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2015: Year in Review

2015 was a busy year of coding, travelling and learning photography. Here are a few highlights, along with my favourite movies, TV shows, podcasts and articles.

Code

  • A lot of Ruby on Rails development
  • Web and iOS side projects I hope to finish in 2016
  • 1,700 commits on GitHub

1600 commits

Movies

I watched 70 movies in 2015, down from 100 in 2014.

My favourites:

  • Youth
  • Mad Max: Fury Road
  • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Youth Mad Max: Fury Road Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

TV Shows

My favourites this year:

  • Gravity Falls ★★★★★ — a surprise favourite.
  • Fargo (Season 1) ★★★★★
  • Game of Thrones ★★★★★
  • True Detective ★★★★½
  • Rick and Morty ★★★★½

Books

I set a Goodreads goal of 50 books and read about half that, mostly classics and programming books. In 2016, I’d like to add more variety: business, science fiction and fantasy. The Martian by Andy Weir was one of my favourites this year.

Traveling

I visited the Netherlands this year and could see myself living and working there.

Photography

I decided to learn photography before my trip to the Netherlands and got an old DSLR the day before the flight. I’d never used one, so I spent part of the flight reading the manual. Getting the focus and focal length right took some practice.

In the second half of the trip, I switched to my iPhone. It was easier to use and I got some photos I liked, though it struggled in low light. Weight was another reason: the DSLR weighed 1.3 kg, compared with about 100 g for my phone. After a few hours of walking, my neck felt the difference.

Back home, I noticed a few recurring problems in the DSLR photos. I’d shot most at the widest focal length, with noticeable barrel distortion. I’d also left autofocus on the centre point, and focusing often took a few seconds. Shooting JPEG instead of RAW left me less room to adjust the photos afterwards. A few things to work on next time.

Music

Top albums:

  • Blurryface by twenty one pilots. My favourite discovery this year. I liked the mix of styles, and it was the first album where I enjoyed every song.
  • Art Angels by Grimes
  • Magnifique by Ratatat

Blurryface Art Angels Magnifique

I also picked up a ukulele, inspired by twenty one pilots. Maybe I’ll record a few covers next year.

Podcasts

  • Cortex. CGP Grey and Myke Hurley discuss productivity and whatever else comes up. Their conversations made this my favourite podcast of the year.
  • Under the Radar. I’d stopped listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast: episodes could run for two hours, and I wanted more development talk. I liked the short, 15-minute format of David Smith’s Developer Perspective, so Under the Radar was a good fit: 30 minutes on development with Smith and Marco Arment.
  • If you listen to one episode, I’d recommend Developer on Fire’s The Pareto Principle and Stoic Philosophy with David Heinemeier Hansson.

Cortex Under the Radar

Articles