Smips

On Thursday night I had the opportunity to go to the Stl Mobile Dev user group meeting. The group is hosted by co-worker Heath Borders (see Heath Tech in my blogroll).

Andrew Prunicki was the guest speaker and he spent two hours explaining topics from how to get and build the source to customizing the image that is displayed while the phone is booting. I was simply amazed at how easy it appeared to be to work with the Android OS. The discussion really made me long for owning an Android device, just so I could build my own OS at home. For now I’ll have to live vicariously through the emulator.

Interested in customizing your own Android OS, begin by visiting here http://source.android.com/.

For me life is very cyclical. There are times of the year where I spend my days coding at work and my nights coding at home. There are other times when my motivation to learn more is left at work. Off and on during the year, I flip between these two cycles. Currently I’m itching to code at night but have tempered that itch by relaxing a couple nights a week. So far it has been working out well for me because I feel like I’ve been enjoying both parts equally. I don’t feel like I’m working a second job and I also don’t feel like I’m wasting my free time doing nothing.

During this current cycle I established some goals for myself. Goals that I thought would help to better me professionally. They are simple goals to achieve. My first goal is to write more.  My second goal is to commit, to an existing or create my own, Open source project. My final goal is to speak at a local user group meeting.

To me, writing more is the easiest goal to achieve. In the past I had a blog, but never put any serious effort into it. So what can I do this time around to make writing stick? That is when it hit me, money is the answer. Money will help me to stay focused and continue writing beyond today. With this in mind, I have developed a simple three step plan.

Phase 1: Create blog

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: Profit

I know there appears to be a small gap in my plan, but I’m not going to sweat the details. It’s a good plan. It’s a solid plan. This plan is going to work.

I now take my motivation and new plan off to bed, because with any good plan comes a time to celebrate and I will do that by sleeping.