May, 2026
What a beautiful time of year here in Seattle!
Reading:
I had a months-long stretch of time with minimal reading, but jumped back into reading in earnest a couple weeks ago.
- Recently finished Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. I quite enjoyed it, but what a show-off Calvino is!
- Currently reading The Baron in the Trees, also by Calvino.
- After implementing a very basic raytracer, I was inspired to learn more about rendering and computer graphics. I’m gradually reading through Physically Based Rendering. The book is a literate program in the style of Knuth and is easily one of the most well-written textbooks I’ve seen. Really a joy to read!
Listening:
I haven’t been listening to music with any serious intention recently. Mostly just listening to algorithm-driven playlists full of songs I already know and like. I’ll make it a goal for June to find and listen to a few new albums from start to finish.
Making:
- I briefly experimented with setting up some custom claw-style AI personal tooling and automations on exe.dev. Although the results were moderately helpful, I eventually decommissioned them. Having to use AI at work so much, I’m feeling less and less desire to play with this tech on my own time. However, I will say that exe.dev was a pleasure to use.
- Slowly progressing on adding features to my raytracer I started back in February.
Doing:
- We recently moved. The new neighborhood is adjacent to our old one, but far enough away that we hadn’t already walked most of the streets here. On most days after work, my wife and I take the baby out and walk around the neighborhood for half an hour or so. This is a perfect time of year for learning and practicing tree and flower identification!
- I’ve recently been able to get back to the gym more frequently. Lost a lot of weight and strength when I couldn’t train as often, so trying to regain some of those losses. At least I’ve been able to improve my pullups a lot.