Dreams - Things To Study

Done in 1994! I've completed a major in linguistics as part of my cognitive science degree, finishing the linguistics major way before I finished the rest of the degree.

Done in 1998! I have a degree from La Trobe University in AI and I also did one honours-level subject in AI at RMIT University.

Partly Done in 1993! I studied first year discrete maths, which is where I got the taste for it. I'd like to do more though.

Partly Done throughout the whole time I lived at home with my parents! I know a lot of Australia's IP law because of working summers with my Dad's Patent Attorney firm.

Partly Done in 1996-1997! I started an Open Learning course in small business management. I only finished about 2 modules of it I think, so I'm hardly qualified, but I have a decent overview of what's required. I may get back to it someday, as I still think small business studies is a useful thing to do.

Done! One of the modules in my Small Business Management course in 1997 has been bookkeeping.

• Learn Auslan (the language of the Australian Deaf community) to conversational level.
  

  Partly Done during the 1990s! I have studied up to second level (whatever that means) which was enough to make myself understood to a Deaf person, but not enough for me to understand them. I stopped because of being sick but hope to take it up again as soon as I can.

• (Altered May, 2003 to add Elvish, LOTR rules OK!) Learn Elvish, Esparanto or another "invented" language.
  
• Learn German to conversational level.
  
• Learn a "dead" language such as Sanskrit.
  
• (Added May, 2003) Learn Irish to conversational level.
  

Computers ...

• Become proficient at programming in Perl.
  

  Done in 1996 and onwards! I started learning Perl in 1996 (can it really have been that long ago?) and was one of the senior perl consultants for Netizen (website now defunct) while it existed. I wouldn't consider myself a Perl Guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I've coded several modules of my own, know how to use other people's efficiently and enjoy using the language whenever I can.

• Become proficient in C.
  

  Done in 1995! During 1995-6 I wrote several programs in DOS-based C and Unix-based C, including PFind which has been sold to several patent attorneys. I also wrote a myriad of other programs of various sizes. Usually I use Perl instead now, it's quicker to code in than C and the speed of the resultant program is almost never important with the stuff I write.

• Become proficient in C++.
  

  Partly Done in 1996! I studied this at University for a semester, I have all the concepts but have not used it enough to be proficient. Not really interested in studying it further though, I'm too much of a Perl addict now!

• Learn enough about TCP/IP networking to be useful on a practical level, for example to set up a local network and connect it to the net.
  

  Done 1996ish! I learned a lot about this by doing most of the setting up of tertius.net.au, including applying for a C-class IP block and the domain name, setting up the standard services and the local Ethernet - everything except doing the physical cabling. In 2000 I was living in a different house and did all the RJ45 cabling to set up between the hub, my server, workstation and laptop.

• Figure out IP Masquerading.
  

  Done in 2000! After being irrationally terrified of IP Masquerading for ages I eventually bit the bullet late in 2000 and figured out how to set it up under both Linux and FreeBSD in under a month! It wasn't nearly as hard as everybody kept telling me it was, and it even kept working after I rebooted!

• Learn to do LaTeX scripting.
  

  Done in 1999! Netizen (website now defunct) used LaTeX for a while to mark up all of their course-notes and I got to inhale 'The LaTeX Companion' to create all the macros and environments we needed for it. It was fun actually, although most of my work is destined for the web so I just mark it up straight to HTML now.

• Learn to do VRML scripting.
  

  Replaced in 1998! It doesn't seem to be something that's really taken off on the net like I thought it would and I have too many other things I want to do.