Yet another overly ambitious Todo list

2012 has passed (and I have to say, thank Eris it did), and 2013 is upon us. Say what you will about arbitrary counter resets and new year's resolutions; the start of a new year is a convenient time to reflect, to look back, and to look forward. Another motivation for this reflection is that I just completed my diploma thesis at long last; so naturally, there's the question of: What next?

And so I thought I'd record here what I'd like to do in 2013 - at a minimum, I may be able to go back to this post in a year's time and compare my goals then and now, and to get a sense of what I thought I might be able to accomplish in one year vs what I actually did accomplish. So here goes, in no particular order.
  • Go snowboarding. Not a given, seeing as I live in a place where both mountains and snow are scarce to non-existent.
  • Visit some of the European biohacking groups. High on my list are BiologiGaragen in Copenhagen, La Paillasse in Paris, brmlab in Prague, London Hackspace, MadLab in Manchester, and Cathal's lab in Cork.
  • Explore Amazon's EC2.
  • Push the Berlin biohacking efforts forward.
  • Get back into the habit of going swimming regularly. Because swimming is awesome.
  • Visit old friends who are scattered across the globe.
  • Explore the European arctic further.
  • Explore the science-y potential of the Stattgarten urban gardening project. That includes breeding, instrumenting, botanical drawing, microscopy, and more.
  • More microscopy.
  • Reading, lots of it.
  • Convert my recently acquired apartment from a place where I keep my boxes of stuff into a place that feels like home.
  • Get the University of Reading's self-cloning experiments kit and work with it.
  • Explore the possibilities of genetic manipulation without a BSL1 license.
  • Implement and test the transilluminator concepts that have been living in my drawer for way too long.
  • Try Sanger sequencing.
  • Try commercial sequencing.
  • Learn more about metagenomics to a point where I can carry out a small metagenomics project.
  • Collaborate with some of my favourite people on some interesting projects.
  • Collaborate more in general.
  • Implement and test the lab-in-a-backpack concept that has been living in my drawer for way too long.
  • Moar bioinformatics.
  • Draw and paint.

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