Happy New Year !

Writing

I wanted to focus on writing this year, which worked well for me. One of the key factors was to block thirty minutes every morning just after waking up to write (or stare at a blank page). The second thing that worked for me was to release articles and essays every two-week and commit to a publishing date in advance. The first week is finding references, researching, and just putting words on a page. The following week would be mostly editing.

Things I wrote :

• I thought about our relationship with objects in Material attachments or sticky objects.
• On Japanese tools, list some of my favourite tools and what makes them attractive
• I studied Stoicism and transformed my notes into a series of helpful tips for developers :
  • Being a pessimist is not such a bad thing
  • No bugs & problems; you might be doing your job wrong
  • How to debug oneself
• How to approach a coding problem lists common starting points for solving a problem
• I wrote an article explaining how data compression works : Data compression and the meaning of Life
• I played a bit too much Wordle. What is the best word to start a game of Wordle?
• Esoteric websites or websites doing one thing well
• An essay on types and categories
• I cleaned my bookshelf and wrote about some strategies for tidying bookshelves : You probably won’t read those books

Things I’ve been working on

Algodeck

I’ve been continuing to work on the illustrations for my upcoming deck of cards on computer science. This project took a very long time, but I hope 2023 will be the year I will finish it. I’ve been happy that my graphic design skills has developed and refined with this project.

Eye

A self-contained HTML poem on focus and impermanence : Eye. Last year I made The Chair. I love a single HTML page that includes everything to render something on the screen. It’s a mixed media. You add CSS, images, JavaScript, and SVG like a collage and can create anything.

Things I learned

IPFS

I worked on w3name and w3.storage. They are developers’ tools for adding and managing file upload to IPFS, a distributed file storage network where files are unique, and content addressed. For example, NFTs are generally uploaded to IPFS. Working on those projects was an excellent introduction to IPFS. Working with immutable and content-addressed files makes developing an application for users quite challenging. It is most of the time hard to see the benefit of using IPFS over any other cloud storage like S3. However, I see a big potential for public data (e.g. museum collection, research data) and things like NFTs.

Cloudflare workers and durable objects

While working on w3.storage, I had the opportunity to learn about Cloudflare workers and durable objects. They are both exciting technologies, and I will consider them for other projects.

Notebook and solander box making

I learned how to make notebooks and boxes with the London Centre from Book Arts. That was a delightful activity away from computers. I’m now using the box to store old notebooks.

I’m planning on creating a new box for index cards.

Blender

I didn’t use Blender for a very long time. I started using it when it still fitted on a floppy disk ! I missed using it daily. This year, a perfect occasion arose to dust off my 3D modelling skills : a house renovation. I modeled the house from the floor plan, which helped me make decisions on space and layout.

I also made a bonus GIF to play with the physic engine :

I hope to make Blender an integral tool in my work. I want to learn how to use the new Geometry Nodes.

Travels

With the pandemic, it felt like a very long time since I went on a holiday. I had the excuse to travel for two weddings this year ! One in Poland and the other in Mauritius. Lucky me.

Books

I’m a slow reader but I think I read quite a lot of books this year. Mostly self-help.

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn by Richard Hamming
• Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are by J. Jennifer Matthews
• Visual Explanations by Edward R. Tufte
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
• Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams
• Do the Work by Steven Pressfield
• The Practice of Not Thinking: A Guide to Mindful Living by Ryunosuke Koike