2024 was probably the most eventful year of my life. So even though It’s now half a year later, I figured it would be a good place to start off my posts with the highlights.
I moved to Brazil
I’m originally from the beautiful town of Bellingham, Washington. But in January I moved to the (almost equally) beautiful state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’ve been working from there as a nomad since. It was the longest I’ve been away from my home country and an amazing experience overall.
I’ve generally had my whole world turned upside down. I’ve been really challenged (in a good way) to get out there and step out of my comfort zone more. Learning a new language, making new friends, getting involved in a new church, being immersed in a new culture and way of life were all really valuable experiences that I’m really grateful I got to live through.
I also had to run into all the things you don’t think about when doing a long-term international move like that. Figuring out what to do with all the documents, visas, and taxes was especially hard. But you do what you gotta do.
I got married!
My wife and I joke sometimes that we’re people who always go the extra mile and do things the hard way. We dated long distance, navigated several international trips to see each other and introduce our families, and then planned and executed a destination wedding here in Brazil.
It was a lot, but it was more than worth it when everything finally came together. We had a magical wedding and made a lot of great memories with our friends and families.
I went full-stack
I started 2024 being primarily a front-end developer with some back-end experience, but now I can confidently say that I’ve shifted to the middle. I still like tinkering with the UX and visuals, but I find just as much satisfaction writing all the logic and systems that power things behind the scenes. The projects I work on went from mostly websites to larger full-stack web applications, and I’m really enjoying that.
Then there’s the ever-present topic of AI and LLMs. I’ve been a cautious skeptic about it all for a while but now it’s all managed to creep into my workflow in many different areas. I started the year working primary with Visual Studio Code, now I almost always open up Cursor. More and more I find myself asking LLMs to remind me of things like that one query attribute I need to add to enable debug mode for this instead of trying to figure out how to Google it properly. We’re living in interesting times, to say the least.
I placed 10th in the GMTK Game Jam
In August I took part in the GMTK Jam. It was fun to go back to my roots for a weekend. Game development was the primary way that I got into the world of programming. At that point I haven’t touched any game project for years (and I didn’t even have a PC anymore to compile together an entry) but I managed to dual boot windows on my Steam Deck, re-downloaded my copy of GameMaker Studio 2 and the muscle memory just came right back.
The theme was “Built to Scale” and my wife and I thought it would be clever to make something about plants. We ended up making a short cozy game about a plant growing up the side of a building. You can play it online or on windows.
Trellis ended up placing 10th overall from 7,557 entries, which I’m pretty proud of. It didn’t end up on Mark’s top 20 but I did get a few seconds of fame in the video B-Roll so I’ll take it.
I lost weight
I finally lost enough weight to not consider myself obese or significantly overweight anymore. That was a huge milestone for me, physically and emotionally. Being overweight was always a looming burden in my life. It didn’t come with a lot of fanfare. I just checked one day and my weight was at a normal level. Somewhere down the line I stopped obsessing over over my weight and just focused on living a healthier lifestyle and slowly improving my stats at the gym.
I’m learning firsthand that major improvements in life don’t really happen overnight. It’s not a week of dedicated hard works that makes the lasting impact, but building up good habits long term that really make a difference.
I became a morning person??
I’m not sure when exactly or how, but sometime over the last year I went from being a night owl to an early bird. I always thought that being a morning person meant that you’d have no trouble getting up in the morning, but I still do sometimes. I just went from being able to stay up late nights hacking away at tasks to feeling my most creative and productive in the first few hours I wake up.
Media
I really enjoy reading through Dave Rupert’s “Vibe Check” posts. It’s interesting for to see what the people I’m following are currently into. So, in that spirit, here is a quick overview of my media consuption from 2024:
Books I Read
After a few years reading mostly non-fiction books, 2024 was a year I spent reading mostly otherwise.
- Cytonic (Book 3 of the Skyward Trilogy) - Was… ok. When I read the first book in the series a while back I can’t say that I expected the series to go where it did. I think the ideas behind the universe of the Skyward series get a little too out there for my tastes, but I had a good time.
- Finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I really enjoyed it. It was hard to keep all in my head at times but I got completely lost in the world of Tolkien. I loved seeing how his faith influenced his worldbuilding and storytelling, especially towards the end.
- Read through the entire Mistborn trilogy - After reading some of Brandon Sanderson’s other books (including the Skyward Series), I figured I would read the series that everyone recommends starting with from him. I was hooked, it was really good. And it was nice to read something a little lighter and more contained after LOTR.
Games I Played
- Forza Horizon 4 - Good fun on the Steam Deck.
- Titanfall 2 - I’m not usually a fan of FPS games, but people kept saying the campaign was really good, and it indeed was.
- Death Stranding: Director’s Cut - The gameplay was really satisfying, but the story was a bit too weird for me. I didn’t end up finishing it.
- Venba - Very sweet and impactful game. I resonated with it, being the child of immigrant parents.
- Portal: Revolution - Really impressive Portal 2 mod.
- Jusant - I thought it was a short and satisfying game with beautiful visuals.
- The Witness - I got obsessed with it. I know Jonathan Blow tends to get pushback for being too pretentious at times, but I really thought this game was beautiful, both visually and from a game design perspective.
- The Looker - Excellently executed parody of The Witness. The GDC talk was great too.
- Mirror’s Edge - Played it along with the MinnMax podcast. Still holds up great today.
- UFO 50 - So much creativity on one package. This took over the final months of the year for me.
Also, in case anyone out there is curious, here are my Top Songs of 2024 according to Spotify.