This year zipped past for me, mostly because I had my eye on an event in November for most of the year, but here we are: the close of '24 and on the doorstep of '25.
In this post I'll try to remind my future self of what I did, but unlike previous years, there's a lot less public work (side projects), a lot less blogging content…and generally, I think, a lot less.
So, with that bulge of joy, let's get on with it.
Some context of the now for future me
This year, Labour came in to power after 14 years of Tory's shitfest. Generally it was a positive win because there were more seats for Lib Dems and four seats (up from one) for the Greens. The flip side is that the Nazi Reform party also placed seats in parliament and is growing in popularity towards the end of 2024.
Riding that wave of despair, Trump, the convicted criminal has also been re-elected to run The States for (hopefully no longer than) four years.
Then there's genocide that Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza (which countries including the UK and the USA are complicit in), and the continued Russia fighting/war with Ukraine.
The world is upsidedown and a total trash fire. It's no wonder that mental health is a growing problem ... and I sort of feel a total disconnect with what I do and the real value on the world.
Jeez, what a fun start to this, eh?
Work
Most of this year I've been working with Oak National almost exclusively developing their public API. I love working for Oak partly for the social good, partly for the people there, but also because I know that the work has done, and continues to directly impact my own kids.
I've had to also finally, reluctantly (and begrudgingly) climb onto the TypeScript train (which I'm not converted at all). I'm a stickler for ensuring that my code passes all linting rules, so I now have the extra pressure to ensure all the types are present and correct (we/Oak apply the rule that says any is banned).
Mostly TypeScript has been okay, but the times I struggle is the times that the actual error reported is a total trash fire of stack traces and "possibilities" of errors (see my earlier post).
As a side effect, I've also discovered vitest (because of how terrible the Jest support was) and that was a welcome simplicity to my tests, even if I'm left writing stupid code like this:
const subject = res[0].subjects.find(
(_) => _.subjectSlug === 'reading-writing-and-oracy',
);
expect(subject).toBeTruthy();
expect(subject).toHaveProperty('units');
// this is more nonsense from typescript otherwise I get red snakes
if (!subject || !('units' in subject)) {
throw new Error('No subjects found');
}
const units = subject.units;
// tests continue
Still, Oak is falls under "social good" for me. Additionally, towards the end of the year I had to submit my very first tender (since my company's inception in 2006), for Oak, which thankfully I won.
This also meant working with a new team which has (to my surprise) left me feeling reinvigorated about work - a rare feat!
Projects
I always expected as my kids got older (now 10 and 13) I would have more time for side projects, but the reality of that has been inverse. Possibly because I hadn't factored for my own self getting old, possibly because I'm tired of the computer. Who knows. Still, I do enjoy tinkering and learning, but the new full scale side projects have definitely dwindled (or I don't feel like have much to say about them).
However, as always: FFConf
FFConf
The event continues to be a success to all those who attend. The speakers, as usual, were absolutely superb with messages that resonate for long after the event has finished.
I do have non-technical people ask me what the event is about, and I'm fully aware that over the years (13 or 14) it's become increasingly vague. It's origins was in JavaScript, but quickly grew to "the web". I tend to think of FFConf being a conference about "how we can make the web a better place", and yes, I know that in itself is pretty vague too!
You can read my own write up (if you like). The lead up to the event was one of the hardest I've had since we created FFConf back in 2009 though. It really boils down to ticket sales and how the events market has definitely changed post-pandemic. For me, it felt like ticket sales were a constant concern from the date we launched on April 22nd all the way until November 8th - which is a long time (for me).
We'll be running again in 2025, but we'll be more cognisant of how to sell and market tickets this time.
Still, a wonderful day of hoomon interaction.
Hardware and hacking
I continue to enjoy breaking away from software and playing in the land of hardware. I do worry that I might be someone who quickly moves from "hobby" to hobby (I still have a pile of 10 or so Game Boys waiting to be fixed from over 18 months ago!).
This year I tinkered with customising Casio F-91w watches and have also created a number of my own custom PCBs, one of which takes a Game Boy CPU and outputs on HDMI (using a Raspberry Pico) and takes input from a USB joystick, the other is a Pokemon Mini custom flash cart (which is very, very in progress).
