Crowbarring all the Ps in again.

Push

Program

Picture

  • The only miserable bit because it was another miserable year: Didn’t get my films developed from last year and so didn’t bother buying any more for summer because of the backlog. I did, however, end the year buying two 35mm films to shoot over the Christmas holidays so it’s not all bad
  • I just can’t get into my phone’s camera. I’ve tried. Failed this one *

Prose

  • Finished reading everything published (and available) by Virginia Woolf. That was a lot of essays! *
  • On a somewhat related topic, completed a basic Maltese course on Memrise; I wish Duolingo did Maltese. I kind of did this instead of keeping up with the Italian (and so I can’t decide if that’s a fail or not *). I still suck at languages

Phonographic

An AMAZING year. Tonnes of good albums. My favourites:

  • TC: GTFU
  • Prodigy: No Tourists
  • Estrons: You Say I’m Too Much, I Say You’re Not Enough
  • Marmozets: Knowing What You Know Now (my album of the year and it was my most listened to album *)
  • Friction: Connections
  • Epic Beard Men: Season 1
  • Let’s Eat Grandma: I’m All Ears
  • Brand New Friend: Seatbelts for Aeroplanes
  • Dreamwife: Dreamwife
  • Tonight Alive: Underworld

None album wise… it was all about Jade Bird for me. Uh huh led me to find Furious which is just beautiful. Album of the year for 2019? Quite possibly.

And a worthy mention for Foundation FM for being a new and different radio station.

Can’t wait to see what next year brings!

Pocket money

The first year (technically ever and realistically for a long time) I’ve given myself a monthly allowance (2% of my pay). And by give I mean: Not letting it be taken away or giving it back, etc. Other years I’ve tried, but made the mistake of waiting until the end of the month and if there was any money left over, then I’d have my allowance; There never was. This time round I gave myself that money upfront. I went a bit wrong at the start of the year (and end of the year) and used my allowance to buy (other people) things that should come out of a different allowance/budget, but in general I have done a good job of giving myself some spends for a change.

So it is arguably my fault that I didn’t get my films from last year developed: I chose to spend my money on some other things instead. The main things were two new pairs of running shoes and then a new monitor and SSD to get my NetBSD desktop up and running again. And these services.

Next year I’m going to give myself a pay rise and set my allowance to 3% of my earnings. I’m hoping this will balance out the “using my allowance to get other people things” bit; Seems fair: I was at ~1% not so long ago.

Plans

  • At least another marathon to prove the first wasn’t a fluke: It’s all the sprint training that I’m most apprehensive of. Ideally two marathons next year. The tricky bit is fitting it in: I did a 19 week plan last year. Next year I’ll try 12, but I have to wait until the clocks change for the daylight so it’s still going to be hard to fit two in if I want to do 12 weeks of training each time. I don’t think I want to go further than that in distance
  • SHOOT SOME FILM. SHOOT SOME FILM. SHOOT SOME FILM (and get it developed)
  • I’d like to do something more with NetBSD. I use it all the time, but would be nice to get more involved and contribute more back. Probably though I’ll just see what else I can do with pkgsrc. Finding time is always the trickiest thing

I have no plans yet around reading (what to read?!!) or learning languages.

I don’t write these every year because there were a lot of years which were too miserable to review; It was just a matter of making it through for the false hope of the next one. But… for sake of comparison here’s one from ten years ago - the bit about friends hasn’t really changed: A really sucky thing about being a parent.

* - Goals from last year.