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Building Projects

Yes, it's been over a week since I last publicly mentioned anything about my life; I'm acknowledging that and I'll tell Google to remind me to share an informative event or idea every day.

Moving on to more productive events, in the past two nights, I've developed and debugged an Android app I named "Countdown" to constantly remind myself of my impending goals. It's not enough to get a scheduled reminder from Google Now; I need a home screen widget to constantly look at and reflect upon. Sure, once the Google Assistant fleshes itself out in a bit (and I do have more to say about that), maybe it could find better methods of persuading me to effectively carrying out my goals. However, as of right now, it's much easier to make a home screen widget for Android, a platform I've obsessed with for the past 10 months.

The Countdowns app consists of a home screen widget and some simple configuration UI boilerplate I assembled with the standard Android Support Library and FirebaseUI. Since the app uses Firebase, the countdowns a user creates with the Android app are available cross-device and cross-platform given I actually make an iOS app and/or web app. (The latter is more likely given I'm actually learning JavaScript and actively testing out web frameworks for another project which is orders of magnitude more massive than Countdowns.)

Now, being honest, I didn't just make this because it's a three-day weekend in the US; I made this because I plan to learn at MIT. While I can attempt to make myself feel guilty for not deferring gratification, I've learned that I only have 715 days until the class of 2019 regular action deadline.

That's something to be incredibly worried about.

Counting out the eight hours of school-related activity every day, that only leaves perhaps half that time in hours to create the next groundbreaking technology or discovery. Deferring any more gratification is going to kill any chance I have at going at my dream university. While I'm not calling it a New Year's resolution for fear of chickening out on it, a major goal of mine this year is to expand my scope as a productive member of the society I live in and, attempting to be as least cliche as possible, make my unforgettable mark on the world.

As for MIT, my expanded explanation is coming soon, but I can say this: the world should expect a lot more of me. (I couldn't think of anything witty to say, but it's almost midnight.)

Good night.

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