Home Assistant
During the school summer holidays, I had told the littlest that we could, in theory, create an automation for her curtains. We wanted to be able to say "Hey Google, open my curtains". I knew how all the parts would work, it was just the connection from the hardware to the Google intent that I didn't know.
Which is when I learnt Home Assistant, and boy was this a deep rabbit hole! The missing connection part I needed in my project turned out to be esphome. With the help of Home Assistant (which I had tried years ago but had quickly given up on, but in those years HA has massively improved), I was able to set up the whole curtain automation.
The hardware side was relatively straightforward and though ultimate it didn't work (because I couldn't get a good enough grip on the curtain pull string which has some elasticity in it), the project completely unlocked Home Assistant to me, and how I'm enjoying a whole range of fun little automations.
My favourite (and I'm promising myself I will blog about it), is that when I got to the gym, our shower towel rail starts to heat up (which already has my clean underwear hanging on it) and when I return home, after having a shower (which automatically turns off the towel rail) I have the pleasure of putting on warm undies, which let's face it: is the best feeling.
In this process, I've also customised our "dumb" cat flap so that I can get a notification when it's low on battery, I upgraded our doorbell and have forayed into the 230 volt DIY'ing!
Donations
During the pandemic years because costs were so low I found we had a good deal of profit we could donate to charities, and we've decided to bake this into our business. The rule (that I/we made for ourselves) is that 10% (or more) of our profits are donated.
This year, most of the donations (money) has gone towards families affected by genocide or wars.
Personal
One of the biggies for me was the addition of hearing aids to my life. Initially I was extremely ashamed of just the idea of having to wear hearing aids, but from the day I had them at the start of the year, I've worn them every day and they've absolutely improved my quality of life/hearing.
It's like they open up the sounds around me. I think a visual equivalent is perhaps if you can see mostly fine, but if some things you need to move away or move closer to read properly (i.e. you'd need glasses), the hearing aids have done for my hearing. I can understand most conversations and I'm not having to pattern match what I think someone has said to me (nearly as much).
Secondly we (as a family) have been undergoing a pretty significant home renovation. When we moved in to our home in 2019, we knew right away that the whole place needed improvements, but it was liveable from the get go.
The original plan was always to move the kitchen to a completely different room and make it the centre of the social life of our home and family. But then came along The Pandemic which immediately stopped any plans in their tracks.
Now in 2024, at the start of May we finally started the work (after getting an architect to go through realistic options). The plan was to extend the house with a side return/extension and thus creating a kitchen in what was our lounge (and would become a larger space).
The wall demolition, creation, beam installation and foundation digging was a pretty serious chunk of work (which, no, I didn't do myself, I wish I were that practical!). Thankfully we were in the position where we could seal the door off to the old lounge, we still had a full kitchen and we converted our dining room into a lounge dining room (folding away tables and chairs to make it our TV room). That kept the vast majority of dust out.
It's taken 7-8 months (there's still some bits to be finished like the decking that was part of the project), but we're living in our new kitchen and it's as if it was always here in our home.
We definitely feel like proper grown ups now!
Next bits
In 2025 I have a few small goals. Nothing spectacular, but I want to keep reading, maybe even increase my reading (or rather stop going to bed so late so that I can actually read).
I definitely want to find the motivation to blog some more, but I feel like what I want to write about has changed significantly compared to a decade ago - but, it's my blog so I can really just dump any old thought farts here (see this post for examples!).
I also started (gently) journalling, partly inspired after seeing both Amy Hupe and Imran Afzal's talked each twice. I can't keep my fears, anxiety and anger either bottled up, or constantly being dumped on Julie (my wife) - so hopefully some journalling will help put that somewhere.
I also need to keep an eye on my health. The pandemic did a number on my gym going, but lock down finished quite a while ago and it doesn't hold up that great as an excuse. I've been attending the gym, but it's the diet part that I've been rather slack about. I'm also hoping that this year I'll manage to get through the year without more of me breaking (or getting a diagnosis that tells me something else is crap), though I've got blood tests coming this coming week and I know there's some news on the end of that…
All that aside, happy new year, and I hope you find some joy in 2025.
We out 👋
