2024: The Year of Friends
In a complete 180 to most years, I may have actually managed to write the (ever-growing) parts of my annual "year in review" series in the right order this time[1]! π That means the data analysis of my life is already live, giving me a strong(er) foundation for writing this entry in the series: the overly wordy deep-dive into the last 12 months π
Whilst previous years have made it quite easy to identify a central theme (particularly last year), I've really struggled to work out what defined 2024. We certainly had a busy year, and one punctuated by major shifts in both our own personal lives and those of the people closest to us. We also made good progress in several areas of personal growth and various side projects. But it all seemed quite ephemeral, absorbing our time for a couple of weeks or months, and then being forgotten or moved on from.
For a while, the idea of "the year of new" seemed quite appealing. There have been some major shifts in our lives, including new jobs, new skills, new countries, new projects, a new car! But, actually, this was only a major focus in the final quarter of the year; in many ways, I think this foreshadows where we're going next, rather than where we're coming from β "new" is likely to be a major theme of 2025, instead.
However, once I'd zoomed out a bit, the theme began to crystallise quite clearly. In fact, looking at it now, it's baffling that it took me so long to notice. Y'see, we spent a lot of the year either planning travel, preparing for travel, or actively travelling, but 2024 never really felt like a year of exploration. Why? Because of the reasons for our country-hopping: if 2023 was the year of our Big Dayβ’, then 2024 was the year of their Big Daysβ’! Between April and September, we averaged one wedding a month, and over half of these required us getting on a plane[2].
And it wasn't just weddings. From the places we visited, to the projects we focused on, to the decisions we made around our own careers and lives, there was an incredibly strong theme: 2024 was the year of friends. Much of what we aimed for, undertook, and achieved was ultimately in service of seeing the people that we love, for big occasions or small; for catching up and for celebrating; in other words, for friendship, in all of its forms.
Friends & Travel
Given the title I have bestowed upon 2024, this felt like a good place to start. But why group "friends" and "travel"? In most previous years, I would have split them into two sections, but the reality is that (almost) every single bit of travel that we undertook in 2024 was focused on our friends. And we travelled quite a lot!
We kicked things off in April with a trip to Jordan, predominantly so that we could visit Bridget and Mark before they emigrated and started their next adventure. It's an incredible country, with an overwhelming amount of history. I mean, we travelled along roads that have existed since before the invention of writing; visited places like Mount Nebo, where Moses first saw the land that would become the home of the Israelites, or Lot's cave, with it's bizarre balls of sulphur that can be used as fire starters; saw gigantic Crusader castles, the immense carved walls of Petra, incredibly preserved Roman cities, and beautiful, Medieval Arabic hunting lodges; and camped in a desert ravine with Bedouin guides, whose ancestors have literally drawn the history of the entire region on similar walls, in similar ravines, nearby for tens of thousands of years, covering local extinctions, climate shifts, and even the arrival of Islam π€― And that's without mentioning the amazing hikes, wildlife, modern culture, or the food β my word, the food π€€
Jordan was followed, several months later, by another trip to the east, this time engaging in country-hopping as we travelled through Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia in a rapid-fire celebration of James and Aldina's marriage π₯ Whereas most of our travels were focused on one set of friends, here we had a revolving door of travel companions. In Belgrade, we explored the old city with Tom, Julia, and Adrian, before driving across for the wedding in BrΔko, meeting Aldina's whole family, then heading south, with her friend Paul in our car. We stopped a night in Sarajevo, where we feasted and partied with a mixed group of old and new friends alike, before (barely) making it to the ferry in Split for a brief but luxurious night on the island of RogaΔ.
