Dispatches from a Nomad: Welcome

Intro

Dear friends and family,

I’m starting a newsletter 🎉

Don’t worry I’m not trying to sell you anything…yet 😉

With all the traveling I’ve recently done and all the work I will be doing with the Recurse Center, I figured this would be the best way to keep y’all up-to-date in the life of Teon.

Just in case I haven’t told you about the Recurse Center, here’s a short description:

The Recurse Center is the retreat where curious programmers recharge and grow. The retreat is free and self-directed; it’s for you if you’re ready to work at the edge of your abilities, develop your volitional muscles, and learn generously.

Spend six or 12 weeks programming at the edge of your abilities alongside motivated peers—at no cost to you. Our optional recruiting services keep RC 100% free.

I will be focusing the next six weeks (but I might extend to twelve) on a personal project that is near and dear to my heart: ticket stubs! 🎟️

I have been collecting ticket stubs for the past twenty years. One goal of the project is to:

1. finish arranging the last few years of the book

2. digitize the scrapbook containing them

3. build a web app that showcasing the physical tickets, digitized

4. do some cool and useful machine learning with them all (image segmentation, OCR, NLP, etc.)

5. create a digital version of the tickets

6. build some tools to make some custom designed ones

My goal is to send a weekly newsletter out on Wednesdays. It’s going to be a mix of tactical work, my life on the road, and likely get personal. This project I’m working on is extremely personal, it’s a look into my personal life that I’m putting on display. I might overshare, but I think it will be good to write about how I’ve been feeling because the last few years have been extremely difficult, and I’ll be writing about what I’m doing to gain some balance back in my life. I think you’ll hear me talk about balance a lot because it is a big focus of mine this year. As well as being kind to myself.

Looking forward to sharing my journey with you all.

• Teon