Saturday, December 31, 2016

Retrospect 2016 - End Well


It is good to start well, but it is even better to end well.

Following on from last year, under some sort of master plan to end well, I made a list of what I should prioritize:
  1. Be a better christian
  2. Make a game
  3. Play the piano
  4. Stay fit
  5. Draw
  6. Speak Japanese / Play Japanese songs
In actuality, I put more effort into items 2 through 6 than into being a better christian. It's quite a pitiful effort if I can only scrape together half a day in a year to spend with the maker of time. Some consolation is that I make coffee at church once a month, and can sometimes draw some latte art.



In making a game, I started again (again, again, again). Yeap, found the 99th way that doesn't work. After going through C++ dependency management using maven, biicode, and conan, I settled on Rust. I managed to make a program that can talk to different endpoints:


For piano, I've been practicing Five for Fighting's 100 Years, and Tenth Avenue North's By Your Side and Fighting For You. Perhaps one day I can use this for priority one.

In fitness, I joined work's Ultimate Frisbee team. It was the first time I played in a team sport, and it is far more exciting than long distance running. Still, a good run and workout feels good, and I keep that up at least once a week.


On paper, there's always a chance to make someone's day better. Check out this year's cards at cards.azriel.im:


Japanese is still a desire at arm's distance. I did spend a steady amount of time on it during work lunches in the earlier half of the year, but somehow didn't manage to keep it up. Maybe later. We'll see.