Well … it’s that time of the year again, and I always enjoying looking back on what I said I was going to try to accomplish the year before. With that said, here is my review of my resolutions for 2013:

  1. Run a 1/2 marathon — COMPLETED (Jan 11th 2013), and I will never run a half marathon again — if you like running marathons, kudos — I’m going to stick to drinking wine 5 nights a week and running 7-8 miles at a time like a real man

  2. Learn to play “Tiny Dancer” on piano better than the guy in this youtube video — COMPLETED — I took piano lessons for 12 years growing up and then quit playing to learn guitar. I decide to re-learn how to play piano this year, and ended up buying a bad ass keyboard. After many hours of re-learning how to play ….I can play Tiny Dancer and a lot of other songs just like this dude.

  3. Become a dual citizen (Italy) -NOT COMPLETED — I recently found out that I was eligible to gain dual citizenship to Italy. I made my appointment last January and my citizenship appointment is in February (2014). In my defense, the reason this was not completed is because of the Italian government, not because of my lack of ambition.

  4. Go to Vietnam — COMPLETED — I did a two week backpacking trip across Asia in May with my cousin Amanda. I started in Japan and went through Hong Kong, Hanoi, Singapore, and then home. It was pretty fun, but I don’t want to go back to Asia anytime soon.

  5. Learn to make good cocktails — COMPLETED — I made cocktails about 10 times this year. It turns out, making classic cocktails well is about as simple as following any other set of instructions.

  6. Cook two days a week — COMPLETED — Although I didn’t cook two days EVERY week, I definitely cooked more than 104 times this year (52*2), so on average it was 2/week.

  7. Only read about/apply Bayesian statistical methods — NOT COMPLETED — I completed the first part of this task (reading about Bayesian methods only), but I didn’t actually do much implementation this year — was too busy building other shit.

  8. Listen to the Rolling Stones top 500 albums of all time — COMPLETED — I completed this one, and was very disappointed. Most of the top 500 albums of all time are horrible.

  9. Watch the IMDB Top 250 —COMPLETED — I did not even attempt this one because I just actually bought my first TV about 6 months ago.

  10. Learn Erlang — NOT COMPLETED — Instead of learning Erlang, I ended up learning Objective C this year. I decide to drop this goal all together and learn Go instead (2014)

  11. Work out six days a week for 1 hour — NOT COMPLETED — I worked out a lot this year, but not six days a week.

  12. Go to ALL of the art galleries in NYC — NOT COMPLETED (and I guess I never really thought I would complete this one)— I went to about 10 galleries this year, so I came close but no cigar. My girlfriend Ava is very much involved in the art scene now, so I suspect I will hit a bunch more galleries in 2014

And here is my list for 2014, in no particular order:

  1. Learn Go: C-syntax with Erlang style concurrency — sign me up!

  2. Make 50K in machine learning consulting gigs — I really am going to try to find some interesting projects to work on this year. If you need any help with , send me a DM.

  3. Build one data project per month w/ a blog post and open source the software: I want to start blogging more about the data analysis I am doing and give back in the form of open source.

  4. Learn to speak Italian (again): I studied abroad in Rome for six months in 2005. When I left Italy, I was pretty decent at speaking, I want to try to learn again.

  5. Learn to read piano music: I am mostly learning pieces by ear + youtube currently, I want to get really good and reading music again in 2014.

  6. Learn some famous lead guitar parts by heart (John Mayer, Jimmy Hendrix, etc): I recently bought a fender telecaster. I need to start using it.

  7. Build one classifier / month on different types of data sets with a AROC value of > .75 (if you know what this means, you’re a dork). I love classifiers with AROCS > .75 — doesn’t everyone

  8. Read more about wine: I love wine, and I know a lot about it, but I want to learn more.

  9. Read 35 books this year, and write a book review for each book: I love reading, and I am going to read 35 books this year and review each one of them. I read 27 books in 2013 and wrote ZERO book reviews.

  10. Visit Big Sur: Never been, hear it is cool -COMPLETE

  11. Visit Rome/Greece: Been to both, but want to go back.

  12. Visit Napa Valley: I love wine — COMPLETE

  13. Visit Istanbul: Last city I really want to see that I havn’t seen.

  14. Learn D3.js better: I use D3.js a lot, but I need to get better at it.

  15. Gain 3.5K organic twitter followers: This probably wont happen unless a miracle takes place, but here is to dreaming big.

  16. Write 3 blog posts a week (data or non-data): This will definitely help my writing, and (15)

  17. Contribute to 5 different open source projects: I use open source everyday and never really contribute back, this year I am going to change that.

  18. Learn basic stenciling like Banksy: After living in NYC in 10/13, I want to figure out how Banksy does that.

  19. Learn Pandas really well: I do a lot of data analysis, but do not use Pandas enough….yet — COMPLETED

  20. Go to all the major art museums in NYC

  21. Help Ava to optimize her firm

  22. Become a better cook

  23. Be a better person