2024: my year in review

Well, here we are again—another year. They seem to go by faster and faster, and this one in particular did. I’m just now getting used to the number 2024. The idea that it will be 2025 is surreal to me. This next year holds several sentimental milestones for me, which I’ll be writing about when they get closer.

I accidentally started a tradition in 2022 of listing out some goals for the new year. So, let’s see how I did this past year.

2024 goals

Let’s start with the one I totally nailed.

Read 5 books

I did it again! I know a lot of folks read upward of 50 books a year, but that’s not me. Five books is a lot for me. I’m trying to build up a reading habit after not reading much of anything longform for years.

This year was The Year of Brandon Sanderson. I enjoyed the Mistborn trilogy (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages). My first big dive into Sanderson’s fantasy novels[1] left me entertained and inspired to write.

I then started on Sanderson’s meaty series, The Stormlight Archive. These books are huge, and I think they should count for two points each. I finished The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. At the time of this writing, I’ve just started on book 3, Oathbringer.

So that’s a total of five books, with bonus points for two of them being ginormous. Grade: A+

Write one article every month

For some reason I like to call my blog posts, articles. Makes me feel more important and accomplished I guess. I’m a blog post snob, I’m now realizing (but only when it comes to my work—I love your blog posts so keep 'em coming).

This is another tradition I accidentally started. Last year, I had the goal to write five blog posts in a year, but by May, I realized I had written one post every month. Then, I just decided to keep it going. I’m really glad I did because writing for my website is so satisfying. You’ll never hear anyone say they regretted blogging more. It’s always a good thing.

Grade: A+

Write a novella (bonus: not sci-fi)

We have now arrived at my first failure. Not only did I fail to write a non-sci-fi novella, I failed to write a novella at all.

But I have a scapegoat. I’m blaming NaNoWriMo for this one. Yes, I’ve had a longstanding tradition of writing during National Novel Writing Month each November, but this year was different.

NaNoWriMo the organization is going through a controversial time right now. Part of it included shutting down the NaNoWriMo forums, including my beloved Adoption Society—a forum dedicated to sharing plots, characters, running gags, opening lines, chapter-naming schemes, and more with your fellow writers.

The forums are the soul of the event for me, so shutting them down bummed me out.

But part of it was that I was busy writing something else.

Grade: F

Make one game

Well, dammit, I failed again. I never got around to making a game this year. I didn’t really have any ideas. I’m still interested in getting better at game dev using PixiJS, and I do have some game genres I’d like to experiment with—tower defense and idle/incremental/clicker. Maybe next year.

Grade: F

Watch at least some of the video courses I bought in 2023

Yeah, I’m bad about this. Ok, I kind of kept this goal, but not really.

At work, I have been building a web component library for use in the COSMIC suite of applications we build for NASA. I wanted to quickly get up to speed on the nitty-gritty details of web components.

As it happened, Scott Jehl came through just in time with an excellent course called Web Components Demystified. I haven’t finished the whole course yet, but I got through the big lessons and learned a ton.

Grade: C+

Spend more time with friends

I could always do better at this, but this year went better than some. I had coffee with a longtime friend of mine, and I had the chance to catch up with my old friends at Mad Genius. I also hosted a voice call in the SMA Chat Discord server. I always enjoy catching up with my crippled cyborg peeps.

Grade B+

Five years of building software for NASA

I really can’t believe it’s been so long. It feels like maybe it’s been two years. But no, it was August 2019 when I joined the COSMIC team at MRI Technologies.

As I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed diving into the world of web components and helping us pay off some technical debt. I’m hoping to do more of that, and the word on high is that we have some exciting work coming down the pipeline this next year. It should be fun.

HTML for People

Illustration of a computer desk. There is a lot of space decor. The computer monitor shows a cartoon space probe zooming past a logo that reads 'HTML for people,' stylized as an HTML comment.

My biggest accomplishment of the year was writing and publishing a web-based book called HTML for People. It’s a beginner-friendly introduction to HTML that rests on the idea that making websites with HTML is for everyone, not just professional web developers.

This thing took months to write and transform into a website. It’s part of the reason I didn’t do my usual creative writing in November—I was kind of burned out on writing.

If you’re interested in the backstory, I wrote all about it back in October.

A Fine Start, version 3

In December, I began what I’m calling the Last (frontend) Rewrite of my minimal new tab page browser extension, A Fine Start. The current version relies on an aging Webpack-based build step to process the Vue-based code. I still like Vue and its nimble cousin, Alpine, but browser extensions have a more strict environment. You can’t use the CDN versions of these frameworks—if I wanted to keep using Vue, I would need a build step to turn templates into render functions.

But I’m tired of build steps. They’re fine for certain situations, but a more vanilla approach serves a browser extension well. For example, Firefox (and maybe Chrome?) discourages using obfuscated code. There are strict rules about third-party dependencies. It’s much easier for me to manage versions and ensure Firefox reviewers can verify my code. It’ll make maintenance easier in the long run to go vanilla.

It’s not out yet, but I expect to finish it in January or February at the latest. Longtime fans should continue to enjoy the features they love, and some new features are coming!

Other projects

My dice roller, d20, is on its last legs. I still haven’t updated it, and I’m not sure if I want to. I’m considering making d20 a web app. It’s already based on Electron (essentially HTML, CSS, and JS), so it wouldn’t be a huge leap.

My synthwave mix site is still up and running. I haven’t made any new updates, but I keep running the update script weekly (well, when I remember).

I added a few features to my D&D character sheet app, Minimal Character Sheet. These are mostly things it should have already had—a place for notes, a field for your initiative position, and strikethrough support in the text blocks. If you want the convenience of digital with the flexibility of paper, check it out.

Music

I’m currently obsessed with The Chilling Alpine Adventure, but as it was just released on December 27, it won’t appear in my music stats until next year probably. I listened to a good bit of electronic this year while working on stuff. After The Chilling Alpine Adventure, I’d say my favorite album releases of the year were Infinite Health by Tycho and A Life by new-to-me artist Christian Löffler (discovered by way of SomaFM).

I wanted to get this article in before the end of the year, but as soon as my 2024 Last.fm report is available, I will link to it here.

Update: here’s my Last.fm annual report. They don’t do permalinking very well so I’ll have to remember to come back to this post next year and append /2024 to the Last.fm URL.

Goals for next year

  1. I read Tress of the Emerald Sea last year, which I believe was my first ever Sanderson work. But as it was a sort of smaller one-off, I’m calling Mistborn my first real foray into the world of Brandon Sanderson. ↩︎