2016 Retrospective
Fri, 30 Dec 2016 22:38:21 +0000
2016 Retrospective

Achievements

I released all these, None of the above has been a commercial success, but I got good feedback from friends and family. I'm particularly happy about Silabitas, because I made it thinking that it could help improve my mum's aphasia after the brain stroke she had last year, and she's been very patient and cleared most of the stages! 😊 (even when some people complain the game is too hard after the second stage 😜)

Power up!

I think I've done lots of learning,
  • Improved my Swift skills, while writing the games and apps above and some other unreleased projects.
  • Bettered my Javascript skills, with several internal apps I made at work, including node.js servers, and Javascript workers in the SOM demo.
  • Attended the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering
  • Learned about Metal API and started a couple of projects that use Metal. I also wrote a couple of blog posts about Metal and Swift for the tech blog of our office: Metal: a Swift Introduction, and Performance of quaternions in the GPU
  • Started learning and programming VR rendering algorithms.
  • I also updated myself a bit on Java and Android development.
  • Did some baby steps on Vulkan API.
  • Did some baby steps on Clojure.
  • Kept working in C# and C++ at work.
  • My year reputation in Stackoverflow is 329, which it's not much, but it more than doubles the reputation I had before.
Apart from that, I became Engineer Manager of my crew at work, so I think I'm getting better at Scrum and planning, and at listening to the problems and needs of my team.

Power down...

A brief interlude with some slightly negative things,
  • I practiced piano, but just to the level I wouldn't forget how to play a couple of songs I memorized... But I haven't managed to play anything new, and my score-reading skills are close to 0 now...
  • I haven't read any book... My list of readings is in fact empty since last year... I can never find the time... I've read some manga in Japanese, and I've read some online programming books, but perhaps I should try to find time for some other types of readings.
  • My Japanese is getting worse... I use it at home, but our conversations aren't technical... Also, I don't read as much as I used to do.
  • I haven't cleared Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain yet... I did play and got half way through, but, again, I'm quite busy during my free time programming games and other stuff... And of course, I haven't picked any other new game since I want to clear MGS first... So no "Uncharted 4" or "Final Fantasy XV" yet...
  • I haven't played any badminton. Since I cycle to work everyday, I do some exercise, but it would be better if I did something like badminton as I used to when I worked at Ninja Theory.
  • I haven't drawn much either... Although I'm quite happy with the cover I did for my game Silabitas.
I guess powering down is inevitable, since time is limited and there are too many things I want to do. But I should try a better balance for next year.

Fun

Trips!
  • I travelled several times to Barcelona this year, and had really good time with my family. I'm happy to have the love of my mum, sister, and brother ❤️
  • Visited Tokyo again. I didn't travel much, but I met many friends and ex-colleagues, which was the main purpose of my visit :)
  • Short nice trips to Edinburgh, Dublin, Berlin, Trieste, Ljubljana, Tenerife, and Paris.
And my highlight of movies and anime that I've watched this year,
  • The Danish Girl, a bit sad but worth checking.
  • Summer Wars, really good anime movie from 2009.
  • Your Name (君の名は), an anime movie nominated for next year academy awards. It's the best movie I've watched in the cinemas this year.
  • Yuri!!! on Ice, super cute sports anime about figure skating, centered around the pure love between the main two male characters. By the end of the year, with all the bad news going on about war and politics, this anime made me see hope in the human race again 😉
Music albums of the year,

And that's been my 2016! I think it's been quite good, but I'll try to admin my free time a bit better next year, including time for doing NOTHING!


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