End of year wrap up - 2022 edition

Is it really the end of the year already? I can’t quite believe it myself! Where did the year go?

Similar to what I did last year, this post is to share what I’ve done this year. This year has mostly been more focused on major real life events, such as buying a house and getting married. I (somehow) managed to find the time to work on some projects and make updates to this website.

Let’s dive in with a summary of what I did:

• Upgraded this website in various ways….
  • Went from Gatsby version 2 to version 4…
  • …and then went from Gatsby version 4 to version 5
  • Changed the background colour
  • Created the Archive page
  • Created the About page
  • Added new images…
  • …reduced the size of the images
  • Added a new font
  • Using FontAwesome icons in the footer…
  • …and ended up swapping out the Twitter icon for the Mastodon icon
• Worked on the season 22 Formula 1 project (and added ALL Grand Prix results)!
• Became a registered Scrum Master!
• Got married!
• Bought my own house!
• Travelled to the USA twice this year!

Let’s talk about these points in more detail.

This website

My website has changed quite a bit this year. In fact there have been over 100 commits to the website repo this year!

Plenty of changes this year. Most of the changes were backend but I did add a new about page, archive page, along with new photos.

Going from Gatsby version 2 to version 5 was a big jump. One of the biggest improvements I’ve seen is that the build times for the website is much better when working on it locally.

The Formula 1 2022 season data analysis project

This is a project that I’ve worked on over the year, and it’s something that I’ve really enjoyed. The repo on GitHub is filled with data for anyone who wants to take a look and start some analysis of their own.

Building the logic and refactoring it has been a good learning experience for me. I’ve never worked with data types like time delta until this project!

There’s still plenty of opportunities to do some more data analysis until the 2023 season.

GitHub

This year alone I’ve made over 270 contributions on all my repos! It’s quite clear when I was on holiday when you look at the table (to be fair, I was travelling a lot this year).

Maybe next year I’ll break 300 contributions?

Real life

The two big life events of this year has been getting married and buying a house. Both of these events happened within a few days of each other AND I was able to do this before I turned thirty (by less than a month). I also don’t recommend completing your house purchase while in another country, that is tricky to manage.

It may have taken me eight years but I did buy my own home before I was thirty. The process of buying a home is a wild ride. It’s something that I don’t want to do again for many years.

Moving house has been a challenge in itself. I have been kept busy by building furniture, getting services (like gas, electricity, etc) setup, cleaning, organising and more. It’s tough work running a house. There’s still plenty of work to do, I need to get curtains, blinds, wardrobes and lamp shades (I’m pretty sure there’s more I’ve forgot to mention).

Plans for 2023

WIth the new year, I have the following challenges I want to tackle:

• Read more
• Work more on Data Analysis/Data Science
• Make some more improvements to this website (redesign maybe?)
• More blog posts, on things other than programming. Like what software I’m using etc. Maybe even books I’ve read!
• Work on the house

Wrap up

It’s been a crazy busy year for me. I’m kinda hoping 2023 will be slightly quieter, but also more productive. For now, I’m looking forward to an Ikea free Christmas break.

Thanks for reading, see you in 2023! 🎉