2015
Music
According to Spotify Year in Music I spent 44 days this year listening to music and that’s just on spotify. Below is the list of the top 15 songs I listened to in 2015. I tried not to include multiple songs from the same artists, so a lot of the really good songs were left out.
Books
I discovered a lot of great books this year and even read some of them. My books wish list on Amazon is now officially out of control, there are just too many good books to read. I will either have to come up with some sort of prioritization system or retire and start reading full time. Anyway, here’s the list of top 5 books, that I read this year, with a couple of quotes:
- Sometimes the difference between geniuses and jerks hinges on whether their ideas turn out to be right.
- “Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.” - Alan Kay
- Visions without execution are hallucinations.
- “Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” - Howard H. Aiken
These 3 books were my first venture into the world of SciFi and I was mind-blown. I can’t believe I haven’t read any before. Definitely hooked.
- To him, a stilted geometric love of arrangement was “system,” an indefatigable and feverish interest in the pettiest facets of day-to-day bureaucracy was “industry,” indecision when right was “caution,” and blind stubbornness when wrong, “determination.”
- Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!
- There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I’ll have it in the face of death, or it’s useless.
Another SciFi book on my list for this year.
- I’m pretty much fucked.
- Hell yeah I’m a botanist! Fear my botany powers!
- [08:31] JPL: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we’re sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She’s also the goddess of rainbows. [08:47] WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.
- I went to Patagonia to cultivate my intuition—to listen to the Voice. When I’m really in tune with it, really deep in the zone, I get to a place where I disappear completely, where I merge with the rock, when time slows down, my senses are unbelievably heightened, and I feel that oneness, that full-body psychic connection to the universe. It took risking my life to get there, but mission accomplished. And that’s why I climb. I crave these experiences. I certainly don’t climb to get on top of rocks.
- Fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth “wind” may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.
- Innovation breeds imitation.
- Consider, for example, how Hamilton describes the experience of riding giants, be they at Teahupoo or otherwise: “When you’re in that moment, there’s no beginning and no end. It starts off where it left off. When you go to that place, there’s no time, and there’s definitely no thought. It’s just pure. You are and it is and that’s why we continually seek it out, and always search for it, and need it. We need it to feel alive and to feel complete and to bring it all into perspective—it just makes everything else fall in line, fall in place. It makes everything else tolerable.”
- The longing for a destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
- The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
- As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.
- Yet we can perhaps only ever fall in love without knowing quite who we have fallen in love with. The initial convulsion is necessarily founded on ignorance.
Blog Posts And Articles
I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, so naturally, I read a lot of stuff on the internet. Some of it is complete crap and some is actually really good. As I was trying to compile a list of interesting articles I read this year, I realized that I should start keeping track of them as I read. I probably forgot a lot of the good ones, but here are some that I do remember:
Podcasts
This year I discovered podcasts. I spend 45-60 mins every day driving to work and listening to podcassts makes it very enjoyable and useful. I also tried listening to audiobooks, but for some reason I always catch myself getting distracted, so I switched back to podcasts. I mostly listen to the Tim Ferriss Show, Hardcore History and Rationally Speaking. Top 15 podcast episodes I listened to this year: