> Also any personal advice is welcome, to the extent that it is possible in such an anonymous setting.
That's your choice, not mine.
> none of the ideas I thought about earlier seem that great anymore.
This is very common. I have this when I shower ;) Go stand under the shower long enough and sure, one idea after another. Mostly because I can't access the internet when I'm showering so there is no context. Then as I go and check feasibility, others active in the field, invariably the majority of them pale.
> what to work on ?
Without any stated goals this is a very very hard question.
You'd have to at least come up with a couple of boundary conditions, such as how long you can afford to work on this without any income, how much time you are willing to expend, whether it has to be a strictly one man/woman job, your skill level and so on.
That you quit grad school doesn't mean much, I've seen people with impressive degrees that would not be able to run an icecream stand, let alone a software or service business, and I've seen high school drop-outs that were doing just that and doing fine.
As for small concrete problems, if what you are looking for is work experience instead of running your own start-up for a make-or-break effort not to land in a job somewhere there is a middle ground, it is consulting.
If you're good you could simply hire yourself out by the hour to software companies or companies needing software written for them in your region. If you do that well then roughly 1/4 of your time 'booked' should pay for basic living expenses.
Then you still have 3/4 left to work on you own stuff.
Thanks, you are right that I wasn't specific enough and I agree about impressive degrees and such, basicly that's why I quit grad-school :). I would say I have decent coding skills and good knowledge of machine learning, computer vision and related theory, as well as the hacker's hubris of not being afraid to start working on anything, no matter how hard it seems, with the hope of 'picking it up' on the go. Also the timeframe is difficult to specify, because one hopes to start a hobby project that turns into a lifetime of work (as Linux did for Linus for ex.)... Obviously if it becomes self-sustaining, it's perfect, if not, it can be done on the side with a day-job or such...
There's a new Netflix Prize coming up; this one will be time-limited. Most contestants shared a lot and made it a very interesting experience; many got contacts in industry that got them good jobs or started their own companies.
A program to track your hours, something to make a contact database and a todo list. All of those are pretty essential.
Billing and such you can do with any word processor.
If you go this route make sure that you reserve enough for taxes once the money starts coming in. Plenty of people fall into that trap. A good rule of thumb is to take the 'gross' tax rate and reserve that much right away whenever a bill gets paid on a savings account.
Then when tax time comes around you have your deductibles and you end up with some money left over instead of a hole to fill.
Gerald Weinberg's two "Secrets of" books on consulting are a pretty good start. They're actually good for anyone who gets paid to give advice, not just professional consultants. Highly recommend..
That's your choice, not mine.
> none of the ideas I thought about earlier seem that great anymore.
This is very common. I have this when I shower ;) Go stand under the shower long enough and sure, one idea after another. Mostly because I can't access the internet when I'm showering so there is no context. Then as I go and check feasibility, others active in the field, invariably the majority of them pale.
> what to work on ?
Without any stated goals this is a very very hard question.
You'd have to at least come up with a couple of boundary conditions, such as how long you can afford to work on this without any income, how much time you are willing to expend, whether it has to be a strictly one man/woman job, your skill level and so on.
That you quit grad school doesn't mean much, I've seen people with impressive degrees that would not be able to run an icecream stand, let alone a software or service business, and I've seen high school drop-outs that were doing just that and doing fine.
As for small concrete problems, if what you are looking for is work experience instead of running your own start-up for a make-or-break effort not to land in a job somewhere there is a middle ground, it is consulting.
If you're good you could simply hire yourself out by the hour to software companies or companies needing software written for them in your region. If you do that well then roughly 1/4 of your time 'booked' should pay for basic living expenses.
Then you still have 3/4 left to work on you own stuff.
best of luck!