Cerrisian Blog

It’s easy!

1. Do background research in an area that interests you
2. Find the fundamental papers, re-implement them
3. Try to think of fundamental things you could change, do research to see if anyones done them
4. If they have, take their papers and re-implement them
5. Find a small way that you can change a fundamental assumption or extend it
6. Implement your extension and compare
7. Write it up and publish it

Now, I just need to explain heursitics and techniques to do each one of these

Today I realized that I was using my favorite time management system autofocus and superfocus [link] incorrectly. I was only going through one page at a time, instead of cycling to the next page when I reached the point of “nothing standing out”. Needless to say, things are much better now! I’m no longer stuck staring at bad tasks on a page.

One trick that I’ve finally absorbed from mind tools is that of “recall” after reading material. In short, after reading a section of material, I go over it in my mind and determine the fundamental concepts. Then I generally record this understanding in my own words in a mind map. This is also the point where it would make sense to put it in a spaced repetition system.

I’ve been thinking of how to do GUI mockups, and I realized that videos are a great way to do this. Thus started my open source animation odyssey! Synfig looks pretty good.

In the same vein, I’m also obsessing about paper prototyping and GUI mockups. Which leads me to denim and pencil for firefox. Basically, they allow for rapid development of hyperlinked mockups.

Now, it’s time to go back through my “at home” autofocus notebook.