Why the whistle-stop tour? Particularly given that neither of us were employed at this pointβ½ Well, that would be because of trip three: after a single night back at home, we found ourselves once more in the departure lounge at Gatwick, this time heading in a completely new direction (west), our bags prepped for another wedding, and another road trip. It has been years since I've been to the US, and never (properly) to the east coast. This time, we had just over two full weeks (again, our time was cut short by another wedding π) to explore Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula and my word, did we give it our best shot π
Our main purpose was to celebrate with Matt and Sarah, as well as generally hang out with the American side of Alison's family, but we still managed to squeeze in city tours, whale watching (orcas!!! π), my first-ever game of softball, and β COVID be damned β the aforementioned road trip: up mountain passes, along glacial lakes, and down lush rainforest valleys. We stopped off at Forks (a la Twilight β and yes, they're still making a bit of a thing about that π); "saw" the Pacific, albeit mainly through some of the densest, and weirdest, sea fog I've ever experienced; and hiked the Hall of Mosses β unfortunately with glorious sun! π
America was a whirlwind of emotions, from the highs of wedding celebrations and exploring a whole new biosphere (so many new birds, and even a few mammals π), to the lows of COVID, all alongside the intense horror of the reality of life in the US. We were there in the final lead up to the (disastrous) presidential election, so the constant, highly visible signs of such deep political division was hard enough, but on top of that I have never been as shocked by the cultural and economic disparities on display as what we saw in Seattle. I think the part that really got to me was just how overlapped everything was: on a single city block, you would have the ostentatious hallmarks of obscene wealth (luxury hotels, obnoxiously large cars, designer stores), all alongside homeless encampments and just so many people clearly battling mental health crises and various addictions. It was appalling, unsettling, and deeply disturbing, but I was at least a little relieved to find that other Americans that we spoke to β mainly tourists in their own country β had been equally as shocked by the city[3].
Despite this, I'm obviously glad we went, and we had a great time. Seattle is a fascinating city, and the Olympic National Park is a very unusual place, with some truly stunning scenery. Plus, we managed to wrangle a full day in Iceland on our way home β just enough time to try some John Green approved hot dogs (a little disappointing at first, and then completely addictive; it was a rollercoaster π ), watch a "lava show", whizz around on scooters, and spot an eider or two.
Once we'd finally settled back in the UK for a while, we decided to make the most of our relative freedom β and ensure that the Yaris hit a few critical milestones before it was sent to the great scrapheap in the sky β and embark on a tour of far-flung friends. Our trip took us up through Yorkshire, where we finally made it to both The Deep, Hull's rightfully famous aquarium, and Bempton Cliffs (sadly no longer hosting an albatross); to Durham for a couple of nights, where we discovered the hidden gem of "old Durham" and visited various favourite haunts; to my parents via Newcastle's cultural highlights (and a WWT reserve); up to South-West Scotland, giving Alison a taste of Caerlaverock (how haven't we taken her there before!), visiting Tarras Valley, the nature reserve I did a fair bit of fundraising for, and seeing old friends, both up in Edinburgh and around Carlisle; and then down, through Manchester for some hard-earned food and cocktail tourism (π€€). In total, we caught up with seven more friend groups and checked off more than a dozen places on our British bucket list π
All of these "proper" holidays were interspersed with smaller, still largely friend-focused outings: a pub lunch in Otley; a long-weekend stag do in the Lakes, and another in Girona (where I drank far too much red wine π); hiking along the Devil's Dyke; a weekend exploring Leicester; yet more weddings, in Budleigh, Henley-upon-Thames, Pangbourne, and Rieux-Minervois (which we paired with outings to Carcassonne and Toulouse); and a city break in Krakow, which was completely stunning β we need to go back!
In fact, I think the only proper trips β as in, an actual weekend breaks, rather than an evening out or half-day jaunt β that we took in 2024 by ourselves were both birding outings arranged for my birthday: one in March, exploring the north coast of Norfolk, and then another down in Elmley for a couple of nights in October, both filled with good food, great beer, and incredible wildlife π¦
And, of course, we filled the rest of our time with even more excuses to see friends, from random week nights at pubs, snooker halls, and even an arcade or two, to various gigs and exhibits, and, for the first time in years, watching football, during a relatively intense period where I decided to be very interested in the Euros (and subsequent heartbreak) π We didn't quite manage to make our summer BBQ plans happen, unfortunately β in fact, the braai barely got an outing all year! π¬ β but still hosted plenty of tasty meals at home, a scattering of board games evenings, and even a small gathering at our favourite local pub, The Hope, for a beer festival[4]. The year of friends indeed!
