Now that I'm on unexpected gap period due to a kind of voluntary redundancy a couple of weeks ago I'm wondering how to keep my hand in software development yet roll on full steam ahead with my really enthusiastic plans to indulge my other personal interests. One of my ideas for this coming year is to finally learn Classical Tibetan (#tibetan) and inspired by CodePen I'm pondering writing an online markdown editor with support for Classical Tibetan, phonetics and maybe later simple auto-English vocabulary translation.

Sadly not all my belongings and books made it safely out of long term storage and I've lost my copy of Translating Tibetan from Buddhism which now costs an absolute fortune to replace. However I do have a copy of S Hodge's book on Introducing Classical Tibetan which relies heavily on Wylie system rather than U-chen script and I think it would make for good test material for an online editor. With the disappearance of the Tibetan Language Student website (frustratingly recommended as a starting point in the http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/classical-tibetan-reader Classical Tibetan Reader) I'm wondering if I should tack on some introductory material as I progress.

Well, I guess we'll have to see how it pans out as I'm now off to get a Typhoid vaccination for a pilgrimage to Buddhist sites in Northern India. Could be an exciting year coming up?