{"id":964,"date":"2013-07-16T11:25:45","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T18:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/?p=964"},"modified":"2013-07-16T11:25:45","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T18:25:45","slug":"things-i-want-to-work-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/2013\/07\/things-i-want-to-work-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I want to work on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finished up my last contract, other than a few weeks of answering questions. Old clients want new things but I think that&#8217;s just a few weeks of work. And then I have a big open space (right after the family vacation).<\/p>\n<p>Those used to make me nervous but I&#8217;m getting better at being excited to have time to work on my own ideas, if only to freshen my skills. I&#8217;m not as worried that I&#8217;ll never find a new client. For a little while (at least), I&#8217;ll be choosier with contracts (such a luxury!).<\/p>\n<p>A friend asked what I want to work on. I think he has entrepreneurial motives though I&#8217;m not ready for another turn on the startup merry go round. In trying to figure out how to answer him, I&#8217;ve sat down and thought about what I really want to work on. Not the technology or location or industry, but concrete things I think must be happening that I particularly want to be a part of.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Smart\u00a0prosthetic limbs (feet):\u00a0 measure surface something (electrical impulses? micro movement? tension?) on the remaining limb and use it to control things like artificial toes for enhanced balance.<\/li>\n<li>$5US clothes washer (the TED talk about\u00a0<a title=\"TED talk\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html\" target=\"_blank\">how washing machines change everything<\/a>\u00a0really got to me). I suspect other things would do: a $5 ereader (put a whole encyclopedias on it) or a $5 something else that can make a huge difference to someone outside the US.<\/li>\n<li>Use chemical sensing MEMS to make a pocket mass spectrometer\/gas chromatography system (bomb sniffing, tricorder, being able to visualize 1\/100 of what my beagle smells).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thinking about concrete examples is difficult. I want to work on something innovative but my innovative ideas are smaller than I want to work on, smaller than a company could sustain. (Though, my ideas get bigger as time goes on so this may not remain a problem.) There are other things I can identify as great things about my next potential contract:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve done a bit of work with devices that attempt to use game-ification as a motivation tool. I&#8217;d like to see a focus also on pet-ification. Many people tend to nurture more than compete. I don&#8217;t know if I want to apply this more to fitness or to education devices. Either. Both.<\/li>\n<li>A genius&#8217; vision of something that make the world a better place. While there are a lot of things I don&#8217;t want to work on\/with (application, methodologies, and companies), I really didn&#8217;t want to make this a negative list. If I were to make this a list of things I don&#8217;t want about my next project it would be &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to work on something designed by committee&#8221;. I find those projects increasingly unsatisfying. However, the times I&#8217;ve worked with someone who had a plan and could articulate how my help was needed, those have been great projects where I have learned a lot <strong>and<\/strong>\u00a0provided a lot of value. (Hey, Elon Musk, if you read my blog, please consider how my embedded software skills can help you with the LA\/SF 30 minute transporter thingy (Hyperloop).)<\/li>\n<li>Proof of concept prototype for a skunkworks. This is kind of like my recently complete project. I like shipping things, it is incredibly gratifying. But I also like proving something unlikely is actually possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I suspect I&#8217;ll find something interesting that pays bills while I ruminate further on my plan to take over a tiny portion of the world. In the meantime, I&#8217;m enjoying this thought exercise. And break.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished up my last contract, other than a few weeks of answering questions. Old clients want new things but I think that&#8217;s just a few weeks of work. And then I have a big open space (right after the family vacation). Those used to make me nervous but I&#8217;m getting better at being excited [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,7,13],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-entrepreneur","tag-lists","tag-plans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/logicalelegance.com\/journey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}