Family
Our year started in Cumbria, midway through a visit to see my parents β and meet the latest addition to the family, their wee pup Archie. We've seen the three of them several more times throughout the year, and I'm happy to report that his bladder control has improved significantly, though he remains just as excitable and frenetic (and adorable) as those first few months π
Pups aside, 2024 had a much smaller focus on family. We still managed to see both sets of parents quite a few times, including trips up to Cumbria in May (tacked onto a stag do); September (as part of the road trip); October (selling/buying cars); and at Christmas, when we also met up with most of my extended family for a big meal, present swap, and winter light trail.
On Alison's side, the main family focus was our trip to Seattle, but we also attended Sarah and Matt's (combined) stag/hen do when they visited in February, and saw her parents a couple of times on days out to Hilliers and Winchester, a trip down to Devon for Charlotte's wedding, and at a wider gathering just before Christmas, in Bristol.
Work
From a career perspective, 2024 was dominated by two events: Alison's graduation from her Masters course, and my redundancy. The former (happier π ) theme stretched from her enrolment in 2023 to August, when I drove across to Norwich, loaded up our little car, and bid her second home farewell. Whilst we never made it to Sutton Hoo, or several of the more far-flung historic and nature sites that we'd originally identified, I've thoroughly enjoyed the excuse to explore East Anglia. It's a beautiful part of the country; Norwich, itself, is a lovely, vibrant city; and the wildlife kept on out-doing itself. We'll be back!
As for myself, I'd started 2024 with distinctly mixed feelings about my job. Whilst Appnovation felt like the kind of place I'd want to stick around at for quite some time β interesting work, varied projects, a supportive atmosphere, the ability to specialise towards accessibility and front-end skills, and a really lovely team who taught me a lot β there was this permanent dark cloud on the horizon. In the equivalent section of my 2023 round up, I noted that the company had already gone through multiple redundancy rounds, and said:
The general market trends indicate that 2024 may be a bit better, but the overall direction appears to be a slimming-down of the tech sector and related budgets.
I also mentioned that I had been "spared for now", which was more than a little prophetic. In the end, the next round of lay-offs came suddenly (and fairly unexpectedly) in late May. There weren't very many of us left, and I'd been strategically bounced off a couple of projects for about a month and a half β just long enough that I was beginning to see what was coming.
On the one hand, this was obviously disappointing. As I say, I loved the team and felt like I still had a lot that I could bring to the table, but at the same time the work had really taken a turn. Most of my spring had been spent working on a proof-of-concept "analytical tool", based on a mishmash of LLMs and associated technologies. Whilst this had been extremely well received, both internally and amongst those clients we had pitched it to, I remained sceptical about the benefits and practicalities of using LLMs (I still do), and reticent about the ethical and environmental concerns around the technology (ditto). It also, frankly, wasn't a particularly interesting project or design.
The only real benefit had been that I thought it put me in a fairly safe position: upper management was pivoting hard in that direction, and this project was quickly becoming our flagship. But then I was pulled off that team and put on increasingly banal busy work. I'd spend weeks bouncing between internal documentation tasks and minor bug fixes, with the constant promise of new projects coming down the pipeline, none of which ever materialised[5].
As a result, when the end came, it wasn't a great surprise. I made quite a few counter-offers, including going part-time and taking an unpaid sabbatical, but the decision had been made. In fairness, the company paid out my notice period and leftover holiday, gave me a redundancy package, and even allowed me to retain some licenses that had been bought specifically for me, including access to the Practical Accessibility course. Plus, it couldn't have come at a better time logistically, launching us into an extremely busy summer of travel with the time I needed to wrangle our calendars and a decent financial parachute that meant we didn't need to cancel any plans or worry too much.
Still, I can't say that leaving would have been my preferred choice π
Thankfully, the year has ended on a much higher note: I officially joined a new team at the start of December, ending nearly six months of unemployment just in time for the Christmas holidays π I'm still finding my feet, but so far it feels like an excellent fit.
The company is based in Wales, so there's zero chance of a "return to the office" mandate for me (we don't even have a permanent office π). Plus, when we do meet up in person, I get to explore areas I don't know that well, like Cardiff and Swansea. I've already been across once, for the Christmas party in Cardiff, which was great fun β even if a sudden storm left me stranded for a few extra days whilst they fixed the train line π
From a career perspective, the role has a strong focus on front-end chops, accessibility, and Craft! They're far from a "Craft development house", but they do use my favourite CMS for a few customers, and it looks like my work will focus in those areas for the foreseeable future, which couldn't be more ideal π Plus, whilst I haven't fully escaped React, its in the minority for their customer base, which is just wonderful news π All-in-all, I feel like it's a solid change with a lot of opportunities to develop the skills that I actually care about.
