Dilip
<
[email protected]> 28 Dec 2023
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2023.
It's the end of 2023. I thought I should first tell you all that I'm
alive, I'm still here and I'm doing alright. 2023 has been crazy for
me, a lot of things have happened - some good, some not so good, and
so, it's time to review this year.
The big stuff.
==============
The most significant change for me in 2023 is that I changed jobs. I
still do the same thing I've was previously doing (embedded systems,
autonomous vehicles, etc). The new job is fun, I don't think the new
team is as social as what we had at the old job. But the old job no
longer exists, that company itself no longer exists - so it doesn't
matter I suppose.
One of my best friends got married and another of my best friend is
about to get married. That makes me the last person in our graduating
class to be single, and boy am I single. There aren't any dating
prospects on the horizon at the moment. I have no idea how any of this
will resolve itself, and I'll be lying if I said I am completely at
ease with the way things are going right now.
My parents spent some time with me this year and it's probably the best
my relationship with my parents has been in a decade easily. They've
learned to treat me as an adult and I've learned to ignore them when
they're being unreasonable. Clearly everything isn't perfectly ok with
us, but hey - this is a great place to be considering the past decade.
Finally, I have started thinking about what I want my next career move
to be a little more seriously. I'm a builder at heart and I know I want
to keep building things that people want and need. I've been playing
with the idea of starting my own firm and building products myself and
running my own business. I've spent over 8 months writing code (and
throwing away a lot of it) looking for a good business opportunity that
I can meet with my skills. So far, no real breakthrough but I remain
optimistic.
The little stuff.
=================
I read a bunch of amazing books this year. Complexity by Mitchell
Waldop is probably the most influential book I've read in 2023. It's an
old book with old ideas, but they were completely new to me. I can
strongly recommend it. The next most interesting book I read was
probably The Box by Marc Levinson. It's a book on intermodal containers
(think shipping containers) and was far more interesting than my
initial expectations going into the book. Finally, I managed to read
the UK edition of Forge of the High Mage by Ian C Esselmont and it
lived up to the rest of the series. I had a ton of fun reading it.
In terms of music, I discovered that I like Lana Del Rey this year.
Yes, I've been living under a rock, I hadn't checked out much of her
work before and she is very very mainstream. Despite all of this, I
really like her work. I get where she is coming from. She feels
authentic, a very rare trait in song writers these days. If she is
faking any of this, she's doing a real good job of it - so much so that
I'd be skeptical that anyone can fake soo many nuances so convincingly
about aspects of a lifestyle that only a few people actually
experience.
Frieren is absolutely the best thing on TV this year. It's an
incredible anime with fantastic execution behind it. The stories are
beautiful. The characters are layered and complex. The relationships
are delicately handled. It's a work of art, highly recommend. I do not
recall anything else from this year as being particularly memorable in
terms of television or film.
ChatGPT-4 is obviously the most significant new technology in 2023. In
terms of actual use and impact, the only other new technology I can
think of that had the same order-of-magnitude impact was probably
github copilot. This technology is real, it matters a lot and do not
let the free chatgpt-3.5 version sway your opinion on this technology.
This is the real deal.
