Remember 2021? or Should I say 2020?

I guess nothing much has changed in the world. The world battles the pandemic. Although people aren’t panicking this year compared to last-year. Our dependence on proprietary software still disgusts me. Thanks to TikTok: our average attention-spans have reduced. I for one, made better use of my time in 2021 than in 2020.

Remember that blog post I penned a year ago?

~/blog/2021

Time to reflect

I’m pretty satisfied with the goals I challenged myself with in that post. Although, I didn’t invest enough time to learn Python I dabbled around with bash (shell scripting), Rust & C++ instead. I started some working on my personal wiki: aka a digital-garden. I dump interesting stuff I find on the internet.

Here’s the list of things

  • learn Python & C++ -> partly done
  • teach / educate about privacy, GNU/Linux, static websites - in a fun way on Peertube & LBRY -> done, taking a break until 2023.
  • setup a casual Matrix chatroom -> done
  • fix my wardrobe; only buy clothes that I care about wearing -> I didn’t buy any ’new-clothes’ this year
  • take 1 photo a week for the year & compile it into a video -> Sorry, I can’t find the photos after September sorry 🤔
  • focus on minimalism, an offline first world youtube-dl, 100rabbits -> done done done, I completely switched to RSS feeds! & stopped using my phone
  • teach diesel some new tricks -> he learnt how to turn around 180 degrees & roll over!
  • create a bucketlist template for a helpful collaborative project I have in mind -> done
  • create a codeberg repo for nifty-ideas / shower thoughts -> here you go
  • setup a PGP key & learn that stuff -> done! you can send me encrypted emails now \o/
  • learn kdenlive -> not really: I didn’t explore all the features yet.
  • make memes on reddit -> not reddit tho, I posted on Telegram instead
  • These were some for starters — This year I focussed on academics. I didn’t really know what was in store, until July when I officially collected my transfer-certificate from school: JEE prep is going great so far!

I graduated 10th grade 👨‍🎓

Due to the pandemic, we technically didn’t have our board exams. The ICSE board cooked up some formula & decided to weigh our 9th grade marks, the pre-boards, & project marks to calculate our score, reasonable; but nothing to brag about. I wish I had a real offline exam tho. But anyway — like the boomer’s say: time & tide waits for none, life moves on, 12th grade will be more important.

So I decided to prep for JEE & focus on getting into college. For the rest of 2021 I was engaged in JEE oriented assignments, course work, et. al. I generally have tests every week, joined a coaching (tutoring) center ~ towards that long term goal I set out, outlined here. The JEE exam. Got a lot of things done, I particularly loved Physics, the many counter-intuitive problems. Look up problems under ‘surface tension & bubbles when they coalesce’ for fun. H.C. Verma’s Book illustrates these concepts pretty well.

Holiday mood 🌴

Media, Music, DRM & other tech stuff

I used to use Spotify, Discord, YouTube extensively, do I regret it? - apparently yeah. Not worth my time anymore. I want stuff to be completely offline. Not consooom 24/7. I deleted my Spotify & Discord accounts back in January. Switched to playing music locally using Lollypop. Probably learn to produce music too?

I blocked youtube.com using NextDNS. I suggest using Piped when you need to stream, it can proxy videos for you. You don’t really miss out, in the long run you are what you eat. Our attention spans have reduced. 7 seconds or so is what advertisers target now. Do you use TikTok? Reels? YoutTube Shorts? I don’t. Try quitting those services, you won’t miss much. Cold Turkey 2022?: if you feel inspired by what I did last year.

I switched to a tiling WM

So I apparently quit using KDE Plasma on my Laptop.

terminal

🍚 ricin’

There’s nothing wrong with KDE Plasma. But your know *nix users can never settle. So this post needs an update. I’m using Sway; an i3 like WM which is running on Wayland. Here are the dotfiles.

home

minimalism

I quite like this new setup. My battery life has improved a tiny bit. No fancy graphics or blur. I’ve riced my desktop. I’m proud of my RAM usage lol 296 MB only.

phone?

I’m still using my trusty Redmi Note 5.

“me holding my phone”

no signs of degradation yet

I hope I can crank-another 125 charge cycles again

“battery life graph”

🤔

As crazy as it sounds, I wanted to build a new browser engine. Just for fun, look at Gecko, Blink, WebKit, Servo source code & make something that can work with CSS & basic JS. An extreme, long term goal in the years to come. I wanna make something interesting, not some boring, bloated electron app.

2022?

So what’s in store for the next year?

There’s definitely more to study: after August, the revision-phase starts, we brush through our entire JEE syllabus, then write mock-tests. Phew. 😅 and August? The month I turn 18! I’ll tick more-things off my /bucketlist.

  • Probably learn to drive
  • Vote? 2024 or State elections
  • Post a couple of videos
  • Post more photos to pixelfed this year
  • Continue taking photos a week
  • Network 🤝
  • Wake up at 5 every day
  • Redesign my room
  • A programming language for humans
  • document observations & experiments using that language
  • work on a secret project ~ ‘a hack’

As always: feel free to network or simply say hi 👋

I’ll respond when I’m free, it’s always fun helping out other people wandering the interwebs.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ⭐️

Happy holidays, wish y’all are keeping well -Nathan