoetOfZwan, journal

Take your photos before the atomic bomb hits! by PoetOfZwan, journal

So confused? by PoetOfZwan, journal

My Personal New Year's Resolutions by PoetOfZwan, journal