Annual review 2024 - 2) Best memories

This post is part of my annual review process for 2024. This year, I’ve committing to writing a more comprehensive review, but to do so I’ve structured myself into particular areas that I think are important to cover.

To read more,

  1. Intro
  2. Best memories
  3. Health - Running
  4. Health - Weights, weight & supplements

Best Surprise Sadly nothing comes to mind. It just wasn’t much of a surprising year. I was pretty pleased with some of my mentees getting new jobs.

Best Meal Toad-in-the-hole, in a tiny, open-fire, farmer’s pub in the middle of England’s Peak District. A good pint, with a good friend after a long time out of the motherland hit all the nostalgia spots.

Coolest New Experience Offroad ATVs in the Dominican Republic. Just a pity the coordination around it was rather rubbish, and the claimed 2 hour safari, was more of a 10 minute blast

Favourite Weekend Back in the UK, jet lagged and going to a gig - the 20th anniversary tour of the third album I ever bought. Hipster mini-golf. Bowling. Beer. Steaks. Worms.

Favourite First Meeting Marion. An infinitely interesting, powerful and motivated friend.

Favourite New City Did I see any new cities? The Dominican Republic was new, but not really a city.

Leicester takes the crown in my “What the hell happened to this place?” award.

Favourite Sports Moment Gave up on sports a long time ago. The only thing I’ve paid even any notice to has been the world marathon circuit with crazy attempts at course records at Boston and NYC.

Favourite New Walk Mam Tor, near Hope, North of England

Favourite New Friend Marion

Favourite Tour I’m going to choose to believe this is a music and band question. I saw Taking Back Sunday, Thrice, Enter Shikari and Bullet for my Valentine live this year, and all of them were on some variant of “we’ve been doing this for 20 years, so thank you”. Playing the old stuff, gets you in the feels.

Favourite Day

Most Intense Week Release week for the supermarket. Drama at home. Drama with the client. 7 days in the office. Living and breathing code for 10+ hours a day for the first time in years. Thrilling.

Favourite Artist Only recently discovered, There’s a Light - the album A Long Lost Silence, is excellent. It reflects my melancholy. It reminds me of sitting in dark rooms as a teenager just listening to music.

Favourite Song Sans Soleil by Alexisonfire. After seeing them support Avenged Sevenfold, and seeing this one live, it’s been on heavy repeat.

Close second is He Films The Clouds Pt.2 by Maybeshewill. It’s just a song I keep coming back to, time and time again.

And then after seeing Enter Shikari live, Sorry You’re Not A Winner was on repeat for a month.

Favourite Concert SOiL - the (nearly) 25th anniversary of the Scars album. A great night.

Favourite Quote Women need love for sex, men need sex to love

What distinguishes you from other developers?

I've built data pipelines across 3 continents at petabyte scales, for over 15 years. But the data doesn't matter if we don't solve the human problems first - an AI solution that nobody uses is worthless.

Are the robots going to kill us all?

Not any time soon. At least not in the way that you've got imagined thanks to the Terminator movies. Sure somebody with a DARPA grant is always going to strap a knife/gun/flamethrower on the side of a robot - but just like in Dr.Who - right now, that robot will struggle to even get out of the room, let alone up some stairs.

But AI is going to steal my job, right?

A year ago, the whole world was convinced that AI was going to steal their job. Now, the reality is that most people are thinking 'I wish this POC at work would go a bit faster to scan these PDFs'.

When am I going to get my self-driving car?

Humans are complicated. If we invented driving today - there's NO WAY IN HELL we'd let humans do it. They get distracted. They text their friends. They drink. They make mistakes. But the reality is, all of our streets, cities (and even legal systems) have been built around these limitations. It would be surprisingly easy to build self-driving cars if there were no humans on the road. But today no one wants to take liability. If a self-driving company kills someone, who's responsible? The manufacturer? The insurance company? The software developer?