Hello, 2018

A new year is just bigger number. (I don't do New Year resolutions, so whatever.) Been a little busy the last few months, with lots of life changes. It's given me time to get some reading done, which has been nice -- 8 books so far this year. I'm currently working on a few technical books:

• Security Engineering (Ross Anderson) -- I finally decided to start working through a list of security topics to start building a foundation of security knowledge. This is a book that I must have in my arsenal.
• The Tangled Web (Michal Zalewski) -- Another must-read for security knowledge. Having an interest in security means learning about the ubiquitous web and the possibilities (read: insecurities) that go along with it.
• Operating Systems: From 0 to 1 (Do Hoang Tu) -- My seemingly Sisyphean attempt to learn OS. I always have browser tabs open with OS-related courses and books, but I'm so slow getting through the material...

And I'm still trying to get myself through the Intro to Machine Learning class (Ng). I used to tell myself I couldn't progress to the new weeks if I didn't finish assignments, but I think I'm just going to start watching lectures and reading the notes first, with a focus on learning the ML knowledge at a high level. Then I'll work on the assignments in a second pass. So far so good: I've started Week 3 (though to be honest, I skipped the Octave/Matlab section in Week 2). This is further than I've ever gotten in this course.

My goal for the reading and classes is to finish things I've started. I've started so many classes and books but never progressed. I'm working toward finishing the first 2 books in the above list by mid-year, and the OS book by the end of the year. The ML class is 11 weeks long, so I am attempting to finish watching the lectures by June, then giving the assignments a shot after that. If I can finish watching the lectures, though, I think that will be a huge accomplishment in itself.