I keep hassling myself about how I'm not doing anything Productive, Interesting, and how I'm Not Smart Enough. A counter-voice in my mind keeps tacking the word 'yet' on to the end of those things: "You're not productive yet, interesting yet, smart enough yet."
Some little switch in my brain just isn't there. I don't know what to do; what direction to go in. I can imagine useful things in disciplines I'm not remotely skilled in (such as genetic enhancements that would come in handy), and I can learn with little or no problem (as long as it's not in a classroom; then I struggle), and I don't lack imagination.
Some...thing just doesn't quite connect. I can't think of useful software things to write; the ones I write tend to be little one-shot style pieces of crap. Maybe I really just don't have any good ideas.
Or, possibly, it could be that this is all just a MPD-esque end run around my problems with the GUICS. Quite possibly.
In the meantime, since I didn't get a lot done today except attempt to locate the source of net connections I didn't recognize on this machine, I plan to work as much of Sunday as possible. The two bars to this are, in order of importance:
I'm feeling the same things about myself, these days. I have this burning desire to contribute to the community that's given so much to me, but I haven't, yet. And I feel terrible about it.
I finally have a quest. A couple of them, even. The problem is that I have to learn so much before I can achieve them. I got stuck in this trap of "I want to do something worth doing, but I want to do it now".
So, I've picked a project, and I'm staying with it. And if this one doesn't pan out, then I'll try another project. I'm trying my hardest not to get discouraged in the mean time by the fact that my reading and studying in preparation produces nothing outside of myself. I'm remembering that that part is necessary to the rest.
I've been finding that reading about the fundamentals is producing results. I feel somehow better-armed. I don't just know coding, I'm beginning to learn some of the art of computing (even though it's not Knuth that I'm reading, at the moment
Keep reading. The projects will come, I'd think, and once they do, you'll already be prepared for them, rather than having to prepare for them as you go, like I'm doing. Good luck.
A Perl/Tk wrapper for Net::SSH::Perl of some kind.
A Perl/Tk wrapper for use Perl, something that would let me select journal entries by user, date, keyword, or some combination of the three. Oh, and it would let me save entries to a file if I wanted.
A Ruby port of Net::SSH::Perl, Spreadsheet::WriteExcel, and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel.
Better SQL-to-XML support for the DBI/DBD module(s). Start with Oracle please
Help Ben Trott and write Net::SSH::Perl::SCP
Well, hey, you wanted ideas - there you go. Also, don't hesitate to send in bug reports & questions to the authors of some of your favorite authors. Even if you didn't invent some great module, you can always help to make it better.
Just my 2 cents
