January 30, 2011

Focusing Attention: Programming

These last two weeks have been a small attempt at clearing up my head a bit. I have far too many things I'd like to do and even if it's not possible to do them all at once it didn't stop me from thinking of them. One minute it's that and the other it's something completely different. This is really not good as it messes with the top idea a lot so I decided to do something about it. By focusing on one single thing each week I've been trying to remedy the situation.

Now I haven't really spent a lot of time with the things I've been focusing on, but I've been a whole lot calmer and not as stressed up as before. So I think it's good for me.

This week I'm gonna focus on something I haven't really done so much, namely programming. The little I've done is some stuff for school and it's fun and all, but it's not really the same as working on your own project. Now I think I'll try to complete the assignments for the course, but that's not really a priority and if it's even a little bit stressful then I'll cut back on it. We've got plenty of time left and it's not worth it to get stressed by something like that.

No I'll focus on Perl (my new Perl book should arrive this week) and making something fun: an IRC-bot. A simple bot isn't much of a challange so I need to add some cool functions to it. I'm really annoyed that a friend of mine is always ahead of the latest manga releases so I think I'll automate that one. I've actually already made one in both Perl and lua, but they're pretty damn bad so this time I'll make it right. Naturally I've got a ton of other stuff to add but we'll see where we end up.

The point isn't to make a bot with a million features, but to start hacking on something fun. Hell I'd be happy if I just stick to the new book and learn Perl a bit.