Hello fellow nixers,
The past year was quite hectic, a unique experience for everyone.
Let's use this thread as both a year review, focused on the technical and hobby aspect, and also a new year resolution.
So what did you discover in 2020, anything you had the time to learn, things you've created, ideas you've pondered about, etc..
Anything new you'll do for next year?

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Here's my take.
In 2020 I slowed down. I've never worked remotely for such a long period and that unlocked a big chunk of time in my daily schedule. With that in mind, I realized I could take as much time as I want to read, research, or work what I like. That's my biggest realization.
I could dig into multiple technical books in 2020, take dozens of courses on Coursera, take my time to write articles about topics I've always wanted to discover, and participate in national and regional CTF competitions.

Through my job application journey, I've noticed that I can't frame myself as specialist in anything. So 2021 will be focused on this so that I can discover what I have as "marketable" skills and open new opportunities. In 2021 I'll also be focusing on bigger researchs that take me wherever I find interesting. I really like this slow take on life.

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What about you? How was 2020 and how will you spend 2021?

2020 was the year I failed to find a better job thanks to that pandemic. Maybe 2021 will be it.
Also, I plan to become rich and famous with one of my long-term development projects.

2020 wasn't that different for me. School was stil mostly open and, sure we had to wash our hands often, but that wasn't that big of a deal.
2020 was also the year I truly got into programming. Before it had just been a little tinkering with Python scripts, but this year I started writing "real" programs in C and other langs.
This year, I want to read more and also finish more projects.

Good luck to you all with your new years resolutions.

hum... for 2021?

* load a real mail address
* buy new screens and/or repair some damaged ones I have
* build an electronic lab or at least finish the plans (so that I could build it when I have enough space at home)
* find a good job
* buy my own house
* clean my $HOME mess
* have my system self-healing (need cfengine3 for that, probably)

Those are the most realistic ones. Build my own distro (release-based, based on muslc, libc++, runit, no-PAM but still LDAP support, ideally "kernel agnostic", and many other things) is a project old and hard enough that I doubt I'll have something working in 12 months. But I do plan to continue going in that direction.
There's also several TODOlists I'd love to clean...

For 2021 I'm trying to keep my mind working. Is being quite hard not only due to pandemic scenario, but due to personal issues too. Different from most of people I know, I used to be a monday lover and self motivatedhardworker.
I'll keep trying to become a software developer ( even if it's a junior position, dunno )

I've been fully remote before 2020, so there wasn't really a big adjustment for me, save for the closure of coffee places and such, also everyone being at home all the time now.

(04-01-2021, 04:12 AM)venam Wrote: Through my job application journey, I've noticed that I can't frame myself as specialist in anything.

That's something I might say about myself as well. I'm experienced in both APIs and compilers, which are quite different, but also not too much related to my actual day-to-day work. Because I'm not sure I actually want to go deep on a technology, I'm thinking of improving my systems and process thinking on my road towards becoming a principal engineer/software architect.

I think it's healthy to assess one's own strength and weaknesses (and desires) from time to time, to figure out where to invest.

There's some open-source I maintain that I want to spend some time on, but I'm acutely aware of the burnout risk. My plan is to slowly ramp that up as I'm ramping down actual programming in my day job, so that coding becomes more a fun thing again that I do in my spare time.

I've also been trying to write more, and 2020 has been an okay year for my public writing, but I'd like to do a bit more still on that. Officially aiming for a well-written blog post every month, so 12 in total.

On a more private level, I've been learning Japanese for almost two years now, and I'm slowly getting to the point where I can consume (some) regular media that isn't explicitly made for learners, so I want to piggyback on that and immerse myself more. The long term plan would be to move to Japan in a year or two, assuming things like pandemics and visas work out. Luckily my employer is present in Japan already, so I would even get to keep my job.

Also hoping to get my SCUBA certification once pools open again in spring.

Well, let's see, there's a lot to recall with regard to 2020.

It's the year that:

- We decided to move to our "forever home" and set a plan in motion to do so within two years.
- My nascent career in live music came to a crashing halt.
- We decided to ditch the Apple ecosystem and move (back) to *nix.

2021 will be the year:

- I finally get after that pesky degree in computer science (at the tender age of 43).
- We move fully away from centralized services that erode our rights and invade our privacy, and roll our own servers, because we can.
- We pack all of our belongings and prepare to make what could be our last move ever in early 2022.

Some more general goals are to keep reading about any topic that appeals (fiction too!), write more publicly than I do privately, and to remain curious about technology in general.

In 2021, I want to feel comfortable "being myself" in various contexts. What this looks like to me is sort of a "fuck it" topper on communication that I sometimes have (I've found life with other humans can be better if I launch myself with -vvv).

I feel in 2020 I revamped my site enough to have a firehouse output there, so now I think I will share more there.

It's fun to be a little superstitious -- in 2021 I turn the same age as the luckiest of my lucky numbers. The superstition is that thus this year will be a "golden year" -- I just have to take my time an visualize what that means, to me, and not escape (read: distract/steal my own time). Again in 2020 I feel I've been setting up an OK base for a feedback loop on these sorts of things, between stuff like anki and a variety of tooling built on top of org mode in emacs.

