2022 in review

Woodworking

Did two projects: a hand-sculpted bowl and wooden version of Scrabble.

Also restored some wood slabs to use as shelves and the top part of a standing desk.

Design

Watched all the lessons for Shift Nudge core. Did a fifth of the homework.

Reading

My favourites, in no particular order or grouping:

Music listening

Very little exploration. Mostly

By December, got tired of always listening to the same 3 most recently played albums on Spotify, so I came up with a tiny script to select 5 random albums from my listening history (last.fm import/export courtesy of ListenBrainz:

(def scrobbles (json/parse-string-strict (slurp "../lastfm.json")))

(repeatedly 5
            #(let [scrobble (rand-nth scrobbles)]
               [(get-in scrobble ["track_metadata" "artist_name"])
                (get-in scrobble ["track_metadata" "release_name"])]))

Music playing

Decided to really learn the electric guitar. Practiced 55 out of 107 days since I started tracking it. I'm following A Modern Method for Guitar in sequential order without a teacher.

I can now read sheet music in the treble clef, instantly recall notes in the fretboard in every string from frets 1 to 9, and play 5 major scale and pentatonic shapes.

On piano, learned Martha My Dear, Me and My Arrow and Tom Jobim's short piece Choro.

Movies, TV

Favourites, from least to most popular (for some idea of popular):

I've also watched the first three seasons of Fargo again and the second season of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, which is finally out after ~5 years in the making. Worth the wait.

Career

I started doing front-end development using ClojureScript at Pitch, and I'm now doing full-stack development with Clojure at Stylitics, which marks three and a half years of working with Clojure full-time.

Advent of Code

I beat my previous Advent of Code record, getting both stars for days 1--15, 18, 21.

Computer workflow

I started the year using Ubuntu + Nix in the work laptop, Windows and NixOS dual-boot in the personal laptop. Removed the NixOS partition from my personal laptop to reclaim some hard drive space and tried Windows with WSL2 for a few months. Didn't love it, didn't hate it. New employer set me up with a MacBook, which I did love and have been happily using since then.

Software I'm grateful for

Personal website

A few new pages:

Traveling

After a 7-year international travel hiatus, spent 3 days in Berlin and 5 in Cascais for the company offsite.

Languages

Shopping

Videogames

Board games

Finally got Azul after years on the wishlist. Turns out my wife is much better at it than I am, which means we get to play it a lot. I also finished a wooden version of Scrabble, but still haven't used it.