Year end wrap up

 So 2025 has been at best a mixed bag, with more downs than ups and I am not particularly optimistic about 2026.

I wrote a novella after my mother died as a form of therapy. It was something I was sort of working on before she died, but I got serious about it after her death. The book went through three revisions, it probably needs at least 3 or 4 more revisions if I wanted publish it professionally. Publishing is not and never will be to publish it. I posted it here and there is both a PDF and an epub out there. If you read it, I hope you enjoyed it. 

At my job, AI has become a thing and as a result, I spent a considerable amount of time looking into the current state of AI. I have a much deeper understand of it now than I did a year ago. On the upside I have up skilled and that makes me more useful to my employer and contributes to my continued employment. The downside is, I now understand that AI in its current state is a dead end. Large Language Models will never result in computers becoming sentient. We are also fast approaching the point of diminishing returns where ever increasing amounts of hardware and ever increasing amounts of energy will be required for smaller and smaller improvements, meaning it is unsustainable. I think we have another 3-5 years before this goes the way of the self driving car.

This year I lost both a brother and my mother. Thankfully the drama levels were low, but this cast a long black cloud over the whole year. I don't have much to say about this, at least not publicly, beyond, I miss them both.