Home
You might think that, with all of this unemployed "time off", we'd have made good progress on plans for the house and garden, right? Rightβ½β½ Hmm... π
We didn't manage any meaningful DIY in the house at all in 2024, though for my birthday Alison bought me a bricklaying course β and put herself through a "home care 101" weekend as well! The plan had been for us to start replacing the problematic fence out back, as well as building a few planters in the drive. Unfortunately, whilst the course was great fun and I learned a lot, that understanding led to a realisation that neither project are realistic: the back wall would take too long for one person to do by themselves (and, factoring in time off, wouldn't be cost effective), whilst the front one would damage the paving stones. Still, I'm keen to find some excuse to put the new skills to good use in 2025 β perhaps a BBQ pit is called for π
That meant, come winter, we still had the rickety old fence down the side of the property. As has become tradition, the first major storm brought several panels down and left us with a few more wobbling uprights, but this time around we decided to save some money and fix it ourselves. In the end, we had to call in some help from Tom and Dylan (at alternate points), but we've now successfully replaced several posts, learnt how to handle concrete, and created a much sturdier boundary. Fingers crossed they hold a little longer than the "professionally installed" ones did! π€
As for the garden, we've continued to rip out the lawn, and must have planted several hundred bulbs in the new beds we've created, alongside a few climbing roses that seem to be taking well. We've also properly cleared the two areas of "meadow" that I've been cultivating, and processed the leftover dead-wood from pruning the apple tree, both of which allowed us to seed the disturbed areas with even more bulbs, native flowers, and several packets of yellow rattle. I've been really excited by the number of insects we've had in the garden this year, so hopefully these steps will continue that trend π¦
Probably the biggest change, though, has been our car. Having managed to get the Yaris to the respectable "age" of 20 years, and racked up over 100,000 miles on the odometer, we decided it was time to let it retire, preferably before this year's MOT came due. In the end, we cut things a little close, finding a replacement a mere two weeks before the current certificate expired, meaning that we barely managed to get scrap value for the metal, but needs must.
As for what replaced it? After coming to the annoying revelation that "modern" cars either had a competent amount of storage space or they could fit in our garage, we said "screw it" and bought a Skoda Scala. I was a little reticent about driving a fully automatic estate, but given that I might be "commuting" to Wales occasionally, the added comfort on the motorway felt like a good trade-off. So far, I'd say it was an excellent choice. I'll always have a soft spot for the Yaris, but I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a relief to have luxuries like working suspension, air-con, and sound proofing! I mean, we even have mod-cons like Android Auto, which feel slightly magical π
Of course, this has left us with a garage that sits largely empty, bar the chest freezer, a bike we never use, and a collection of fence posts ready for the next storm π I don't want to give away too much, but the hope is to do something about this now-wasted space in 2025. We'll see how it goes π¬
Health
I started the year with really solid health intentions, boosted by a decision to finally buy a treadmill. Whilst the stop-gap exercise bike has done well enough, 2023 taught me, once and for all, that I was never going to enjoy cycling indoors. At the end of the day, if I can't be bothered to use the bike to lose weight for my own wedding, then when am I going to use it?
We ultimately settled on a Walking Pad folding treadmill. It was quite pricey, but I had a "health and wellness" fund through work that I could tap into to offset part of the cost, and I'd say it was money well spent. Folded up, it slides under our couch, and whilst setting it up is a bit of a pain, the actual exercise is much more enjoyable. Whilst I can't currently track my runs very well (something to work on in 2025), in the first 3-4 months of the year I can say that I was using the machine regularly.
Hiking continues to be a preferred activity, with some major walks in Jordan, and then quite a few days off exploring locally after I was made redundant. These resulted in some new personal bests for step count and daily distance, as well as the completion of another Conqueror Challenge β following Aragorn from Lothlorien to Helms Deep. Whilst I didn't manage to get back into football, or any other regular team exercise, I did spend a lovely weekend hill walking and canoeing in the Lakes, courtesy of James' stag do.
