https://youtu.be/m_HIofD-nNA

A video version of a large chunk of this blog post

1. Gwent (1 day, 5:50:44): Around May I found out that CD Projekt Red had changed the rules around the Gwent Journey, so that journeys were no longer time-bound. This meant I no longer felt pressured to play every day in order to progress. Freed from feeling forced to play, I once again caught the Gwent bug and, as you can see, it became my most-played game. The addiction was also facilitated by playing on my phone (although that time is not captured here). Eventually, around September, I had to stop when the heft of the phone was giving me RSI issues. I had moved on to other games on my PC, so I took a break from Gwent. The developers announced that the game only has one more update coming, so we’ll see if the community around the game remains. That will dictate how much I continue to play Gwent because, after all, a multiplayer game is no fun if there isn’t anyone to play with. I expect I’ll get readdicted some time in 2023. ( Last year 23 minutes)

December was wholly dedicated to solving the Advent of Code 2022 problem set. Our job was to help the elves trek through the jungle to get magical starfruit. It was a lot of fun to do it live once again! This year I also had experience from the previous years (both live and on my own pace) that gave me the skills to solve some of the puzzles, including some puzzles that were variations on themes I’d seen before. In the end, I collected 36 stars, near my average for number of stars collected during AoC. Between work, family commitments, my programming and problem solving skill levels, that’s about the most I can usually do during the live period in December.

Once again I participated in the Bigfoot 5 and 10 mile race near my house. However, I think this will truly be the last time. I didn’t fall this time, but it seems that no matter how carefully I step, this trail is designed to make me roll my ankle. I rolled it twice to the point where it hurt and a couple times that didn’t hurt. As I write this post near the end of race day (it will not be published until the new year), my foot is not throbbing and it doesn’t hurt to walk, so I think it was strained a bit, but not sprained (thank goodness).

A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great collection of Scalzi short stories and flash fiction about Christmas. If you like his sense of humor, you’ll enjoy the book. Depending on your reading speed, probably a little over an hour to complete.

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Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It will be very interesting to compare this book to Seize the Stars when I get to it next year. Both involve the seeming impossibility of pushing for justice against a society and economy that is dependent upon injustice. Whereas this book is relatively realistic, Ms Fan’s book is YA and may turn out to be more hopeful than realistic.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Weinersmith

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was more of a fan of the abridged Bible, but that’s probably because I have more familiarity with the Bible than Shakespeare. Still, it’s interesting to see how old negging is.

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Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m not an incredible baker, I’m an average baker. When I bake breads - my family is often happy with the taste, but my wife always says - “All that work and we could have bought bread that’s just as good from Wegmans.” So, not show-stopping or anything. And, out of all my hobbies, I practice it the least often because of the time commitments. (Gotta be home to start the bread, proof the bread, bake the bread)

Another year, another look at my music trends for the year. It was another year of music acquisition (supporting the artists, ftw! - I knew Spotify wasn’t paying artists well, but Corey Doctorow’s book, Chokepoint Capitalism really brought home how much they’re screwing over artists), although I think things may slow down in 2023. Here are the albums I purchased in 2023:

• The Protomen - Presents: A Night of Queen
• Encantó soundtrack
• Moderator - The World Within
• Kognitif - Soul Food
• MxPx - Horns, Plans within Plans, Let’s Rock, Left Coast Punk EP, The Rennaisance EP
• Packy Lundholm - Track Sabbath Vol 1
• Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
• Catbite - Nice One
• Macroblank - entire discography - 14 albums
• Vicente Garcia - Lomas de Cayenas
• Girl Ultra - Nuevos Aires
• The Shape of Ska Punk to Come
• Me Like Bees - Songs from The Realm
• Kill Lincoln - Can’t Complain
• Jokabi - Chilltendo Deluxe
• Turning Red Soundtrack
• We Are the Union - Ordinary Life
• Chillhop Music - Essentials Spring 2022, Essentials Summer 2022, Essentials Fall 2022
• Anberlin - Silverline

New Music I got as a gift:

Python

This year I really worked a lot on Python web technologies so I came to appreciate all the work that the JetBrains team does to make all the little things (like running Django test server commands) incredibly easy. I essentially did all my Python development in Pycharm.  I’ve had access to the paid JetBrains suite because of the work I’ve done for my open source project: Extra Life Donation Tracker. Since development has slowed a bit on there, I may not be able to renew the subscription. If that’s the case, there’s a big chance that I’ll start saving up some money for a Pycharm Professional license. The only real exception to using Pycharm for programming was when I was editing code on a server. There I would use vim or nvim (more on that later).

In short succession 2 podcasts I listen to covered the movie adaptation of The Pelican Brief. If you watched it back in the 1990s you probably didn’t realize how bananas the plot of this movie was. It sounds OK in short summary - some evil corporations kill 2 US Supreme Court judges to prevent a certain ruling. But once the podcasts go into the details of the movie - it makes next to 0 sense.