2023 in review

2023 in review

These review posts have proven useful when looking up stuff, so I'll continue this tradition.

(2022/2021/2020/2019/2018/2017/2016/2015/2014/2013)

Non-Board Games I've played/bought

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online
  • Diablo IV

Books I've read

Movies I've (re-)watched

TV Series I've (re-)watched

Podcasts and other media

CDs I bought

  • The haul from late December 2023 I hinted at last year:
    • Therion - Leviathan II DIGIPAK
    • The Halo Effect - Days Of The Lost
    • Soilwork - Övergivenheten DIGIPAK
    • In Flames - Whoracle
    • In Flames - Used And Abused
    • In Flames - Lunar Strain + Subterranean
    • In Flames - The Jester Race + Black-Ash Inheritance
    • In Flames - The Tokyo Showdown (Live in Japan 2000)
    • Sabaton - The War To End All Wars
    • Hypocrisy - Worship
    • Fear Factory - Recoded
  • Dropkick Murphys - This Machine Still Kills Fascists
  • In Flames - Foregone
  • Electric Callboy - Tekkno

I need to double-check, but I should now own the complete In Flames discography. The Halo Effect is also great.

Other stuff I bought

  • a new (used) bike. ~8 year old ROSE gravel bike for 200 EUR
  • a new mobile phone, Google Pixel 6a for 340 EUR
    • Teufel Airy Sports wireless headphones, 60 EUR
    • a fancy case that still ended up only costing 10 EUR
  • some bags for bikepacking, including an Ortlieb "Seat-Pack", used and in perfect condition
  • a couple straps and replacement pads for two different sets of headphones
  • a dedicated work bag/travel pouch that will always stay in the bag
  • an electric guitar!
    • Squier Stratocaster in black for ~320 EUR
    • Boss Katana Mini ~100 EUR
    • Fender shoulder strap and some misc equip

Social networks

  • Fediverse - this is my main platform now
  • Facebook - logged in like three times
  • Twitter - deleted all remaining accounts

Messaging

  • IRC - mostly every day
  • Matrix - several times per week
  • Email - no change, but I feel it's getting less
  • Slack - work and 2 other communities
  • Signal - yes
  • WhatsApp - yes

Trips

  • other countries: London/UK for a few days in summer
  • five day cycling trip and staying at a rental house after that
  • Austria, but that was not a vacation

(Online) Services

  • Subscribed to Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime
  • some MMO subscriptions
  • No change for VPS: Strato, Hetzner Cloud, Scaleway
  • switched mobile plan to fraenk, now 10 EUR per month

Still thinking about consolidating a few things with hosting, but no concrete plans.

Programming languages, sorted by usage

  • Java - work
  • TypeScript - work, at least it's better than JS
  • Elixir - work
  • Clojure - some personal projects

Not a lot of personal coding this year, also skipped Advent of Code due to lack of time.

Stuff that kinda worked out

  • Eläkeläiset concert in April
  • Free & Easy "festival" in July/August
  • cycle more. I think I broke the 1500km mark on the new bike between June and September
  • redoing the living room and entry hall of the apartment
  • more pen & paper evenings, monthly Shadowrun has resumed

Happy this category is back. Concerts are back on the menu.

Stuff I planned to do this year but didn't

  • no big vacation trip, the London thing was more of saving a thing that had gone wrong
  • visiting a bike park

Stuff that would be nice next year

  • keep on cycling a lot, but do more mountain biking
  • bringing back board game night