The new year is upon us! With it I have cleansed my project list and notes, refreshed my reading and games-to-play list, and am ready to rock.
First off, I've killed my ~2 year on-and-off side project "Journode",, a web-based note-taking application in redbean and fullmoon. I had previously used a couple of note-taking tools, and found that my notes tended to have a directionality to them. The design had a standard note-editing view and a star map, and each note could have references / backreferences and indicate the next or previous note, letting you fork a project into tangents. I thought it was very cool, and even designed a polar-coordinate map system, where new notes would show up at the center of the map and push all old notes out radially.
It was a neat project but I'd often get it just to where I needed it to be (barely functional) and then use it for 2-4 months, then stop using it a couple months.... then come back and completely redesign the front end. It was a lot of wasted effort! (Plus I started getting way heavier into physical notes in 2022)
So with that dead I moved all of my notes into Obsidian, as I'm keen on the infinite canvas mode they recently added. Not sure if I'll pay for sync yet, but that's the last bullet in Journode!
The very first note from 2 years ago is "I want to get back into game development", and I took that note to heart! Almost all of my side projects that I take on now are at least tangentially oriented around game development.
Next up, I reworked my to-read list. I read a tonne of fun scifi last year, but the stuff that stuck with me was the philosophical stuff. Left hand of Darkness is what I started 2022 with, and I want more stuff like that. I've loaded up on stuff like Snow Crash, Flowers for Algernon, and Permutation City. I also bought into the Brandon Sanderson kickstarter, so I'll have some lighter audiobooks to sprinkle through the year.
Over my holidays I also listened to Noor, by Nnedi Okorafor, which I got on sale on Libro.fm. It was a fairly light read with standard sci-fi stuff, but having it set in futuristic-africa (which wasn't that futuristic except for a handful of new technologies) made for at least a difference in scenery and underlying philosophy.
I overloaded my games-to-play list for 2023... I won't get to all of them, but I'm going to try to be more militant about getting to the meaty stuff. I was spoiled with tactical RPGs in 2022 with Triangle Strategy and Digimon Survive -- it got capped off with a re-release of Tactics Ogre, which was on my to-play list at the start of 2022 (psp version)! I haven't got to that one yet, but I'm going to tackle it this year.
Over the break I dabbled in some light gaming, not wanting to get too invested in anything. I ended up playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress' Steam Release (I've been playing that on and off for years, and spent quite a while on the Bay12 Patreon). I didn't get very far, but assembled some happy fortresses without too many deaths. The game plays pretty alright on the SteamDeck, and mobile Dwarf Fortress isn't something I'd ever dared to dream of.
I also played Gato Roboto, which I failed to beat on account of some of the Mouse bosses being assholes. Dyson Sphere Program got about 3 hours of attention before I realized the SteamDeck really wasn't going to cut it for long-term play. I put a couple hours into Dome Keeper and Noita, both fun pixelly roguelikes which I'll likely tinker with in the future.
I also ended up with a copy of Pentiment, which has hooked me. I beat the first Act and plan on completing the game before moving on to anything else this year!
Finally, I've taken up a bit of writing. I saw somewhere that lots of prolific writers push out ~500 words a day, and as it turns out 500 words isn't too difficult. Plus due to 2022's influx of fountain pens and notebooks, I have ample writing implements.
So far most days I get between 250 and 500 words (not counting since I'm using physical media, about a page and a half), and I've been writing little vignettes from a story I've been working on for nearly 2 years in my head. I write them as if they're 500-word snippets from a finished novel, and it's really refreshing! I've got about 8 of these done so far, and expect I'll hit a writer's block soon, but I'll keep it going as long as I can.
I'm excited for the new year! I've got all my work stuff locked and loaded for the first day back tomorrow, and am hoping to blast into this new year at full speed to build up momentum that will carry me through the dreary winter months. Cheers.