Plus, whilst I remain a total sucker for a Burger King, a combination of wallet watching and trying out Gousto, a meal prep service, has seen our diet steadily improve, particularly in the latter half of the year.
However, whilst we suffered no real injuries or health scares in 2024, the year was punctuated by periods of general illness. The first hit me in late March, and left me tired and generally grouchy, resulting in a slow decline from weekly runs, to fortnightly, to monthly. At the same time, with work stress rising, and the increasing time sink of travel planning, my fitness goals fell off entirely. It definitely didn't help that we seemed to come back from every wedding or flight with a cold, nor that our Seattle trip was rudely commandeered by COVID β I tested positive on our one year wedding anniversary! π‘ And then, just as I was feeling better, I was bit by a black fly whilst gardening, resulting in a swollen leg and a limp for our Poland trip, plus another month or so of recovery π
The end result is a year that saw an average decline in my health, but with some solid progress in specific areas. I've gained a significant amount of weight, lost lung capacity (particularly after COVID, once again), and reduced my endurance. However, we're eating healthier meals and I've found a pattern of exercise that I don't hate, both of which I'm taking as wins.
Hobbies
Photography
Whilst 2023 saw the purchase of a new camera and tripod; adoption of a new rating system; and a lot of experimentation with various combinations of equipment, 2024 was really just about refining those decisions. The only new hardware I picked up was a Sigma 1.5x converter; a purchase that I remain quite sceptical about. My hope had been that I could use it on the R8 to gain a bit of a bump in reach, but what I've found in practice is that, despite literally being made to work with my Sigma telephoto lens, the combination just doesn't produce results that I'm happy with.
It's better on the R8 with the 70-200 (and, to be fair, it is passable, in good light, with the Sigma), but that's not a combination I really want to use it for. It's come in handy once or twice, but really it's just proven that I've hit the limit of my current price bracket. If I want better functionality, I'm going to have to shell out again, either for a better APS-C body, or a much more expensive R-series lens π¬ The rumour mill is currently churning around a possible R7 mark ii launch in the next six months, which would be a huge boon, as the M6 I'm currently using is beginning to have some serious software issues. Then again, so is the Sigma lens...
I'm still thoroughly enjoying having two cameras when out and about, though, and my various rating/editing systems continue to improve. A big shift this year has been re-prioritising tagging images over deleting them; I now aim for a first pass to cull out anything that is obviously not worth keeping (out of focus shots, awful compositions, misclicks), and then I tag everything. I've found that doing so actually allows me to delete more images, more quickly, because as I'm tagging I will go through and record sightings to spotlists, and then wipe entire sections of "record shots". I also get a better overview of the photos and species I saw, so can compare shots taken throughout a day much more quickly, and spend less time fretting over image selection.
The missing piece to it all remains a gallery of some kind. I have managed to make some progress on this front whilst being off work, but still nothing concrete enough to really use or share. Ideas are coalescing, though, and more than a couple of concepts are now proven. Watch this space!
Indie Web
If 2023's web development was dominated by upgrading to Craft v4 and trying out the Astro framework, 2024 can be summed up as upgrading to v5 and really pushing how far I can take Astro's functionality.
Craft
Major version updates are typically a bit of a headache, but I didn't mind so much with version five of Craft. Why? Because almost every piece of new functionality is something that I've been hoping to get for years! This may also explain why I had upgraded within a few months of release, rather than my usual glacial pace π
Matrix blocks are now Entries and can be nested natively, so plugins like Supertable and Neo have been deprecated; fields are reuseable, including within Matrix blocks, allowing for a leaner and easier to maintain content structure; the Redactor plugin has been sunset, and replaced with the much more modern (and less buggy) CKEditor. All of these are excellent changes[6], but each one comes with a bunch of content negotiation issues and data migration concerns.
The end result was a total re-architecting of the content structure and back-end architecture for this site, which took months. Because I hopped on the band-wagon early, I was often finding bugs in migration patterns in sync with the development team, and I missed out on some of the more powerful automation tools that have been released in response. As a result, I ended up having to bodge together some distinctly manual migration processes, and spend many, many evenings painstakingly copying data from one set of fields to another.
