pravenj

Leaving programming after 25 years of it, I wanted to do something that will help world be a better place even after I am gone. Trees have always appealed to me. Hence local fruit trees -- sell fruits to run farm once fruiting happens in a few years. Local plants are localized to climatic and soil conditions of the area thereby requiring the least nutrition, water and care.

Its going to be a bit slow from here for few reasons, I have to learn to grow saplings faster and out of season, make fertilizer year round and figure out how to ensure plants are growing. I have figured out some of it, but financial resource crunch will hit me in next 6-8 months. So now trying to come up with ways to handle that.

Help in any of the above is extremely welcome. Does anyone feel social impact funds will want to look at me?

Comment · 5 years ago

My daugther(18) and I(47) create a comic series at https://www.instagram.com/arghhhcomics/. We use Inkscape and Gimp for them. Now we have animated series coming up, called Misunderstood, where daughter is exploring blender. She is just starting, but loving it.

Comment · 5 years ago

Having mentored quite a few gifted science students, the best thing that I have found is to give them a problem, give them a bunch of things and tools that they can break and tell them find a solution.

Find time to discuss various solutions or find mentors for your child who can do the same. Let the child understand more, not by making, but by breaking the problem down to the smallest units possible and see the connection.

With the same philosophy we are working to build one room labs in public schools in Nepal called tinker lab (www.tinker-lab.org)

Comment · 5 years ago

Here is a list of things I have been doing from the time I left programming 2 years ago, roughly having worked for around 24 years. I was left with lots of time and didn't want to work only in one thing like programming before. So I got into small projects that meant something for me. Might be of help.

-- Learning music for last 4 years, mainly to get into a hobby. I put in about 1-2 hours of practice per day. Thinking of building a course for people with absolutely no prior knowledge of music, but I have not started yet. Have got a mindmap going here - https://www.viewpedia.org/musicCourse-map.png

-- Mentoring, at NYAS ((www.nyas.org) and invidiually. Perfect as it does not take too much time, but connects to lot of young minds. Hope to increase and maybe we should create a network of mentors as someone suggested being mentor in the comments. I have not found a mentor network yet.

-- Lokopakar (www.lokopakar.com) - for mentoring and another unique program called Strength Together, that is a peer-to-peer network to help adolescent girls in developing countries overcome their feeling of "I am not Enough"

-- Tinker Lab (www.tinker-lab.org) - I found a group of guys who were into breaking things apart and seeing what was inside and trying to put it back (never really making it). We are now working to make a lab for public schools in Nepal where young, eager, self learning students to do the same. The first lab is coming up within the month.

-- Farming, fruits for fun, vegetables commercially. Now thinking of adding bee keeping and a farm stay program. I spend only the weekends on it as others handle everyday work better than I.

-- Viewpedia (www.viewpedia.org) Still left with time as I gave up social media and most of TV. So learning about my own culture and building a website to provide collection of youtube videos of mostly unwritten Nepali culture. Currently focused on music and dance.