2024 TODO List

Last January was the first time I’d had a blog of any sort out there in the world, so it seemed like a good idea to put my 2023 resolutions online. I’m going to do the same for 2024’s KPIs, but before I do that, we should probably take a look and see how I did for last year…

2023 Scorecard⌗

Write A Game⌗

As I put it so nicely a year ago: “2023 is the year this changes. Or at least, I hope it does.” Hopes, of course, are designed to be crushed and trodden on, and this one was no different. Although I started some reading on the Bevy engine, I never got much further than that. Sure, I had plenty of ideas, but that was about it.

Overall Score: 1/10 (1 point awarded for vague effort, but holy shit, that’s really grasping at straws here.)

Fluid Simulation⌗

The closest I got to any form of research into Navier Stokes was opening the Wikipedia article, and having a super interesting conversation with someone at work about it. Not a great outcome, although the conversation did bring up some interesting things that I hadn’t thought about in terms of potential implementations, so it’s not a complete wash.1

Overall Score: 1/10 (1 point awarded for the conversation. This is a slightly more meaningful 1 point than for writing games, so I’m improving as we go.)

Moar Gigs⌗

Well… there was definitely a few of them this year. The Maiden two nighter was great, even if seeing Nicko play at less than full strength (for obvious reasons!) did make me a little sad. We caught Incineration Fest too, which was great as it was the first festival (even a 1-day one) for several years. Other shows included Katatonia, Solstafir, Devin Townsend, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Panopticon.

Overall Score: 8/10 (I’m sure there were some others we could probably have made, but overall, a pretty solid year.)

Staying Fit⌗

This is a tough one. I missed the first couple of months working out due to a thumb injury from late December 2022, one that I assumed would get better. It kept not getting better, until I went to see someone about it. I was given a thumb brace, and after a couple of weeks, things went back to normal… until the last quarter of the year, when holidays, sickness, childcare, and a bit of a bout of low mood all took their toll. The thing is, I know that I’m a happier and healthier person when exercising, so this has been pretty disappointing.

Overall Score 3/10 (really annoyed at myself, must try harder this year.)

Write More Blog Posts⌗

This one, I’m pretty happy with. I’ve kept a reasonable cadence up, and not just writing about music that I’ve been listening to either (that somewhat dried up later in 2023, going to a “publish when I’ve got something to write about” release schedule). Finished the year with the post on Python’s importlib, which I was particularly happy with.

Overall Score 10/10 (Happy with this. Hopefully can keep up the pace again this year.)

Overall Score⌗

23/50 (46%) Did OK on a couple of them, but fairly shit at others. Hard to think of many places where this would count as a pass, so going to have to mark 2023’s TODOs as a moderate failure.

2024 Objectives⌗

So, with 2023 behind us, what do I want to achieve this year? Picking 5 goals again so I can compare scores for consecutive years and see how I do!

Write A Game⌗

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… Usual story, would really love to just get something out there. Do I think I’ll do it this year? Honestly, I doubt it, but it’s something I always aspire to, so this will keep on cropping up.

More Work On Procedural Generation Series⌗

Having published the first part of my series on procedural generation, I’d really like to delve into it a bit more and put out a couple more posts on it. It’s super interesting, way more interesting than a lot of other things that I’m interested in, so would be a shame to lose momentum.

Urban Exploration⌗

This one’s a bit of an odd one. Urban Exploration is a term I stumbled across when trying to find out more about the kinds of pictures you see people posting of old abandoned buildings. I’ve always liked that kind of photography, so it would be amazing to attempt to take some photos of my own like that. Which leads on nicely to…

Take More Photos⌗

I’ve had a mirrorless digital camera for a few years now. While I’m OK with using auto mode on it, and have taken some reasonable photos in the past, I’d like to work on better composition, and also become better at using editing tools to bring out the best in my shots. In a perfect world, this would be using open-source software, although having played with Adobe a bit, it’s going to be tough to beat how easy their tools are to get good results!

Staying Fit⌗

This one’s on again. It’s fucking important to look after yourself, and I really dropped the ball in ‘23. Need to do a better job of it this year.

See you all in a year’s time to see how things went!

  1. Well, it pretty much is, if I’m being honest. ↩︎