update

short post

• finished reading philip glass’s memoir, words without music. very chaotic life, so i won’t try to summarize it here. probably the most interesting part for me was his discussion of music in relation to theater, and how composing for plays / operas forced him to rethink how music in general should be structured. the book also gave me a bunch of music recs; i’ve been listening a lot to glass’s opera trilogy of einstein on the beach, satyagraha, akhnaten

• finally got around to reading dune. for some reason i’d gotten the impression dune was very long and difficult to read, which is why i’d been avoiding it for a while, but it turned out to be pretty enjoyable? i think it’s in large part because the worldbuilding is incredibly immersive, to the point that after finishing i thought to myself it shouldn’t be possible for someone to create this. it’s like tolkein’s worldbuilding except instead of focusing on languages and ancient history herbert focuses on ecology and politics, which i’m a big fan of. unfortunately i probably won’t read the sequels, because there doesn’t seem to be a natural stopping point

• work has been alright. i don’t think i’m very good at my job, largely due to lack of experience working with gpus and pytorch, so progress has been pretty slow. it’s a company norm to do a lot of pair programming though (1-2h on a typical day for me), which i appreciate because it’s fun and my coworkers are nice and it’s probably also when i’m most productive. for some reason i’ve never had trouble with talking while programming and find it pretty easy to maintain flow

• i haven’t been doing much outside of my job. part of this is because i’m often tired (both from work itself and from lack of exercise - i moved twice and am moving a third time in a few weeks so i haven’t bothered figuring out where to work out yet) and part of it is because i have not yet found events or communities that i think i’d enjoy. i think once i am better at my job it will take up less head space and i will be able to think more about the other stuff, but it’s unclear when that will happen (i’m not in a hurry though, the current situation is fine too and it’s a nice change of pace)

• before my most recent move i was staying with two friends who are starting a company together, and it seemed like they were having a lot of fun (it also seemed like they were very stressed, but those things aren’t incompatible). staying with them made me realize that i’ve never actually worked on anything with friends full-time before and it’s an experience i’d probably enjoy (the closest match is probably when i went to hacklodge, but that was working with people i’d just met and only for a week). unfortunately i don’t really have any obvious avenues towards that right now