21 & 22

2021

I wish I could say 2021 was an eventful year, but frankly I spent most of it dealing with ennui, boredom and general disenchantment. One could even say I might have faced some burnout, but I don't think that's it; I still very much like writing code.

I also got covid right in the middle of the year so that might also have put a damper on things, but that doesn't mean that absolutely nothing happened last year.

Life

Back in June 2020, and rather suddenly, an opportunity to accomplish one of my personal goals presented itself, and I decided to go for it with the caveat that I had to complete it within ten months. Indeed, I finished it by April, and now that's one fewer thing for me to worry about, forever.

I moved back to Bucaramanga, my home city, after spending three years in Bogotá. I figured I wasn't doing much of anything there (even less with covid around) so I decided I wanted to spend more time with my folks, siblings and my sister's children.

I could finally go back to the movies after over a year of lockdown, but more on that later.

Work

I started working at a new company, with which I'm extremely happy. It fits all I want from a place to work nigh perfectly (remote, flexible, well organized, interest in new tech, etc) and the team is great. Some of the projects are better than others but regardless, it would take a lot, a lot, for me to leave.

On the personal projects front, I created a prototype to compare single page applications with backend generated fragments displayed by htmx.¹ Also I learned a little about genetic algorithms while on it.

Did some updates to this website, mainly related to indie web things.

Reading

Technical

I cut back on my HN surfing. Not because the signal to noise ratio has gotten lower (although I've gotten the feeling sometimes) but because I was simply spending too much time in, often repetitive, comment sections. And I didn't even comment, I mostly read.

Instead, I've been subscribing to more and more blogs (both company tech blogs and engineers' personal blogs), to the point that my subscription list in the old reader tripled over the year. I'd say the change is good in general.

Likewise, I've followed more people on social media (primarily the same engineers whose blogs I subscribed to), mostly for discovery value: Often those people share stuff by other people, which means potentially new blogs to follow.²

Fiction

I finally got an e-reader last year, and it has translated on my reading quite a few more books than in recent years. Mostly fantasy, and I'd say my favorite was probably "Prince of Thorns". I'll be reading its sequels and more this year.

Movies

According to my Criticker profile, I watched sixty six films last year. I love that almost half of them were watched in theaters, although I do stream movies; had to pick up the habit during 2020.

Apparently, the movie I hated the most overall was some cliched horror movie from 2019, but the one I hated the most that I watched in theaters was of course the new "matrix" movie.

Conversely, I gave the exact same rating, the highest of the 66, to two different movies: "Savig private Ryan", which I watched at home, and "Spider-Man: No way home", which I watched in theaters. Yup, I stand by it, definitely the two movies I liked the most that I saw last year.

Unfortunately, nothing over 85 (which would translate to a nine or higher in imdb), and indeed, no movie I watched last year really floored me. I'm hopeful for "The Northman" to pull it off this 2022.

Music

I don't stream music; I'd rather buy the songs I like and listen only to my collection... But that didn't happen often last year. Though I did remember adding "Courtesy Call" as well as some instrumental tracks to my "music for programming/writing" playlist.

2022

With 2021 out of the way, I do have plans for this year.

Life

I'm pretty happy with where my life is right now, materially speaking, so I'm focusing this year on finally losing weight. I have a plan this time.

Work

Will keep working in my current job. As I said, I have zero interest in leaving my current company.

Will do far more experimentation, both to practice stuff I might have gotten rusty with and to get to know new things... such as Rust.

I also have an idea for a potential tool/service that could become my first officially released open source project. Gotta work on it and iterate to see if it actually is viable or not.

Reading

Nothing much, will continue the trend of reading the blogs I already follow and subscribe to more.

Likewise, more usage of my e-reader for fiction.

Writing

I'll do my best to be more active on this blog. Can't promise a regular schedule to myself, but I will write at least a note of anything that comes to mind or that I find interesting.

Will finish some stories I am writing privately and will try to get started on something I feel I can actually publish. To get feedback if nothing else.

Movies

As I said, I'm really looking forward to "The Northman", but also there's a handful of other movies that I'm hoping they're as great as they look (looking at you "Doctor Strange") or that end up surprising me (looking at you "Avatar 2" or "The secrets of Dumbledore", among others).