A list of things I should try and master. These are skills I have some experience with, but which I never went the extra mile to really become a guru.
- The piano: I was decent when I was younger, and then I quit because I didn’t want to be uncool. Isn’t the wisdom of youth fun :(.
- PHP: I know enough to break things, but if I could just sit down and actually develop something useful I could master the language.
- Photoshop/The Gimp: Something else I really should take the time to learn about, instead I seem to stop about five steps after Unsharp Mask
- Vi: I love it but I know about 5% of what it can do.
- Photography: I get the technical aspects, but I’m a horrible photographer. I wish I wouldn’t have learned anything about f-stops and aperture until I actually learned to take compelling photos.
- Cooking: I used to try and learn something new every week or two. Then I stopped and just kept making lasagna. It is really good lasagna but I don’t cook for Garfield.
- Unix/Linux: This is broad, but I know enough to figure out most problems. But I still need to figure things out, I rarely “know” the answer.
- Writing: I should have minored in English in college. Once again the wisdom of youth struck gold.
There really is no question of what I should do with this list, I should take one and spend four months working on mastering the skill. Maybe putting it in writing and publishing it will be the motivation I need.
How about you, any skills you have that you wish you would master?
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Dog Training- My dog can be a serious jerk sometimes and I wish I could stop him sometimes.
Speed Reading- I love books and can’t seem to get through them fast enough.
Project Management- And for something like $3000 I can take a 40 hour class…
First off, love the recent content, been really good.
Second:
1. I have always wished that I had picked an instrument that I could have continued to play, peacefully and enjoyably, rather than the trumpet which no one really wants to hear being played drunkenly, late at night ;)
2. I have written in PHP and am proficient enough to not break everything when I code in it but I can’t say I’m a master. If I have to make changes to already written code I can do it fairly well. Thankfully Wordpress has enough plugins that I don’t have to bother like I did with Drupal.
3. Image editing: I suck at this. I’m glad Flickr has Picnik and that gets me where I need to go (simple cropping and color adjustments)
4. I gave up on vi and then Emacs years ago. I stick w/nano/pico because I’m a shameful geek.
5. Photography: I’m only good at taking pictures of food. Other than that, it’s hit or miss.
6. Cooking: I’m a fairly decent cook and while I’m nothing even 1* rated, I can cook well enough to make the wife happy. If it were up to her we’d be eating frozen pizza, hot dogs, and Mac and Cheese every night.
7. Linux. I’ve been running it for 15 years and can get around most issues. Some, like the recent webserver performance issues I’ve been experiencing, still get away from me.
8. Writing: I are the suck0rz.
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I’d really love to master baking. While I can cook, I can’t bake mostly because I hate following recipes. I have made bread but aside from that I leave it to my wife to spend the time with all the crap necessary for baked treats.
SAS. I work with SAS all day long at work and while I can utilize a lot it has to offer, there is still a ton to learn. One of my coworkers is a SAS god (I call him the SAS Ninja) and can really do some cool shit. Some day I want to grow up to be like him.
regular expressions. While I use them frequently and have written entire screen scraping utilities which used them extensively, I am no master. I frequently have to consult manuals and such to get simple shit to work. I’d really like to understand them and use them to their fullest extent.
Home/car repair. My father was incredible with this sort of stuff. A very technical individual with a lot of broad experience (range from programming to building a deck or installing a new bathroom). I have absolutely no ability in any of this and end up paying dearly for it.