Happy new year! I'm going to start doing these obligatory year in review posts. I don't know how it'll turn out since it's the afternoon of the 31st as I write this up. I really should have been working on this all week. But with r/a/dio in the background, /a/ in another window, and soon some drinks, I don't see how this could go wrong!
It's been the first full year of my site being online with the anniversary having been the first of December. 7 posts this year (excluding this one), which isn't quite as much as I'd like but it's not terrible to start off either.
In May I got my baiku (but still no license lol, but I will deal with that once it gets warm enough). In August I went to DEF CON 29, which was fun but me going out to a social event of any kind was unusual and is hopefully good progress in that regard. In October I passed the Sec+ exam, which as I said in that post, I feel a bit silly for having done at this point, but it's still proof to myself that with dedication and adderall I can accomplish something I start. In December, I failed the Advent of Code event, which doesn't seem very noteworthy, but it highlighted gaps in my programming knowledge that I plan on overcoming this year.
I already have a number of plans and ideas for posts to make in the next year which will be more fun than what I produced this year, so I hope you'll check in once in a while.
I also created 11 blurbs, a new photo gallery page, and a new Tor mirror this year. Also changed my CSS twice to celebrate Halloween and Christmas.
According to the visitor counter, I've had over 18,000 visitors! As of right now it seems I've also had 77 guestbook signatures (thank you all!), and 937,132 requests this year, but I get absolutely bombarded with bot spam so that one doesn't mean as much. Not to mention that one of you has been determined in trying to DoS my site for some reason. I went from 5,213 requests one week to 171,689 the next, and that hasn't let up at all unfortunately. It's not effecting anything on my end, it's just strange.
In my New Year 2021 blurb I said
> I have never had as many personal plans and hopes for a year as I do for 2021. I'm very ready to throw all of my effort into a productive new year.
which is very funny and also sad to read now because this year really sucked for me. Stuff started turning around somewhat towards the end of the year, but I had a lot of confusion and misdirection this year in regards to what I want to do in life. I won't go too deep into personal things, but as things are I'm just going to throw myself into C programming and subsequently some systems study, before starting on assembly/reverse engineering focused resources. On the side I'll try getting better at the math and algorithm topics that I struggle with so much. Everything I do this year and whether it helped me will be logged in my, currently neglected, post titled Path to Competence.
My side projects have suffered this year a lot, but at this point that's mostly because I desire to rewrite some of them in C with better layout and program design. Will come back to these and provide updates as they exist.
I made a pic that's now being used as the OP image for the mod sticky on /trv/. The previous sticky thread had been up for almost 9 years.
My favorite happenings of the year was probably the Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 shitshow on /a/ when that dropped. It's a little too bad that those threads turned into a recurring general thread for some reason, but I guess that's expected in the current year.
This won't appeal to many so I'm sticking it at the end, but here's a list of shows I watched that aired this year and a brief thought about them.
I think I'm going to be way quicker to drop shows this next year, and spend more time watching things from the 80s-90s that I've not seen.
i watched the first season last year and it was ok. the gimmick plot twists (no spoilers) were entertaining but it was still pretty silly as expected of a horror anime.
the second season was almost unspeakably bad. it did nothing good, and it wasnt even comically bad, just painful.
i dont even really remember this one very well in terms of content. i think it was an incel self-help anime where nerds can self insert as the MC. i vaguely remember people saying stuff like "there's actually good advice in this show!" and thinking that was funny
the plot of the show is that each character is a cell in some person's body and they run it like some industrial society while it teaches you random biology trivia. the idea is cute and i enjoyed the first season, but i don't know if the idea is cute enough to sustain 2 more seasons of interest from me. i think i didnt finish one or both of these.
one of my all time favorite shows gets a second season :D actually going to start rewatching this one tonight (dec 31) since it overlaps with new years. just finished rewatching season 1 last week.
really comfy and cute. a tough series to say goodbye to, very mono no aware
not my kind of thing at all but you can't skip this one and still use /a/ because of how prevalent it quickly became
creepy and off-putting show
forgettable isekai, but watched anyway since it looked cute
i really liked the first season of this series, i like the absurd, over-the-top humor it uses. the yugiri lore episodes were really good in particular. i don't like idol shows, and unlike the common cope you see about this show of "the songs are good because they're ironic!" or "i dont like idol music, this is just particularly good!", i still cant force myself to sit through those parts
the super cub threads on /a/ ended up being my favorite threads to follow from this year.
started off really interesting with a well presented melancholy that i like a lot in series. sometimes the characters would just randomly pull a "you can go anywhere on a super cub" moment and i'd remember that i'm watching an advertisement. this became increasingly prevalent as the show went and overall the episodes towards the end were not very good.
it's degenerate but i really like this show and the more serious tone and lore from this sequel season compliments the original really well
really boring, even with yuri goggles. the characters were completely uninteresting even by anime melodrama standards, and most of the conflicts were randomly invented with no purpose or consistency
goofy, but still fine. liked the first season more, but even that doesn't compare to the original series.
homura did nothing wrong btw
the first season was barely made watchable by watching the development of the main handler girl's relationship with the main schizo guy character, but this wasn't really touched until the end. i was told more than once "but wait it gets good" but god is this boring
overall really enjoyed this and it's probably the most artistically interesting show i watched from the last year
it's a bit hard to remember which character is which or belongs to what clan, but it was made easier with some anon on /a/ who created charts
would have really enjoyed a show like "Biwa no Tabi" (based on ep 8 at least) in the same setting because the main character was interesting, but as it was it was still a really fun depiction of a cool historical epic
probably my fav new series of the year, not a sequel