Friday, July 22, 2011

A Busy Summer

The summer is proving busier than expected. In June, I started taking remote classes at Stanford in pursuit of a Graduate Certificate in Data Mining and Applications through the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD). So far, I am enjoying my first class, stats202. As I suspected, I really like working with data to find hidden patterns, trends, etc.

At the same time, I have a project at work with an aggressive mid-August deadline. So I've been putting in extra hours. The good news is that the project is going well and I'm doing lots of R programming to analyze performance data. More fun working with data. I like R and am gaining a lot of experience with it through work and school projects.

Any spare time not spent with family is being use to work on a few hobby projects. I'm building a Zen Toolworks desktop CNC machine so that my son and I can make cool things. I bought an Arduino and Ultimate Microcontoller Pack from the MakerShed that I'm having fun with. If that wasn't enough, I'm slowly putting together a plan to build a tricopter.

A busy summer indeed.