If 2013 was the year I shook up my life, and 2014 was the year I learned how to succeed in it, 2015 was about challenging myself not to accept the easiest trajectory. 2015 was a busy year and it threw interesting things my way. Sometimes that was difficult, even hopeless, but I will never forget you 2015.
1. Public speaking – I did so much public speaking in 2014 that I felt like I needed a break from it this year, but that certainly didn’t happen. I spoke at 6 events this year
– Data Point Live, New York
– Data Jawn, Philadelphia
– Data Point Live, San Francisco
– Games using the HTML5 canvas, Philly Javascript Devs
– Thinking in Data, Data Science Philly
– Directives as Components, Angular-Philly
It would be shocking to me if I did more than one or two events in 2016, but that’s what I said last year, too.
2. bengarvey’s brain – I created a twitter bot using twitter_ebooks to guess what I’m really thinking about. He tweets about every 9 hours and if you favorite his tweets, he might start bugging you. Some choice tweets:
Interesting points are WWI, WWII, and putting together a swingset.
— bengarvey's brain (@bengarvey_brain) November 28, 2015
@lauren__ipsum in case it isn't obvious, there are more drugs but only one internet.
— bengarvey's brain (@bengarvey_brain) December 4, 2015
Fact: The friendliest people on PATCO are still 6 people alive who were born in the 1800s
— bengarvey's brain (@bengarvey_brain) September 2, 2015
3. Rocket Booster – I worked on a fun Jetpack Joyride clone with the kids called Rocketbooster. It’s not 100% complete, but it’s fun. It takes forever to load all the game assets, so be patient.
I probably spent more time making the music for Rocketbooster than programming it. All the songs are available here on soundcloud.
4. Work
I’m coming up on 3 years at RJMetrics and just got promoted to Engineering Manager. I wrote cool stuff including our new Data Warehouse Manager, a huge improvement to dashboard sharing, and some crazy tricks to get data out of Amazon Redshift. I also spent an extended tour of duty leading our support team to crush the support queue.
5. Work Part 2
I won the RJMetrics chili cook off thanks to the now “award winning” Ben’s Awesome Chipotle Chili.
6. Odyssey of the Mind
I’m coaching Sasha’s Odyssey of the Mind team this year! We just started practicing and it’s been wild.
7. Trello
I’ve been using Trello for years, but now I’m using it for everything including a shared grocery list.
8. The Bentindo Entertainment System
I gave Jake a raspberry pi powered game system for Christmas this year I white-labeled as the Bentindo. This was the image on the back of the box.
9. Books I Read
REAMDE by Neal Stephensen
Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald Reinertsen
The Call of Cthulu by HP Lovecraft
Ender’s Game by Orsen Scott Card
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
What If? by Randall Munroe
The Innovators by Walter Iassacson
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Axe Cop Vol.1 by Malachi Nicole
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
10. Moves / TV
Interstellar
Master of None
Cosmos
Black Mirror
11. Wine
The Formula Shiraz by Small Gully Wines
12. Music
Still listening to The Blow’s Paper Television weekly. Ok daily.
My favorite album released this year is Ratatat’s Magnifique
Other albums I enjoyed (not necessarily new)
Bleached’s Ride Your Heart
Bass Drum of Death’s GB City
Lana Del Ray’s Ultraviolence (but wow is it uncomfortable)
Bully’s Feels Like
Playlist of songs I’m super into right now
Especially this one