The FreeBASE (2011-2014)
This was the first project that gave me the illusion that somehow I was going to be big. The FreeBASE was a video game console built with the off-the-shelf parts that played free games and media. The swath of open-source games and freely-available content made the console quite the tantalizing concept. However, despite all the effort that went into design, cost estimation, prototyping, marketing and even building a team; this project lead to nowhere.
The most obvious flaw was in the business model. How do you make money when everything is free except for the console? Unlike other manufacturers like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, we couldn’t sell our system at a loss and recuperate them with licensing fees since we had no licensing of any kind. This poor business idea and inability to market the system properly meant that the first step was failure.
FreeBASE was a project destined to fail and never exist in it’s designed form. I remember spending hours learning Blender to design a compact system that used regular off-the-shelf x86 components. Unlike our bigger brothers, we couldn’t put everything on a small PCB and call it day; putting it in a tiny box.
I wrote a blog post about this that’s no longer on this website due to long hiatus in blogging. I spoke to a friend who was closely involved with me in the project and we agreed that the system was designed on an emotional basis. The imaginary walls that we encountered put a stop to our tracks.
We, as a team, didn’t feel like we learned our lessons from this project, and were destined to do more mistakes in the future. It’s not enough to fail but understand where the failures came from. Despite this project being dead for a long time, I don’t feel like I learned my lesson.
There’s even a stupid promo video that was made for this blunder.
NoteBox (2014)
Another attempt at fame that went into disaster at very last moment with a kickstarter campaign that never took off let alone published. The idea was a modular laptop that used off-the-shelf parts that would allow customers to design their own system with crazy ideas such as a DVB-T tuner and even a software defined radio.
It even went to point where I actually built a prototype that was fully-functional, a laptop made with my own hands. The failed kickstarter campaign was full of details up to a concept drawing and all sorts of other details that I wouldn’t even think of now such as our implication in the open-source world.
I’ll admit that near the end of the project, I got too scared to continue. I realized that it was too much to swallow especially being an individual project. The fear let me to giving up and realizing that I didn’t actually have the resources to make this possible with the biggest challenge was making it as depicted by the concept drawing, and yes, there was one, the I actually drew with my very hands.
Flight Simulation (1998-current)
I feel in love with aviation after my first ride on a plane. I wanted to relive those memories somehow and soon discovered there was something called simulation. When I was young, I got a hold of a copy of Flight Simulator 98. I was too young to take things seriously and the aircraft bundled with the game were incredibly simplistic. As I grew older, I started buying addons for the game which were more study-level but I was reasonable: just two of them, an airliner and a single-seater. However, my collector mindset kicked-in and I bought so much addons that I never ever would use all of them.
My goal was to prepare a YouTube channel with various adventures flying different kinds of planes. However, I never had the energy or the will to actually learn the procedures and practice. It was always a dream and bought a bunch of equipment impulsively like a podcast-quality microphone and an HDMI recorder. Soon after they were sold on classifieds.
Later on, I was really impressed with X-Plane 11 and bought a dozen addons for the simulator some not even being installed in the first place. Out of all the addons bought, I haven’t learned a single one of them.
My dream is to know a plane inside-out and fly on VATSIM with the correct procedures and ATC phraseology but it’s still a pipe dream.
I think about this ‘project’ quite often but these days are more and more full and I don’t know if I’ll have the time to learn unless I neglect say work.
Eventually, I deleted all the installers for FS2004 and lost my precious collection that will be a mess to recover. X-Plane 11 is currently installed on my system with all of the addons that I purchased. The last time I started that thing was several months ago. A unread collection of FCOMs, tutorial, QRHs, checklists all remain unread on my tablet.
Reading (1996-current)
School taught that the most sacred thing in the Universe was reading, something that I didn’t disagree with. As I went by the years through elementary and secondary school, I was made to read more and more books. However, they were all fiction and that left a very sour taste in my mouth. The last book I read was The House of Spirits and I promised myself to never read a novel ever again.
Little did I realized that I was missing on a pile of knowledge that is hidden within these pages. I bought a tablet, got the eBooks I wanted (Library Genesis) and only sat the first night reading a book. After that, it never happened again and I haven’t made progress ever since.
I’m intimidated by long running tasks for some reason no matter how small the tasks are divided in. When it comes to read a book, I make the biggest excuses not to do it, usually going to sleep. I have a list of books that I want to read but I feel like I have failed myself so much.
Personal Website and Related Projects (2013-current)
This one bothers me a lot. What started as my portfolio to show off, I wanted to grow into a window to myself. I started this blog which has been pretty active and kept cleaning up my website when it got messy. The centre of attention was this blog but I soon realized that no one read it. I’m just a nobody on the Internet and no one cares about what I’m thinking about or why I’m angry that day. My life isn’t exciting with a world full of travelling or anything like that. This was on purpose, but not having a niche that my blog-mind focused set me up for failure.
My projects also never caught on. Counting on what archive.org has shown from my past, I probably have had a total of 15 projects many of them thrown out or in unliked sections of my website. Several incomplete and code removed from my GitHub. My resume makes me seem like I’ve done a lot and even though it’s true, they’re not in the complete state that they’re perceived to be in.
Even the projects that on their way to fruition are unpopular. The only way I make myself feel better is by telling myself that they are ‘passion projects’ only done out of the love for whatever medium I’m expressing or what I’m trying to sell.
The store page has not led to a single sale yet. No one listens to my online radio except me. My suggestion boxes and emails have not received a single thing in their inboxes.
No matter how much I yell on social media and plant my website on anything that allows me to put a link, I get nothing in return. I’m screaming at a door of an empty house. I wrote about this before, but I’m just a dot in the sky. Seen but easily forgotten. I consider this website a failure but it’s not going down.
I’m deeming myself as a failure, a really big one; I’ll never grow and will never learn from my lessons.