Here are some things I made in 2025:
- Pro-Wrestler or Roller Coaster
- A Fusion 360 Script for creating a Penrose Triangle in CAD
- A personal book recommendation tool, which used my archive of book reviews, the OpenAI API, and RAG techniques to give me personalized book recommendations. The tool wasn’t polished but I ended up enjoying some of the recommendations.
- 9 Music Box Fun songs.
- I’m most proud of Sommarfågel, which is one of the most technically challenging songs I’ve made. Duck Tales (NES) was also good and probably more fun to listen to.
- The songs above were aided by the MIDI import/export feature that I added this year. The import is useful for dumping the notes in there, so I can spend more of my time trying to turn the song into a great music-box adaptation (which, for me, is the fun part).
- 8 new projects added to Let’s Get Creative
- 12 blog posts on bryanbraun.com, including a detailed breakdown of circular dependencies and its companion repo.
This was the first year I really leaned into AI-assisted development, and a couple of my projects reflect that (like “Pro-Wrestler or Roller Coaster,” which I probably wouldn’t have made if I had to do it from scratch). I briefly wrestled with the question of “did I truly make it if I had AI assistance,” but I think the spirit of this post is less about the coding and more about the drive to be creative. As I get older and find more things vying for my time, I don’t want to let go of that desire. I’m finding that AI is actually helping me continue to exercise that creative muscle without requiring so much manual labor.
Happy new year, friends.