Welcome to my year in review post...a few days into the new year. See previous editions for 2022,  2021, and 2020.

I didn't start any new side projects this year.

Tanzawa
Tanzawa has been under development for about 4 years now. This year saw a large number of gaps between development of features, but I still managed to ship:

On December 31st, I also snuck in a PR to remove Turbo from the Tanzawa admin, a major goal for the year. There's still a lot more I'd like to do with Tanzawa and I reckon I'll continue chipping away it.

Sunbottle
Sunbottle was mostly in maintenance mode this year. It works... Sharp (thankfully) hasn't changed their HTML or Javascript so my scraper hasn't needed to be updated. The only feature I added was a comparison of the previous year's generation / consumption and a small API that I can use to fetch generation totals to display on my homepage.

I ran less than 2022. While the year stated strong I had a 2-week break when we went to America (I didn't feel safe running along traffic that's moving at 60 - 80kmh (40 - 50mph)) and I wasn't able to get into a groove until 6 months later. I noticed that when I frame running as a way to manage my mental health and not weight loss or such, I maintain motivation.

I had some surgery on one of my legs to fix some veins. My leg used to feel heavy when going for long walks or going up long flights of stairs...I thought this was normal / me just not having muscle or stamina. Turns out it was poor circulation. Once the doc fixed me, I now realize how much it was affecting me. I regret not doing it sooner.

Basal cell carcinoma made a reappearance after ~10 years. Thankfully I know what the early stages look like this time, so I was able to goto the dermatologist and get some cream to get it, rather than waiting faaaaaar too long such that it required surgery to extract it. Happy days. 

Leo is in his last year of pre-school and next year he will start primary school. He's still a picky eater, but he's eating more variety of foods. He probably eats too many french fries, but we are able to go out and eat at a variety of restaurants now.

We went to visit Texas for 2 weeks in February. It was Leo's first trip to America and his first time meeting a lot of different family members. We had a lot of fun, but the trip was hard. Traveling with kids is draining. Having to drive everywhere is also draining. The expense of hotels/cars/flights and me becoming a taxi driver....I'd rather we visit places where there's public transit.

I went from only buying physical books to reading books on my kindle again. I'm reading more books this way. This will be my default for now and for books that I really care about, I'll also buy a physical copy. Ultra Processed People has changed how I think about food. Having a 5-almost-6 year old in the house makes it difficult to truly cut them from my diet.

I'm not a big gamer, but this year saw me and Leo play the heck out of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. We got 3 divine beasts down and 1 to go. While Leo's friends at school are into Pokemon, Leo's hooked on Zelda...it also gives us something we can chat a lot about in English.

Working at Kraken continues to be a blast. We're growing like crazy and literally moved offices because we couldn't all fit. For a while the conference rooms were turned into hot desks and we event had passes to a nearby co-working space as overflow.

The new office is in Roppongi. It's a major step up and fun to work out of. Though I'm still mostly remote so I can help with the boy in the mornings (and it didn't get any closer, so it's draining to go multiple days in a row).

Somehow I went from leading a team of 4 (including myself) to leading a team of 15 (including myself). We shipped so much work this year and migrated a large client to Ink. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished and looking forward to more this year.

Last year was by all means, a good year. I hesitate to call these resolutions, but here's some things I'd like to change or do in the coming year:

Run 100 Times
For real this time. I can get a good month or two of running, but there's always something that creeps up. With a fixed leg and an eye towards mental health, I'd like to achieve that this year.

Take more time off work
We have unlimited time off at work. I don't use it as often as I should...which I realized after taking my first full-week off since February at the end of December. The team has grown and has enough experience that things will still get done in my absence. And I know I'll work better if I'm better rested.

Travel again
An upcoming trip for work has reminded me how much I like to travel. The past few years...we had Leo...then the pandemic...and we got out of the habit of going places we don't always go. I'd like to go explore more this year.

Embrace being a dad better
My hobbies have generally been things I do by myself or require stretches of uninterrupted time. At the same time Leo's not going to want to hang out with me forever, so I should seize the moment. I want to focus more of my attention on doing things with Leo, not always for Leo.

Be more present and embrace calm
I've known for a while how distracted smartphones make us (me). This year I want to be more present and take concrete action towards calm. This will mean carrying more dedicated devices. But each device will not have the internet. I want to go back to listening to my mp3 collection on an iPod, take photos with a point and shoot, and way finding without a gps. If I replace my iPhone this year (it's already 5 years old), it will likely be with a Galapagos phone.

Glad I got out of the PC repair game in high school. Such a fun read.

I don't quite have the willpower of the author,  but quitting meat and alcohol seem admirable. I'd like to get to that place, eventually.

When the iPod was released it made a single promise: all of your music in your pocket. With great software and this promise, it sold like wildfire. Over time our music collections grew and with it, the max capacities of iPod also grew.

After a good run, the iPhone came out. Unlike the iPod, the iPhone used smaller faster solid state drives. Our music collections no longer fit on the device. We now had to pick and choose in advance which albums we'd take with us.

However, the iPhone had one thing the iPod didn't: cellular internet connectivity. This  made a new reality possible: access entire label's catalogs for the cost of a CD per month. No music taking up precious storage (which now also houses our photos and data) and constant access to the latest releases. Win-win.

Or is it? How many artists did you forget existed because the albums you owned were hidden behind recommendations for the masses? How often have you been unable to change songs or buffer because of connectivity issues? And when your subscription expires or the service is shut down, what's do you have for all of the money you've spent? Nothing. Nada.

Maybe it's a sense of nostalgia. Maybe it's longing for software and devices that just work. But I'm switching back. I've re-purchased an iPod Classic so I can keep my entire music collection with me again.