There is always a balance, of course.

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I spent some time after writing the above trying to come up with a more specific list of things I want to do, because the above is fairly washy (I've also decided to leave some tech goals out of this list).

- I will reach 170lbs again (my journey is 230 -> 170 -> ~190, over 4 years or so)
- I will finish reading the books I carry around on my desk
- I will create a recipe interface from an archive of my mom's old cookbook stuff
- I will create at least one song

Lot's of interesting notes and aspirations in this thread. May the start of the new decade be charmed for us all.

(09-01-2021, 07:47 PM)neeasade Wrote: Lot's of interesting notes and aspirations in this thread.

For sure... this is a nice kick to consider ways to change and grow.

(07-01-2021, 09:00 AM)sulami Wrote: Also hoping to get my SCUBA certification once pools open again in spring.

Good call. It has been too long since I last went.

For me, I will start this year with simple aims:

- get into a consistent sleeping pattern

Hopefully anything else will follow.

As the software failed me again last night (the browser crashed, the article was restored - but I couldn’t add files, error 50x, until I restarted the browser again), I also hope to finally find the time to migrate my 15 years of fighting WordPress to a better system this year.

As it was the case for OpFez, 2020 was the year I finally got into programming. I learned a lot of stuff and created virtually all the software projects I have created. Got my programs packaged in a lot of repos (Free/DragonFly/NetBSD, GuixSD, Nix, to name a few) and that was really nice to see people using my software in the wild. Now and then I see someone using xmenu on /g/ desktop thread, and it is really satisfying to see that.

It was the year I have read a larger number of books than the any other year. It was the year I have learned the most.

Oh! That was also the year I moved from Linux to OpenBSD. What motivated me were the manuals. After getting into C programming I began to refer to the manuals and I found OpenBSD's ones to be more terse and complete than Linux ones. After moving, I had discovered two small bugs on OpenBSD's code, and that were my first contribution ever to a free software. The feeling of discovering your first bug in a big project is really satisfying, lol.

Now, my resolutions for 2021:

• Learn golang. I have bought Kernighan's book, but I have not had the opportunity to read from cover to cover.
  
• Learn more about programming in UNIX. I have bought Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment and read some chapters.
  
• Read more. I have a pile of books on my desk just waiting to be read, including those two.
  
• Write more software. I have some ideas of new software to write in 2021. The first is a dock/bar for X11 that works like FVWMButtons (a module of fvwm), which swallow windows to be docked in a bar. The second is a TUI table/list manager that could be used as a file browser, mail user agent, news reader/aggregator, etc. The third is a window manager. I have already written one, but it was too buggy (although I'm still using it rn).
  
• Get a job. I really need one.
  
• Get vaccinated.
  

Wow, some really inspiring responses here!

First of all, sorry for my absence the past month and a bit... I've been on vacation and left my computer at home to kind of 'detox' from all things tech. It's been nice, but I've missed it, and all of you!

I'll keep this short and sweet. This year I want to:

• Lose my COVID beer belly -- this involves drinking less and exercising more. Going to join a gym.
  
• Move back to Queensland Australia (Currently in Melbourne)
  
• That obviously means new job and new house.
  
• Impregnate my wife again. We want a second child.
  
• Tech/nix related... I want to host my own email server finally.
  
  That's about it. Big things on the horizon as most others. Here's hoping this year is kind to all of us :)

BUMP for posters in this thread. One month left bbs.

• Buy a few Raspberry Pi's and use them to build some servers for various things around the house.
  
• Build a new desktop machine to replace my old Gateway PC.
  
• Learn how to write some elinks hooks to filter out the extraneous crap on so many websites.
  
• Learn at least one new programming language. ( Lua? Rust? Haskell? )
  
• It's not computing-related but is still techie: work thru my college physics textbook to refresh my knowledge of things I've forgotten in the years since then. (Inspired by my recent realization that I'd forgotten some simple stuff like how to calculate gear ratios or angular momentum.)
  

Quote:I've noticed that I can't frame myself as specialist in anything

I'm still not a specialist in anything, and can't seem to get into any particular topic. Thus, I can't find a job position.

(29-11-2021, 06:03 PM)ckester Wrote: Buy a few Raspberry Pi's and use...

You're going to do all that in the last month of 2021? That's a lot to catch up to.

(04-01-2021, 05:07 AM)jkl Wrote: Also, I plan to become rich and famous with one of my long-term development projects.

Did you?

I misread the subject line. Those are my resolutions for 2022.

Learn golang: Nope. I had so much to do and the college took me so much time that I could not learn golang this year.
Learn more about programming in UNIX: I'm still programming in UNIX but my knowledge has not advanced in this topic this year.
Read more: I bought more books than I could read. But I read some.
Write more software: I could do that. I also rewrote my WM, which was one thing I wanted to do last year.
Get a job. I really need one: I just did an interview for internship at a small company. Let's see how it goes!
Get vaccinated: Two shots!

I have become famous (as a member of the city council), still working on becoming rich though.
My code projects are mostly dormant these days. I should change that.