On the plus side, that enabled me to really dig into some ideas I've had for a while. I've moved entirely onto the third version of my journal architecture, stress-testing it across multiple big trips and over a hundred individual entries. I'm still refining aspects of it β towards the end of the year I completely refreshed how I capture meals out, for instance β but it's beginning to feel a lot more stable and coherent, and that's mostly down to the new functionality that v5 brought to the table.
theAdhocracy
As for this website, the tech stack is completely unrecognisable to a year ago. I hadn't planned on migrating the site in 2024, but around April or May some part of the old Gatsby build chain imploded. After a few attempts at debugging, I figured it might be quicker to just jump ship. The original idea was to wrap the existing React code in Astro components, which worked remarkably well at first, but it took a little longer than I had hoped, and ran afoul of our busy summer plans. By the time we had returned, it felt like another month or so of delay would be worth doing things right, so I set about stripping away the remaining React code entirely. Cathartic is an understatement π
I also spent a chunk of that time working through a laundry list of bugs and improvements. Articles have been given a fresh lick of paint, modernising and improving the reading experience. Colours have been generally tweaked; they're still not fully accessible, but more of them are than before, which is a partial win! The calendar feed in the journal is now rendering correctly, and webmentions are a lot more consistent. Twitter metadata (and footer links) have been deleted. And last, but certainly not least, the old Algolia-powered search engine has been ripped out, refactored, and replaced with my own custom API endpoints bolted onto Craft itself!
I'm still not officially calling this "v4" of theAdhocracy, but the eagle-eyed will note that the footer now proudly states 4.0.0.a π (Then again, at time of writing it also still claims to be built using Gatsby, so you can only trust it so far π )
Journal v2
Figuring out my own site search meant deep-diving into Astro's server-rendering functionality, which I'd first taken for a spin at IndieWebCamp in Brighton back in May, as part of a rough proof-of-concept for a beer rating microsite (which I really need to return to at some point). Combined, these two mini-projects gave me the confidence to attempt building a proper front end for the new Journal, particularly now that the content structure was feeling quite stable.
One of my core concerns was that, well, it's a journal, and therefore a lot more private than most of what I do online. I'm happy censoring myself (or not) when I write blog posts, but I stopped using the existing Journal because I became increasingly uneasy subjecting other people to my boundaries. I want to make the information available on the web (otherwise why bother capturing it in the first place), but I want to do so in an ethical way, and that means anonymising and obscuring the content.
That's why server-side rendering is such an important part of the puzzle, and why Astro feels uniquely well-suited for the project. I can still work with a modern, component-led architecture and benefit from all the mod-cons of Netlify et al., but I can also shift the data fetching and authentication to a private server.
I've made solid progress with those plans, building a front end that can be searched by day, month, and year; anonymising the content coming from Craft, so that people's names (and anything else I flag as "sensitive") is automatically obscured; time-gating posts, so that I can't be stalked; and building a rudimentary authentication system, granting tiered access to content (i.e. de-anonymising text and removing or reducing time-gates). I even have map pages that show every location/check-in that I've recorded, alongside when we visited, what we did, etc.
Behind the scenes, this is all being powered by a suite of new APIs and custom functions that I've built around the Craft database, all of which I'm extremely proud to have pieced together and bashed into a rough, working shape. In particular, I've finally cracked authenticated endpoints β otherwise all of that anonymisation would have been trivial to subvert!
Locally, this is all working extremely well. There are still a few bugs to iron out, but the key functionality all interacts correctly, and I can finally browse all of these memories in a pleasant, efficient way. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the "live" experience.
I'm not quite sure what the root issue is, but once the site is up on Netlify, it craaawls π’ The performance isn't just bad, it barely functions. Trying to load a whole year, for instance, takes a couple of milliseconds locally, but on the server, it takes so long that it times out! I'm also finding that rendering pages via Netlify functions eats up resources very quickly, and whilst I haven't run over any limits yet[7], I'm painfully aware that this might be a real roadblock if I ever do get the site live.
