Bucket List

Career

  • ✅ Present at a conference
  • ✅ Be invited speaker at a conference
  • ✅ Publish a scientific paper
  • ✅ Publish a patent
  • ✅ Found a company – akhetonics.com
  • ✅ Reach 1M evaluation
  • ✅ Reach 10M evaluation
  • Reach 100M evaluation
  • Reach unicorn evaluation
  • A successful exit (⚠️ intentionally vague)

Hobby and adventure

  • Write a book
  • Learn to play an instrument or compose music
  • 🚧 Learn to make a website
  • 🚧 Add 24 pages per year
  • Learn how to make an Android app
  • Learn to sing

Travel

  • See the northern lights (I went to Norway specifically for this, enjoyed the Lofoten islands, saw no northern lights)
  • ✅ Road trip in a van (California)
  • ✅ Visit Japan

Visit every continent:

  • ✅ Europe
  • ☑️ Asia (only Japan so far)
  • ✅ North America
  • Africa
  • South America
  • Antarctica – how the hell do I even get there?
  • Australia

Sailing

  • 🚧 Get the sailboat license
  • Make a week+ trip on a sailboat with friends
  • Get my own sailboat and learn to fix it inside out
  • Install something in a sailboat
  • Repair something in a sailboat
  • Cross the Atlantic in a sailboat
  • Live on a sailboat

Flying

  • ✅ Fly on something
  • ✅ Get a SPL
  • ✅ Participate in a glider competition
  • 🚧 TMG license
  • PPL license
  • Fly to Italy and back for a long weekend or short holiday
  • Build my own plane

Diving

  • ✅ Get the open water diver certificate
  • ✅ Get the advanced open water diver certificate
  • ✅ Get the nitrox certificate
  • Get the deep dive certificate
  • Dive a place repeatedly for a mission (ghost nets, biology)
  • Dive on CCR (rebreather)
  • ✅ Dive a wreck (Zenobia in Cyprus)

Somethin specific to freediving:
These three happen to be more or less the requirements for the advanced freediver exam (AIDA 3):

  • Breath hold 3 minutes
  • 50m swimming pool apnea
  • 20m deep free dive
  • Experience freefall in freediving
  • Learn spearfishing
  • Catch a fish spearfishing

Life

  • ✅ Move abroad (twice: first the UK for 5 years and now Germany)
  • Live in yet another country
  • ✅ Have a child (Hi Fosco!)
  • Live in a hangar/workshop
  • Have a DIY workshop at home
  • Speak German decently – let's say B2
  • Keep annoying anyone who puts pineapple on pizza
  • Track spending every year

Health

  • Go back to 90 kilos
  • 4× activity every week for 1 year (home gym counts)
  • ✅ Cycle to work (when weather allows)

Crazy Ideas

  • Drive a racecar on track
  • Go to space – I can take suborbital…
  • Reform the broken publishing system (write a post on this)
  • Win the Nobel prize so that I can:
    • Wear funny t-shirts at conferences
    • Make a whole slideshow in Comic Sans
    • Publish only on ArXiV or similar
  • Write a funny paper and upload it on ArXiV
  • Write a serious paper alone and upload it to ArXiV

People to Meet

Not autograph signing — something like "hey, would you like to stop for dinner? Why not!" or "Should we do a project together?"

  • Mr. Rip (Giorgio Cognome)
  • Giuseppe Bucciarelli (Maruzza)
  • Alessandro Masala (Shy Breaking Italy)
  • Jen-Hsun Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO)
  • Lisa Su (AMD CEO)
  • Linus Torvalds
  • Margaret Elaine Hamilton
  • The Obamas
  • Lex Fridman (be invited on his podcast)
  • Mario Draghi

Reverse Bucket List

The rules:
It must be something I won't do.
It must be something that seems fun or rewarding to others.

  • Cheat on my wife
  • Become a smoker
  • Look into paranormal / religion for answers – i.e. stop following logic / science
  • Buy stuff to show off
  • Heal from imposter syndrome (fucking annoying but keeps me grounded)