Now.
What I'm doing at the moment, inspired by Derek Sivers' Now and which I learned of from Patrick Rhone.
My current reading is
papers from the creators of the Plan 9 research (operating) system. (An overview is Plan 9 from Bell Labs)
'The Nickel Boys' Colson Whitehead
My recent listening is 'Opus', Ryuichi Sakamoto, his final performance for a film directed by his son, Neo Sora in the last few weeks of his hugely productive life, cut short by cancer in 2023.
My current projects are:
setting up a new Pi 5-based workstation, running the (currently) latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, booting from an SSD via the M.2 HAT+. In addition to taking advantage of all the new features of the OS (eg Raspberry Pi Connect), I'm installing Guix as a high-level package manager (with a fabulous name) for reproducable development.
getting familiar with the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, a surprise update on the Pico which has proved a really versatile device
beginning to work through 'The Little Learner, A Straight Line to Deep Learning', Daniel Friedman and Anurag Mendhekar
Previously.
Some previous things I've read include:
'The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI', Fei-Fei Li. There's a plethora of 'AI introduction/critique' books at the moment, following the current infatuation with generative AI. But this is different, by a Chinese-American who worked hard for her career while supporting her family after their immigration to the US. It's as much an auto-biography of struggle (not the least as a woman in a male-dominated field) as a technical work, and all the better for it. If you want a taste of her style, here she is in amiable conversation with Yuval Noah Harari, providing a gentle check in his more excitable moments.
'The Maniac', Benjamin Labatut. Reading the first few chapters I have to admit I was fazed by the unflinching directness of the violence described. It's an interesting format—mixing fiction and a more factual account of the life of John von Neumann; whose background I didn't really know much about. I persevered to the end…
'Four Seasons in Japan', Nick Bradley, 'Dandelion Wine', Ray Bradbury, 'Tyger', S F Said, 'Fractals, on the edge of chaos' Oliver Linton, 'Kofi and the Rap Battle Summer, Jeffrey Boakye, 'God's Children Are Little Broken Things', Arinze Ifeakandu.
Image: Tor y Foel from Llangynidr.