I remain hopeful that this is an error on my part, and some more time working through the docs and hanging around the support forums will illuminate some kind of ideal solution, but there's a real possibility that I might have to tackle this again from an entirely different angle. The good news is that, now I'm working with Craft in my day job, I am learning some tips and tricks around performance; I've also become quite happy working within it's own templating system, Twig, so I might shift this part of the site into the Craft codebase directly, though this isn't my ideal solution. Hopefully 2025 will uncover some new, beneficial ideas on the subject π€
Smart Home
Not much to report in this area, though I closed out the year with a purchase that I've been eyeing up for some time: a StreamDeck+! Basically, its an overpriced macropad, giving me a range of buttons, dials, and touch targets to assign various triggers and automations to. I've not dug into the functionality too deeply just yet, but what I have managed to get running has already been worthwhile:
- Handy buttons for triggering various website builds, so I no longer have to log in to Netlify every time I post or update something β functionality that I used to have built into Craft, but lost during the v4 upgrade;
- A combination of StreamDeck and AutoHotKey software that allows me to toggle NVDA on and off[8];
- Another toggle, which switches my main PC's audio output between headphones and speakers, bypassing a several-step manual process;
- A much nicer (and more responsive) tactile volume control, replacing the weird "puck" that my speakers use (and ridding me of some more batteries);
Basically, a bunch of simple "nice-to-haves" that smooth out the wrinkles of various workflows and processes. Long-term, my hope is to integrate the device with our smart home apps and services, allowing me to control my lights, radiator, and more without having to move.
That will require a home automation "hub", however, to which end I have also bought a license for HexOS, a new Linux-based operating system that's aiming to be a simple, GUI-based alternative for setting up NAS servers, personal cloud apps, and media systems β and has promised support for Home Assistant. I haven't had time to play around with it yet; nor do I currently have any hardware to install it on. But the thought is there π I have a vague plan to buy a new computer in 2025, at which point I may cannibalise the old one and reuse it with HexOS somehow. And there's always that Chinese micro PC that I bought years ago and never worked out what to do with...
Ad Hoc Highlights
As is becoming normal for these posts, I wanted to finish things up with a rapid-fire round of miscellanea β all the bits that I want to remember or am excited about achieving, but which didn't really fit anywhere else.
- I briefly mentioned it above, but I finally made it to an in-person IndieWeb event, which was great fun and something I hope to repeat whenever they next return to the UK!
- Tried opera for the first time... and possibly the last π
- Designed my first pair of shoes! π
- Drummed at the Winter Run, London Marathon, and β quite ridiculously β in front of 10,000 people (give or take a few hundred), as the opening act for both Sundar Pichai and Idris Elba, at Google's annual all-hands internal conference π₯
- Became enthralled by the soot sprites all over again at the theatrical version of Spirited Away.
- Heard Sam Sweeney perform the entirety of Escape That at a wonderful venue in north London, as well as seeing a real who's-who of all-time favourite bands at other gigs: Caravan Palace, The Cat Empire, Lazy Habits, and even a cheeky pizza date with Electric Swing Circus.
- Explored many new National Trust and WWT locations β we definitely made good use of our shiny new lifetime memberships for both π
- Saw several famous faces on the stage, including Eddie Izzard's solo version of Hamlet, and Sir Ian McKellen in an astounding performance of Player Kings.
- Finally made it out to the Crossness Pumping Station, London's stinkiest hidden gem β and thankfully not that smelly when we went π
- Although, having said all of that, we didn't actually watch any of the show Friends, which now feels like a completely missed opportunity...
And that, as they say, is a wrap. Another year over.
All in all, 2024 had quite a lot of unexpected twists hidden throughout its twelve months. Not every journey went exactly to plan β from redundancies, to inopportune COVID infections and fly bites, to missed petrol stations, and mileage photo panics β but we made the most of each and every opportunity we were given, and the end result was an incredible year of adventure, spent with some of our absolute favourite people.
I'm not sure 2025 is likely to tread a similar path. We still have a handful of weddings on the horizon but, to be blunt, we're running out of people that we know! And 2024 wasn't exactly the cheapest year, especially with neither of us earning for half of it; all that travel, plus some pretty big purchases along the way (*cough* car *cough*), really began to add up! As a result, travel in the year ahead may be a little simpler, a little more low-key, but I think the core theme of 2024 will continue to burn brightly. I'll certainly be hoping so!
