I tweeted a thing with "modest 2017 goals". Modest because it's stuff i could/should have done already and it's not aiming too high.

This page tracks the progress of that.

End of year edit: see 2017 goal tracker conclusions

Break broken RSA

Progress criteria: Each one of the first 48 exercises of cryptopals is roughly 2%

Completion criteria: Pass cryptopals set 6.

Bonus points:

  • Doing sets 7 and 8
  • Applying this to real-world crappy implementations of RSA including [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]
  • Get admin by bitflipping or whatever on [REDACTED]'s awful RC4 thing
  • Timing attack on [REDACTED]

Personal note: I'm honestly ashamed I still haven't done this. That's why it's here.

Status

20% (10/48)
I'm still an impostor.

2017-02-26: Done up to challenge 10. I picked golang.

Learn rust or go

Progress criteria: arbitrary / subjective.

Completion criteria: write at least one program or library with at least 1000 lines of code.

Personal note: One of my goals a couple of years ago was to get comfortable with C. Well that succeeded. A bit too much. Now I'm stuck in a comfort zone with C which feels wrong given how dangerous it is (and the lack of community and the incentives against adding dependencies and...).

Status

0%
Haven't even decided which. Probably both, go is simple, rust is more interesting.

2016-02-26: I'm doing golang for the cryptopals challenges, but it's too simple (i started comfortably writing code in after spending one hour going through the tour) so it's not worth counting towards this goal.

So now it's decided, this is about rust.

50 radare commits

Progress criteria: commits merged in master branch of radare during the year.

Completion criteria: having a total of 81 contributions in the 'dequis' entry in radare's contributors page (started with 31)

Personal note: I used to have a personal goal of doing one commit per release. At some point radare switched to releases every 6 weeks or so and it was harder to keep up. 50 commits is more than i've done so far but I'm perfectly capable of doing it over 365 days. Might require creativity.

Status

2%
DateProgressTotal commitsPosition
2017-01-090/503128
2017-03-051/503228

100 kanji

Progress criteria: flashcards leaving the learning stage and staying in the mature stage in anki. May go backwards.

Completion criteria: At least 100 cards in the mature stage.

Procedure notes: I'm going for meanings + some common readings. Not writing, but it would be nice to not suck at guessing stroke order.

The specifications of this section may change if I decide to do something other than anki, like memrise.

Personal note: Probably the hardest one because I haven't studied this stuff in a while and this is my way of getting motivated to do it. (february edit: lol)

Status

100%

2017-01-10: Nothing yet. Didn't even build the deck.

2017-01-15: Started fresh deck with 60 cards. Front: kanji. Back: hiragana, english meaning.

2017-01-16: Added 43 cards

2017-01-27: 6% -> 8%

2017-02-06: 8% -> 17%. Total cards: 143.

2017-02-10: 17% -> 25%. Total cards: 143.

2017-02-20: 25% -> 52%. Total cards: 148.

2017-02-23: 52% -> 57%. Total cards: 148.

2017-02-26: 57% -> 60%. Total cards: 195. (now covering all of JLPT N5 plus other stuff)

2017-03-05: 60% -> 63%. Total cards: 200

2017-03-08: Total cards: 268 (turns out i'm still missing a lot of JLPT N5 words that don't really require kanji)

2017-03-11: 63% -> 69%. Total cards: 269

2017-03-16: 69% -> 83%. Total cards: 272

2017-03-20: 83% -> 91%. Total cards: 272

2017-03-22: 91% -> 105%. Total cards: 272 - completed the original goal in 66 days, but obviously i'm continuing. Dropping the % now.

Get over the fear of using [REDACTED] already

Progress criteria: arbitrary / subjective

Completion criteria: Use [REDACTED] the way it's intended to, for at least one month, and only if the reason to stop using it is closer to "deliberate decision" than it is to "fear".

Personal note: ~it is a mystery~

Status

100%

Likely to be completed during the first quarter, maybe doing the hardest part in january.

2017-01-27: pretty much done, but the "one month" condition is pending

2017-03-05: let's consider it done