It feels preposterous that I haven’t made a single post this entire year. Inspired by Tania Racia’s annual yearly review, I figured I could at the very least give my thoughts on 2024 as a whole.
Personal project wise, this was a pretty productive year. I deployed my first PWA called Media List, an app that resides on my own phone and I get a lot of use out of. I have continued to explore, as I’m sure many other developers have, the use of A.I. in coding expeditions. It has become part of my daily workflow, and still is something I’d like to spend more time with just tooling around.
I completed two game jams. One for a procedural generation jam (https://octopus-blues.itch.io/tree-planter) and one for Halloween https://octopus-blues.itch.io/speed-demon. It was my first time ever messing with procedural generation, and something I like to revisit. Due to time constraints on my extreme beginner level knowledge of procedural generation, the only thing I you can do in my game is plant trees and generate new terrains.
The Halloween game jam was the first one I joined, and I settled for a small physics based incremental game.
Much, if not all, of my personal projects these days are games made with Godot. It has been a long time since I’ve spent a weekend messing around with a new language, or doing anything remotely close to web development. I find the Godot ecosystem simply too fun, the combination of a GUI and Code editor adds a surprisingly game-ification like feel. Like most Godot users, I find myself somewhat of an evangelist for the engine.
I have spent some time this year, starting a few months ago, studying to get an AWS Solutions Architect certification. I have never studied for nor recieved any sort of developer certification. Back when I worked in online marketing, I used to get various google marketing certifications. I figured it’s about time to do something for my career that is broader then code implementation.
After a few months of studying, I can see I’ve underestimated how vast the AWS platform is. I have been trying to find the right (and realistic) amount of time ot study per day - I’ve been osciliating between 15 minutes and a full hour. Like many working adults, I find my self with surprisingly little free time during the week day. This is not helped by my hour, sometimes hour plus commute. I’d say I have around 2 functional hours during the weekday.
I’ve written on this blog for nearly three years now, as we move from 2024 into 2025. My very first post on my website is “How long is a blog supposed to last?”, which muses over the fact that in my long digital life I have had, and abandoned, many blogs.
This isn’t even the first incarnation of marcussnow.dev. Lost in a sea of repositories lays half a dozen blog posts about frameworks and other web related musings. Upon rereading my first post, I feel as if I’m only going to repeat myself here. So I’ll say something a bit different.
I think it’s time to sunset this blog. In all of my blogs, this is a first. I have never had a final post, because I always intend to eventually write something. Well, I suppose this time will be different. I will free myself of the nagging responsibility to scream into the void. I worry that my writing ability will languish without use, and in truth it most likely will. In this new powered world of A.I., I don’t even know if it’s worth nuturing a writing talent. I still maintain a private journal, which redeems all of the wonderful therapuetic vantages of writing.
But maintaing whatever gestures wildly about is, I don’t think I’ll continue down this road. In truth, a large part of making a website was to both learn web development, and to help foster an interest for it. My first “dev” blog was in 2019, before I got my first software job. I’ve been working in software for 5 years now, so much of my life has changed.
When I first started that blog, my life was in such a different place. I was freshly married. The death of my mother, grandmother, and uncle was fresh. I was trying to reinvent myself. And it took me 5 years to do so.
I think this makes for a fine last post. Something I can look back upon with fondness. I feel a great desire to post this as is - with no further editing. Maybe there is an eagerness in me, to simply have finished a post for 2024, after many failed attempts.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I rescued a cat and a dog. Which brings my little household to me, my wife, our three cats, and a dog. It’s a full house over here.
I guess it’s an end of an era. I wonder if a single soul ever read any of my posts. I guess I’ll never know.
Thanks for reading.