2015 Wrap

A quickie retrospective post on 2015 so I don't have such a very empty year on the blog.

New things I tried, some of which succeeded:

Made some improvements to my side project SankeyMATIC, including: more customization features, eliminating at least one browser-crashing bug, and improving the overall quality of my JavaScript code.
Started using my github account, including making the SankeyMATIC code officially open-source.
Made a couple of pull requests (a.k.a. code-change suggestions) to other people's projects which were accepted.
Gave a lightning talk on SankeyMATIC at a DataScience DC meetup. It went reasonably well.
Took a short course in R Graphics. Went from knowing no R to passing the course handily.
Participated in a GSA Hackathon for the first time. (Primary lesson learned: go in with a team if at all possible. It's not geared to the size of project I as an individual am likely to succeed at, and no one's looking to add team members on the day of the event.)

Some things I enjoyed:

Another year of being @medley's primary conversational partner. (The things you all miss by not surveilling us, I swear.) The closest you can get is probably following both of us on Twitter.
Another year of dad-hood, now with a second-grader who's playing good baseball, getting good at playing piano, and working his way ahead in math.
They Might Be Giants' new album Glean
Reading about the Hamilton show (now on Broadway), getting the Hamilton soundtrack, listening to it with genius.com open to the annotated lyrics
Frank Turner's new album Positive Songs for Negative People
Joe Jackson's new album Fast Forward (and seeing him on tour here).
The CBS show Person of Interest (Thanks to Laurel Krahn for the recommendation).
The podcast This Week in Blackness, which is a fairly eye-opening, brain-expanding listening experience for a plain white person such as myself.

A few other 2015 highlights that come to mind:

Attending my grandmother's 100th birthday party.
Visiting St. Louis for the 30th Anniversary Concert of the Pikers (YouTube playlist) and getting to direct some of the old tunes.

My favorite part, which made it to YouTube: my old "Take Me Home" arrangement, performed for the first time in many years (with Matt Cooper on solo).

A few goals for 2016:

More improvements to SankeyMATIC -- enough so that I'm happy to stop calling it (BETA).
More attempts to contribute to other people's code.
Write more. Write a lot more. (A perennial wish, admittedly.)
Learn more data science skills.
Keep improving my data visualization skills.
Try to make something using Swift.

Not looking forward to in 2016:

I'm sure I'm forgetting numerous things, but that's a fair amount of links to throw out in one post.

Happy New Year to you & yours.