Today is the end of a lot. For one, it’s the end of the calendar year - a year a lot of us consider to be suboptimal. It’s also the end of an era - tomorrow I’m participating in the very last service Vault 29 will ever carry out.

Of course, that which is of the nature to die is of the nature to be born again! The inexorable universal passage of time doesn’t care and barring something truly unforeseen life will continue along just fine tomorrow, so let’s look forward!

This would be a fine time for me to point out I have a bit of a problem with spending too long in the future or the past - much like everyone else - but I’m not here to proselytize you. Yet.

When I look forward most often do it through the lens of the GTD system, so let’s have a look at some projects and what I hope 2018 will mean for them.

Tarnished Tale

Tarnished Tale is the priority recreational project for 2018, not the least of which because its development is an exceedingly cheap hobby - I don’t need anything I don’t already have. I certainly don’t intend to have TT or its debut game Layer completed in even the vaguest senses of the word, but I really am hoping to have a minimally-playable tech demo out by summer and from there really start building out the feature set on TT-CORE.

Tapestry

Tapestry’s development is hung while I wait for an upstream module update, but all that really does is mean I won’t be releasing anything for it until that update comes out. In much the same way as a writer will break writer’s block with a simple exercise or an illustrator might doodle to get warmed up, I occasionally make small improvements to Tapestry as an exercise since its development is simpler (and uses different parts of the python library) than TT’s is.

That having been said, I’d really like to have it be fully cross-platform by the end of 2018.

Professional Stuff

If you’re following along you know I have a new job, and while it’s not directly related to infosec or any of my immediate future plans, it’s a job and it pays regularly and it has to do with tech, all of which are inarguably good qualities. This job is also willing to pay for the time I would otherwise lose writing certification exams and interviewing for other positions, since it’s part of a post-post-secondary development program. I’m happy to say that means that this year I’m hoping to get, at minimum, my A+ and Network+ exams completed. From there I’d like to move on, get a more security-related job, and buckle down for sec+.

Also, there’s this weird “business plan” project mocked up in Wunderlist now. No idea what that’s there for.

Hardware Hacking

I don’t get up to enough of this, frankly. Hardware is a huge blind spot in my expertise and I think it’ll always remain a hobby rather than being something I professional do, but from a security mindset I should at least understand the basics, so I want to do a few small projects with that (and maybe develop project clair).

The Malquarium, Praxis, and Like Projects

Alright, so for a few months now I’ve been running my website off of a “server” I repurposed from an old acer laptop and it’s… okay. But just this afternoon I aquired an old Dell Studio XPS box. Most of the box isn’t useful for much to me, hardware wise. It’s pretty dated.

Still and all, it’s got me thinking that I could manufacture something of server quality in piecemeal fashion. A Xeon here, some RAID there, and boom, yourself a McMuffin.

Now, I’m not sure which systems I’d be willing to house on it - running the malquarium alongside anything seems dangerous. But I might try it anyway.

From the Ashes

Alright, so there’s no sense in denying it. My book, Sanity Line, was very fun to put into print. I might well do the same with its sequel, From the Ashes, but probably not this year. I would, however, like to at least compile my notes for the second draft.

Above All, Live

So this exercise is all well and good, but if you’ve known me in person you’ll know I’m not at all above planning a project and then never acting on it. So, most importantly, I want to just focus on worrying about that less, and living in the present more.

Happy New Year, Everybody!