2014 Review

It's my annual year-in-review, note-form brain dump!

Reading

I read 40 books last year, with the following standouts:

  • Refactoring (Martin Fowler)
  • Envisioning Information (Edward Tufte)
  • The Disaster Artist (Greg Sestero)
  • Web Audio API (Boris Smus) --> read it online for free
  • Blankets (Craig Thompson)
  • Jimmy Corrigan (Chris Ware)
  • The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen)
  • Show Me The Numbers (Steven Few)
  • Antifragile (Nassim Taleb)
  • The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
  • The Wisdom of Anxiety (Alan Watts)

Music

I was well on track to discover exactly zero new music last year, until R&B legend D’Angelo came back from the dead to release Black Messiah in late December. While it's definitely not at Voodoo's level, I enjoy the new album, and at least it gave me something fresh to listen to. Looking forward to actively seeking out new music again in 2015.

Open Source

In 2014 it was time to learn a few technologies I'd had my eye on for a while:

  • d3, and data visualization in general
  • React.js
  • the Web Audio API

At the end of the year I had a few things to show for my efforts:

I'm also working on a Web Audio-related side project that will hopefully see the light of day at some point.

Work

Work was steady for 2014. A highlight was definitely implementing a few data visualisations with d3 (dataviz was obviously a major theme for the year).

Travel

Nada.

Exercise

Very little.

Misc

So it turns out there wasn't too much to write about (here) for 2014. My life last year was dominated by non-programming concerns, and was overall pretty damn intense and stressful. I begin 2015 refreshed, and extremely thankful for a lot of things in my life. One of my goals for the new year is to write here a little more– stay tuned for more questionable ramblings.