The first months of the new year has been such a busy time that it is only now that I’ve made time to sit down and go over the last year.
Perhaps I should make it a habit to write these reflections over the year, so that they are more or less ready to be posted at years end
Theme Link to heading
The 2024’s theme was “Explore”, a theme I think fit nicely given that it was the year we finally made the move over to the Netherlands.
I’ve used the time not only explore this new country I find my self in, but I’ve also been making good use of the train connections available to me to go explore the European continent.
Lindau Link to heading
First off I had the possibility to traveled to the beautiful town of Lindau in Bavaria to meet some friends that are originally from that region.
Just the town on it’s own would already be beautiful enough, but combined with the view of the Alps in the background just across lake Constance, makes it really an experience I would recommend to anyone.
When we were not being hosted by our friend’s incredibly generous and warm families, we ate almost exclusively at Hotel Engel, a place I would highly recommend for both the food and the atmosphere.
Tuscany Link to heading
Then during the summer we attended the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends, held in the secluded town of Coreglia Antelminelli in the rural hills of Tuscany. While I had been to Florence a few times already, I had never really explored the countryside of Tuscany much.
The wedding was held at a Villa Colletto, a beautiful 19th century property standing at the top of a Tuscan mountain. Having been there, I have a hard time imagining a better place for a wedding.
Having now spent a week exploring the area, I can say for certain that rural Tuscany will be high on my list for any future travels to Italy.
Hamburg Link to heading
And then at the tail end of the year, between the Yule festivities and the new year, I traveled to Hamburg to explore the yearly 38c3 congress, which had been on my bucket list for a long time.
I had the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting people and learn new things. It was such a nice experience that I am now hoping to be able to go again in the near future (that is if I can grab tickets).
Hamburg was also an interesting city to roam around in. I specifically liked seeing the Speicherstadt and surrounding areas.
Life Link to heading
This has also been a year exploring aspects of life and community, in ways I could not have imagined. I’ve had the luck to get to know some truly selfish individuals this year, and for that opportunity I am immensely grateful. I will probably write something on that in the future.
And so while there are still plenty of things left to explore - as there always are - overall I walk away satisfied with how my theme for the year went.
Books Link to heading
Perhaps due to all of the activity of last year and the move to the Netherlands, I was not at all as prolific in my reading as I had hoped would be the case. Still, there were a few books that I made time to read.
Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy Link to heading
This was a book series that I had heard enough about for some time to put it on my reading list. It wasn’t until I saw that Netflix was about to release a tv series based on the books that I knew it was time to either read them, or have the story inevitably spoiled by online chatter.
The first entry “Three Body Problem” - often also used as the alternative title for the trilogy - started off strong and was overall a fun read. The most interesting bit about it, to me, was the way it was written. Obviously I read the translated version, but the narration style of the original work came clearly through in the translated work. Having discussed it with a friend, I know that I wasn’t alone in finding this a unique aspect of the book.
The second installment “Dark forest” brought some interesting new elements to the story, specifically an idea for a solution to the Fermi paradox, but in the end I felt it didn’t live up to the hype surrounding it. Still, I would recommend giving it a go.
However the third entry, “Death’s end” fell completely flat, in a way that just seemed like the author wasn’t sure about how to tie up the loose ends in the story. It could be skipped completely, as it adds very little to the overall story arc.
Blindsight Series Link to heading
This was another science fiction series I had heard talked about over the last few years. Now though with LLM’s being such integral part of the ongoing zeitgeist and how the theme’s explored in the first book can be seen to overlap with them, I had to give it a look.
‘Blindsight’ was a trip to read, while the follow up ‘Echopraxia’ went fully off the rails.
These have the usual bio-hacking, mega corporation, dystopian paranoia found in the works of authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.
The first entry is very much worth a read, while nothing is lost by skipping the second.
The following is a short film based on the first book and I absolutely advice not to watch it if you are even slightly interested in reading the book: Blindsight - SciFi Short film.
Emperor of all maladies Link to heading
Given that this was the only non fiction book I read during the whole year, I made an excellent choice.
The book threads the history of cancer, the various ways it has been diagnosed throughout time and the ways humanity has tried coping with this incurable collection of diseases. It then goes through the medical science victories - and losses - that have occurred over the last hundred years, in quite the detail.
The book also touches on the aspect of research funding, how public funding is crucial for this kind of medical research, and on the politics, how non experts can shift focus in ways that are not always beneficial to the end goal.
Having had experiences with cancer in my family, this book was a fascinating look at how far modern medical science has gotten. Just the evolution in the 90’s and early 00’s before the book was published was greater than most of what was accomplished in the eighty years before. And in the last decade since the books publication back in 2010, even more impressive developments have occurred.
I would highly recommend this one for anyone even slightly interested in medical history, cancer research or public health policy.
Work Link to heading
Work on Prescriby continues, and last year the team grew quite a bit.
A clinic for receiving postoperative patients was opened and as a result our user count started growing at a healthy pace.
The mobile application also underwent a design sprint late last year, where the team solicited the help of Júní - a local design studio - to work with us on creating a refreshing new take on the product. The end result was a complete overhaul of the application both in terms of visuals and experience, with implementation work currently ongoing.
I am looking forward to when it is ready to be revealed to the public, as it will really be a major update in both usability and visuals for our users.
This year will be an exciting one, where the focus is being placed on foreign expansion.
