2013: Year in Review

The Good

• Moved to Bangalore. Probably the best decision I’ve made in the last five years. When I moved here, I told myself I’d stay for at most one year. Now it’s starting to look like I’ll be here for a while.
• Started cycling. This is Bangalore rubbing off on me.
• Passed all my college exams.
• Started working full time.

The Bad

• Can’t think of anything, really. Minor existential crises don’t count. 2013 was a suspiciously good year.

The Ugly

• Picked up wrist and back injuries because of bad posture while working on the computer. The injuries are minor, but they inhibit my ability to work for long periods of time. I’ve made several lifestyle changes to combat these, and they’re slowly paying off. Still, the road to recovery is long and fraught with many setbacks.

The Highlights

• Best book read: a close tie between Cloud Atlas and Speaker for the Dead.
• Best musician discovered: Janelle Monáe.
• Favorite albums of the year: Good Kid m.A.A.d City, Doris.
• Favorite new software: PyCharm, Pinboard.in, Google Keep.

Unlockments Achieved

• Streamlined my web development and deployment workflow. I’ve started using Vagrant and Ansible a lot, and unit tests have become an integral part of my work.
• Read (slightly) more than I did in 2012. I read fifteen books in 2013, but fell short of my goal of twenty-five.
• Started exercising.
• Moved to Bangalore.

What Next?

There were several goals that I couldn’t achieve in 2013. I’d like to tackle them again this year:

• Release one or two useful webapps into the wild. (If possible, monetize these.)
• Start keeping track of how I spend my time.
• Start keeping track of the movies I watch, the books I read, and the music I listen to.
• Read more. Twenty-five books, at least.
• Super secret goal.

Besides these leftover goals from last year, I have some new goals for this year:

• Manage my time better.
• Start contributing to an open source project.
• Write more. Technical blog posts, book reviews, music reviews, private journals, fiction, whatever.
• Learn about machine learning and statistics. Perhaps a MOOC is the best way to do this.

Have a happy new year, folks. Make it one worth remembering!