Happy New Year!!! I hope 2022 was an excellent year for you. Let me know how it went!
I find I have 2 modes of operation, either I’m exploring because I’m trying to find a new interest, or I currently have an interest and am jumping into the deep end. For most of 2022, I was in exploration mode.
📅 2022
I kicked off 2022 by exploring blockchain! After building a Monero miner and putting it into a Raspberry Pi1, and creating my own Solana token2, I decided it wasn’t for me.
In January I also started working with an Antinet (a box of notes which follows 4 principles outlined by Niklas Luhmann) and continued learning about VR.3
In February, my friend Robert Macwha and I wrote and designed a recommendation deck for Shell on how they could improve their profits. 4
Personally, I wasn’t very proud of our end result, and decided to write an article about my failures.5
In March, I got back into coding projects. At this point I was telling myself that I enjoyed working on VR projects, but the truth is that I didn’t. Instead, I turned back to blockchain to give it another try and built what I call the EthVault. A program that uses Obsidian6 to visualize the Ethereum blockchain.
In April, I continued the EthVault and worked on a few other side projects and participated in Ludum Dare (a large game development competition).7
In May, I started working with Zayn Patel, Sualeha Irshad, and Shreya Hegde on an AR literacy app called Beru.8 We made connections, I built a prototype9, Zayn gave a few talks10, things were going really well!
Then my world got rocked by a friend’s close encounter with suicide and I spiraled into depression.
After a month of not doing anything but going to school and surviving, I eventually got back on my feet in July. During that time I realized that I didn’t want to work on Beru anymore - and neither did a few of my team members. So we disbanded the project.
To get myself back into the swing of things, (since I was at a lost for direction) I decided to create a card game. It sucked, I only played it twice, but it did what I wanted it to: it got me building again.
Shortly after, I participated in the 2022 Game Maker’s Toolkit Game Jam11 with my friend Jordyn Hamilton! Together we created Roll For Damage12, they did most of the programming, and I made most of the art.
In August, I got interested in Play To Earn games. After a month of research, I determined they were bullshit and moved on. But please, if you have are passionate about this topic, reach out to me. I’d still love to talk and would love to have my mind changed.
In September, I entered a new school and participated in a hackathon! My final idea was to facilitate the handover process in emergency rooms by using NLP models to summarize a patient’s entire medical record.13
In October, I explored Neuro-Evolution algorithms and built a game to put a bunch of agents to the test. They failed.
Shortly after, I spent over 30 hours developing an artificial ecosystem using the NEAT14 algorithm and Unity. Many of these hours are uploaded on Youtube.
This sparked a new interest, and in November I started reading more about artificial life and AGI. I found AGI to be more fascinating.
In December, I started writing these blog posts, and developing hypotheses and talking with people. I’m still in the process of building the prototype which I mentioned last month.
Progress is slow and steady.
🎉2023
2022 was one hell of a ride, but now it’s time to turn my attention to the new year ahead.
I’m splitting my goals in to 3 scenarios. Best case, medium case, and worst case. On top of these goals I also have the theme of the year. Instead of setting solid resolutions that I will fail to complete just a few weeks from now, I am setting a consistent theme for the entire year. 15
My theme: Technical Depth.
When I am making decisions, I’ll keep my theme in mind. When reading or coding, I can make sure to keep my theme in mind.
With all that out of the way - here are my goals this year:
🥇 Best Case:
Reach 250 subscribers on this blog
Have a USB with an artificial brain which is capable of completing 5+ tasks
Publish a research paper
Write 12 technical paper summaries
Publish 6 Youtube videos
🥈 Medium Case:
Reach 200 subscribers on this blog
Have a USB with an artificial brain which is capable of completing a single task
Write 6 technical paper summaries
Publish 3 Youtube videos
🥉 Worst Case:
Reach 150 subscribers on this blog
Have a USB with an artificial brain
Write 3 technical paper summaries
Publish 1 Youtube video
Now that the goals are set, I also need to set the systems which will help me reach them. These systems are geared towards the best case scenario, if I keep them up, then reaching the best case shouldn’t be a problem.
⚙ Systems:
Publish a blog post every week for the entire year
Spend 10+ hours per week coding
Read 3+ research papers every week
Select a paper each week for possibility of summary
Write 1 summary per month
Come up with 2 video ideas per week
Publish 1 video every 2 months
These systems will lead to the best case, but if I fall short, I can still reach the other benchmarks.
I’m incredibly excited for the coming year, I feel like I have found a direction which I can follow. Now that I have a direction, I can already start to feel the compounding effects begin.
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful year, and that your 2023 will be great as well!
Nicolas, it's so great to see your updates. You are clearly a very talented person; your drive, resilience, curiosity, and ambition realy set you a part from so many other people your age (and not your age!).
I really appreciate your desire to learn; your ability to try new things, learn from them, and move on to the new project. Good luck this year! Wishing you great exploration and fulfillment.
Wow! You've kept yourself super busy in the past year! Thanks for sharing your journey. You have also laid down an ambitious set of goals for the upcoming year. Remember that, on the one hand, success can be defined in our minds as reaching one's goals (in objective terms), but on the other hand - and often more importantly - the lessons and knowledge gained along the way, especially knowledge about one's self. In that regard, wishing you a very "successful" 2023!