Defend Iceland Link to heading
Defend Iceland is a relatively new bug bounty program for companies and institutions in Iceland, that I had heard about but never had any interaction with before.
While working on adb helper last year I used to run some of the functionality on the applications that were installed on my phone at the time, and in one of those instances was able to discover a way to circumvent the security procedures that one of those applications used.
Now it just happened to be that I knew some of the developers of the application in question, so I reached out to them to let them know about the issue (I’m nice like that). They then directed me towards signing up for Defend Iceland to be able to claim a bounty on the issue.
Since then I’ve had two more disclosures paid out via the program, and while the amounts have generally not been very high, the ratio of effort-to-gains has been very good. I can see how some make this into a full blown occupation.
The interaction with the program’s handlers though was, lets just say, less then ideal.
They were clearly not ready to deal with the amount of disclosures that came flooding in (I can see the number of disclosures and roughly their status), and due to long periods of communication silence there were times where I wasn’t sure the program was still operational.
There have been rotations in their management since then though, so perhaps things have gotten better.
There are occasional evenings where I will sit down with a cup of coffee, run over the list of companies and institutions participating in the program and see if there is anything to be discovered.
Even when I end up not discovering anything, I enjoy the search. I guess this must be what those people that walk up and down beaches with metal detectors feel.
Social Media Link to heading
I still use Mastodon, and support both it and my instance with a monthly financial contribution, but in an attempt to not miss out on developments in my field I also opened up an account on Bluesky as it seems that most of the core Android developer community has moved over to it.
Frankly though, I am not one of those that misses the noise of Twitter. And in that respect I am not sure Bluesky will be the place for me. But I scan it from time to time, just to see what the Android community is up to.
Projects Link to heading
Last year I did not work on as many side projects as I had planned.
Most of what I did work on were either private infrastructure projects - like my home server - or Ansible roles. There was though one project that didn’t fit that description and was made public last year.
ADB helper Link to heading
I did rewrite the numerous bash scripts that had collected over the years of Android development into a single project. I’m rather happy with the outcome, and use it pretty much ever single working day. The post about it goes into more detail.
Check out the projects section for a full list of my projects.
Playing Link to heading
Video games are a fantastic medium that are able to convey stories and action in a way that no other medium can.
With the amount of work that Valve has put into their Proton compatibility layer I have long since stopped having a Windows partition for playing games.
All of these played fantastically on Linux.
Surviving the aftermath Link to heading
I have always had a soft spot for management games - having grown up playing the likes of Theme Hospital, Theme Park, SimCity and more - as well as having a soft spot for anyting post-apocalypse in general. So naturally I gravitated towards this one.
After finishing it I would say it feels like the discount cousin of Frostpunk. Not a bad game, but just one that has very little replay value.
Pillars of Eternity Link to heading
2024 was finally the year that I finished this game, after having started playing it back in 2015. What can I say, I take my time with some things.
This was the game that ushered in the revival of the cRPGs, and for that I am thankful. But I will be honest, it was a bit of a slog to get through. Overall the experience was a solid one, though I did not find the combat system particularly interesting. In the end there was no clear strategy needed, and I can’t even remember if I ever used any of the quick items or consumables.
Having heard a lot of good things I do plan on playing the sequel at some point, but it might take a few years until that happens.
Pillars of Eternity: White March Link to heading
Similar to the main game, I had started playing the expansion back in 2016 and only finished it this year.
It was a welcome distraction from the main story line, and had some interesting locations to explore. Well worth it.
Fallout 76 Link to heading
Anyone who is even remotely watching video game related news will have heard about the disastrous launch of this game back in 2018, and how it was an under-cooked mess for years.
But having played around with it over a couple of weekends, it must be said that it has come a long way since then. However the game does not fulfill any need for a narrative story, and the very restrictive storage will quickly make it feel like the game loop revolves around inventory Tetris rather than anything else.
Sure, paying a monthly fee would give me more storage. But it isn’t clear to my why anyone would want to pay for this game. The world feels dead, bereft of any story worth exploring. And after killing the same creatures for the hundredth time, inside the same bland environments, I knew it was time to move on.
It’s worth sinking a weekend into, since it is free.
Path of Exile 2 Beta Link to heading
Path of Exile 1 was very much a surprise when I played it for the first time a few years ago. At the time I didn’t realize how expansive the game world was, and how many interesting systems the developers had been able to create. It became one of my all time favorite aRPGs, only superseded by Diablo 2.
So once the beta for Path of Exile 2 opened up in December, I blocked off a weekend to dive head first into it. And man, did it deliver! Sure, there were some hiccups here and there, but those are to be expected of a beta.
That both entries in the franchise are free and without any game play content locked away is such a breath of fresh air in this era of endless micro transaction and subscription fatigue.
This year Link to heading
The theme for this year is going to be “Networking”.
I both want to expand my network of people, both in a professional and personal sense. To help with that I’ve identified some events and groups in my near environment that I plan on reaching out to and participate in.
But I also want to get more into actual networking, updating my own knowledge of the networking stack and start diving into network engineering. It is one of these aspects of the software stack that is so fundamental to everything built upon it, that it feels like a blind spot to not have a complete grasp of it.
The plan is also to cover more ground when it comes to reading non fiction, and to make at least one mobile and one web side projects public this year.
And looking over the number of posts I’ve written this year, I think there is room for improvement there as well.