As it is nearing the end of the year I thought it would be nice to write about what I've been up to this year. This is mostly a list of things I've done and reflections on how things have been going.
Egypt
One of the biggest events of this year has been going on a trip to Egypt in September. This is the first time I've gone on a trip abroad for years which was quite exciting.
The main thing I wanted to do in Egypt is visit the archaeological sites and museums. I got to see the actual pyramids and sphinx which was very cool. I even got to go inside the largest pyramid which really felt like dungeon delving with how small and narrow the access tunnel was.
I visited both the old museum of Cairo and the fancy new one. It was impressive just how many artifacts there were and I got to see the mask of Tutankhamun. The new museum was very nice and it was a shame that I didn't get more time to look around it.
Ludum Dare
Now and again I've tried taking part in the programming competition Ludum Dare over the years. Now often I don't manage to finish but now and again I do.
I did manage to complete something for the competition in October. It isn't anything special but I was happy that it gave me a chance to try writing a dialog system and work on how to have npcs say different things based on your progression through quests.
One of the nicest things about Ludum Dare is the reviewing period. During it you get the chance to play and rate the games that people have played and leave feedback on their entries. In turn people review your game and it is lovely to receive feedback from people who have played your game. The experience is very positive with people leaving nice comments.
There is a ranking of games afterward and whilst I would never expect to score that highly I was pleased to see my game doing better than the average. It actually scored its best rating in humour which was cool. I guess people liked the dialog I wrote for all the npcs.
Nanowrimo
Nanowrimo, the novel writing event might not be a thing anymore but I still wanted to take November to be a month where I write a lot. I've been getting into writing a journal every day this year and I wanted to see how far I could push myself to write in it.
Nanowrimo is meant to be a novel writing but I decided I would allow myself to write anything so whilst I did write some notes and prose of a fantasy story the main bulk of my writing was in my journal.
It was lots of fun to just write as much as I could and it felt nice to express myself. There is a goal wordcount for Nanowrimo of 50,000 words and I managed to absolutely crush it by writing 100,000 words!
Reading Books
Over the last year I've made it a habit to spend time reading physical books everyday. It is a lot easier to get through a large text if I'm not at a computer and distracted by the internet. Although having said that it has given me an excuse to do some microblogging by writing about what book I've just read on twitter.
I read a wide variety of books this year, not only fiction but some non-fiction textbooks too. I essentially have been going through all my old university textbooks and reading them again. It has been nice to refresh my knowledge of what I studied all those years ago.
Playing Music
Just over the past few weeks I've been getting back into something I haven't done since I was learning back when I was a kid which is playing the piano. I used to find it so difficult to sit down and practice each day so it's been really nice to be able to do that now I'm older.
Playing the piano isn't a skill you really forget and I can still play some of the pieces I really practiced from way back. I have had to remember a lot of the old theory and have been approaching it with new eyes which means it has been very interesting to learn more.
Summary
So all in all I've had a pretty busy year as I've also been getting to the gym and exercising every day. The previous years I had been going through a spell of bad mental health so it is nice to see improvement over the last year.
Hopefully I'll be able to keep up these good habits and even add some new hobbies to my collection. I was learning a new language, Japanese, last year so perhaps I could get back to language learning with Chinese? I'd also like to get back into doing some art such as drawing.
We'll have to see what the future holds and I might write more here about what I get up to.
