While I don’t think it was my best year overall, 2023 contained some of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
Prior years in review:
I stayed in LA, the first year I haven’t moved to a new city since 2017.
I drove in a giant circle around North America to make a feature-length film.
I gave an impromptu tech talk about logic.
I made a mobile app in a month.
My total number of Haskell mentees passed 30.
I completed a course on digitally sculpting humans.
I got a new piano teacher! (The old one recommended the switch, so it’s all good.) I also upgraded my digital piano.
Some of my favorites games I played for the first time this year were Tunic, Dead Space (the 2023 remake), and The Forest Quartet.
I replayed Limbo, Hollow Knight, and Journey which are all great.
I finally watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Breaking Bad.
I finished 83 books this year, which is a record for the last 10 years at least (probably I read more sometime when I was a kid). Of those, 22 were fiction, an unusually high percentage for me.
My favorite fiction books of the year were There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, Mort by Terry Pratchett, and Permutation City by Greg Egan. I also read/watched Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which was great, but better as a watch than a read.
The best nonfiction book I read was Quantum Field Theory, as Simply as Possible by A. Zee, followed by Robert Sapolsky’s Determined.
I read a bit more outside of my wheelhouse than usual, including Cuneiform: Ancient Scripts by Finkel and Taylor, Conflict is not Abuse by Sarah Schulman, and The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
I drove to Texas.1