Detritus of Empire for 2017

And as the sun rises on a new year lets have a different kind of coin.

January of course is named for Janus, a Roman deity who could look both forward and back at the same time.  Looking back is seldom a useful endevour but were I inclined to do so 2016 was personally a rather good year. Being a grandfather is fun.  Being a student a full generation and then some older than my peers is interesting.  I have traveled here and there, seen and done interesting things.  Regular readers would be bored by a recap.

So perhaps a look forward.

I expect to remain a student.  I am not sure which classes at the local Tech school I will take on but the universe of things I need to know more about is vast.  I could in addition to now being a mediocre machinist add to my repertoire and become mediocre at welding, or pneumatics, or programming.

Many of these topics overlap with another goal, to remain a teacher.  Robotics is great fun.  At the high end is the soon to launch FIRST robotics season.  We have the ingredients to be very good this year but of course a great season happens when none of the thousand little things that could go wrong do go wrong.   On the other end of the scale it is time to upgrade my long standing middle school robotics program.  Components have become quite affordable and I am no longer shackled to an employment schedule.

I expect to travel.  Like so many plans it assumes good health and no family crises.  Its Vindolanda in May and if all goes well a return to Italy either before or after.  There might be a Classic Summer Road Trip.  I might come up with something entirely new.

For writing I occasionally try to keep to a pattern.  I have things lined up such that I will plan one robotics post and one history related post per week for a few months.  The third post of the week will be "pot luck". Later of course archeology comes along.  I will try to stick to three times a week posting but after nearly six years of same I think an occasional variance is justified. 

It has been a busy year at Detritus of Empire.  If stats can be trusted, I have had a significant uptick in visitors of late.

Of course stats can't be trusted, not really.  When a topic of arcane interest suddenly has five hundred "hits" you can be sure most of them are automated 'bots from somewhere in the murk of Eastern Europe.

But they seem to cause no harm and are perhaps in their own way simply curious.  

So, to my human audience in 2016, Thanks!

To my non human audience, 01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 01110011 !