sprout Summary
A running list of things that sound fun to do but require a medium-to-high amount of effort to plan. If you want to participate in any of these, contact me!
recurring
things that will happen or are currently happening at regular intervals.
flower piano
Every year in ~September, Golden Gate Park transforms into a public concert hall. It would be fun to perform there!
Here’s a list of pieces I’ve prepared / or are preparing by year:
- 2025: Chopin Ballade No. 1
- 2026: Solo piano arrangement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1st movement)
Yosemite
This is a recurring event that will hopefully happen ~1x a year. The 3rd annual Yosemite trip is on the horizon for October 2026!
Inspiration:
- Free Solo (2018). lol jk. unless?
- The macOS X 10 default wallpaper.
- Continued possession of the ability to rebut anyone who unironically “V1 in my gym“‘s by falling off every V0 at Camp 4.
Details: Yosemite trip template
- Bonus: go to Bishop or Red Rocks at some point
making music in general
weekly jam sessions ongoing! hope to get back into production soon.
dinner parties
Getting a bunch of great people together and making great food for them is one of the most immediately rewarding ways to spend time with others. also who says no to free food?
- finish compiling recipes.
- write up some full menu drafts and ingredient sourcing lists.
planning in progress
things that are very likely to happen within the next year, and have sufficient buy-in where needed.
run a marathon
2026 will be the year of the half marathon! i hope to run at least 2 half marathons this year, and then run my first full marathon sometime in 2027 (or late 2026, if feeling especially ambitious).
- need to train more seriously:
-
1mi average / day
- if i can run like 10mi without dying then i’ll feel pretty good about it
-
red rocks
yosemite, but in the nevada desert?
aspirational
things i definitely want to do at some point, but haven’t started planning and don’t know when.
eclipse chasing
My former astronomy professor Alex Fillipenko has seen nearly 20 eclipses and considers each one a life-changing experience. He also tells us that he’ll retroactively fail us if we have the opportunity to see one and choose not to.
The next easily viewable eclipse will be on August 12, 2026 from Iceland or Northern Spain. This may be a logistical nightmare since there aren’t any major cities that go through the path of totality.
The easiest opportunity in the near future will be on July 22, 2028 from Australia.
bike across the netherlands
https://www.holland-cycling.com/
Bike from the southernmost point to the northernmost point of the mainland Netherlands.
Inspiration:
- I’ve done chunks of this (namely Aachen → Maastricht → Roermond) and would like to do the whole thing at some point.
- Best country to bike around by a long shot. Nothing even comes close.
Details: ~500 km of (very flat lol) cycling from Maastricht to Eemshaven.
- Maastricht to Amsterdam through Eindhoven and Utrecht
- Amsterdam to Gronigen/ via Afsluitdijk
- Afsluitdijk is currently closed to bicycle traffic due to ongoing construction, so this route would likely need to be done after construction is complete (late 2020s?)
- Rent the fanciest Swapfiets ebike. €74.90. https://swapfiets.nl/en-NL/ebikes
Buy-in: anyone willing to fly to Amsterdam and spend an entire week riding a bike. This would also be fun as a solo trip.
Opensauce Exhibition
Details: https://opensauce.com/exhibit-application/
- Make something really cool and silly to show off at next year’s opensauce.
- Most likely something hardware related (or maybe a game? or both?)
- Now soliciting wacky ideas.
- TODO: assemble the PCB badges from this year
- find the partlist
- buy parts
- find time to run a mini-workshop
random ideas
sketches for things i don’t know i want to do yet, and wouldn’t be too sad if i never did them. but they did sound cool to me at some point in time!
visit every national park
picked up one of these scratch off national park posters recently. would be fun to collect em all!
travel bucket list
some places on the top of my list to visit + spend some meaningful amount of time in:
- various parts of japan that aren’t tokyo
- taiwan
- singapore
- australia + new zealand
- switzerland
- norway/sweden/finland
- fontainebleau, france
computational art
multimodal creativity through computers and the internet.
List of inspiration, people, and orgs to track:
hiking/backpacking in big sur
or surfing, or camping. to be decided!
Run an ARG/treasure hunt
Inspiration:
- Jet Lag: The Game
- Alternate reality game: Wikipedia
- A friend hosted a scavenger hunt in SF (2025/04) and it was so much fun + really well organized! Alamo Square → Ocean Beach, ~8 miles walking/running over 3 hours.
- Could build a slightly larger-scale game in a few ways
- Allow bikes/transit. Make it advantageous to have local knowledge on how to most efficiently get from point A to point B.
- Have some form of interaction between teams (like challenges, CTF-style things, sabotage)
- if ARG-style, can have it go over multiple days with no time pressure.
- Could build a slightly larger-scale game in a few ways
Buy-in: looking for organizers (and time).
biking across the golden gate bridge
Possible route below, yoinked from this guide.
completed
things i’ve done and may or may not do again in the future.
train retreat
Inspiration:
- the scenic route, a blog post by Jasmine Sun about doing exactly this
- I’ve done SJ→Seattle, Seattle→Vancouver, and SJ→LA on Amtrak. Some of my best and most memorable in-transit experiences so far.
Details: Amtrak from San Jose Diridon to either Seattle/Vancouver or Denver. Stay a couple days at the destination, fly back.
Buy-in: find a group of people who:
- likes trains
- are excited by the idea of sitting in one for 24+ hours with no internet
- have an infinite backlog of things to read/write/think about deeply