I decided to try my hand at my very own 2024 retrospective to give myself a chance to see more of the good things I managed to get done or that I experienced. And as the news continue to be all doom and gloom I figured why not do this in the shape of a blog post so that a) it’s more easy for myself to revisit that again in the future whenever I get dragged down and b) y’all maybe also get some positive vibes.

So here we go…

  1. I got myself a Silhouette Portrait 3 vinyl cutter (that i can fully operate with open source tooling based on an Inkscape plugin, fsck proprietary cloud sh*t!) and immediately gave it a face. Technically that still happened in 2023, but on December 30th, so I’ll let it count ;)

    New tool in the house! After circling one for years now, I finally pulled the trigger on a vinyl cutter/plotter!

    It's a Silhouette Portrait 3, only a small one, but the important part is that I can use it with Open Source tooling & local only*, thanks to the combo of @inkscape & the inkscape-silhouette** extension!

    Lots of ideas swirling around in my head about stickers, shirts and such, but for now I've given it a face! 😄

    * Fsck this cloud only subscription crap!

    ** github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-

    A Silhouette Portrait 3 vinyl cutter with two eye stickers. It looks like it is doing this face: o_o
    Card image from chaos.social toot 111669542081808946

    GitHub - fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette: An extension to drive Silhouette vinyl cutters (e.g. Cameo, Portrait, Curio series) from within inkscape.

    An extension to drive Silhouette vinyl cutters (e.g. Cameo, Portrait, Curio series) from within inkscape. - fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette

  2. I did a deep clean and reorganization of my office, and I’m happy to report that this has mostly held up!

    Day 4: Desk, electronics area, paper printer (a bit). I still need to take care of the paper waste in a few (we have some containers for that down the street), the e-waste (run to the place for that some time next week) and some bulky waste ASAP, and I didn't touch the lassr material storage after all, but for now I'm calling this done.

    Feels great walking into the office again, which is the best thing considering I'll be back at work come Monday.

    View towards the back of the office. Desk to the left, a big whiteboard and some shelves filled with electronics directly forward and a paper printer and a table with a laser cutter to the right.View towards the desk from being the chair. Three screens, Framework laptop vertical to the left, a bunch of steaming lights.Once more a view towards the front of the office with the Expedit directly forward. To the left the still untouched laser table, to the right the heavy duty shelves.

  3. I got a new label printer (Brother QL-820NWB) and created scripts to easily print out Deutsche Post stamps with that.

  4. I spent some beautiful calm days with my partner in the southern black forest - plenty of snow and walks and games!

    A tree on the side of a hill in the snow. The sky is blue, the sun is shining.

  5. With the help of the vinyl cutter and the laser cutter I gave our Datenzwerge some stylish travel cases!

    Our datagnomes will travel in style from now on!

    We got two L-Boxes for them now which fit 5 gnomes each. A few weeks ago I lasercut some custom foam inlays for them, and just today finally got around to also put some custom vinyl stickers on them, after my partner turned the logo he created black and white for us 😊

    I'm very happy with the result, and I hope @Romses will be as well once he gets his box into his hands soon 😄

    A black L-Box 136 standing on a chair. On its lid there's a black and white datagnome logo with the text datagnome.de next to it.The open box on a chair. Five datagnomes are inside, each in its own compartment in a custom foam insert. There's also two smaller compartments holding extra gnome feet.Both of the boxes, clopped together so they can be lifted both as one unit.
  6. I also did a deep clean and reorganization of my wardrobe, and that’s also still holding up! No more dreading of sorting the laundry into the wardrobe!

    Phewwww. Six hours of wardrobe cleaning today, and after doing the same last Friday I can now say the wardrobe is in a shape I really enjoy opening it again.

    Today's focus was the "general household laundry stuff" part of it. The plushies and the sewing machine have their own shelves now 😄

    I've already brought the 3 large garbage bags full of old clothes to the recycling container, & put the 6 actual trash bags into the garbage container.

    And now excuse me while I fall down on my couch.

    Picture of a freshly cleaned wardrobe.
  7. I learned book binding and got into solo RPGs!

    Inspired by @stiftnuersel I decided to finally try to add book binding to my skill set and started with binding both books of 2D6 Dungeon (also a tip by @stiftnuersel).

    Especially sewing the paper stacks was incredibly relaxing. I put an audio book on (going through The Stormlight Archive again) and just went for it.

    Decided to go with a soft cover. The cardboard came from some deliveries and the fabric from the left overs of an old sewing project.

    Quite happy with the result 😊

    Two freshly bound text blocks.Template used for creating the sewing holes.Finished book covered with a black structured fabric.Leafing through the book.
  8. I also got into crafting print-and-play games!

    I've been in a crafting mood for a few days now. One of the results of that were my recent adventures in book binding , the other was finally figuring out a good way to create custom playing cards for print'n'play games.

    I stumbled across in one of my itch.io bundles and that was the trigger: Cards were printed one sided on a piece of 185gsm linen stock, sealed with fixative, folded and spray glued together, then cut. A bit thick but feel & shuffle great!

    The stack of cards for the gameFront and backs of the cards
  9. As a result of that I also built a little tool (running 100% in the browser!) to convert the usual PNP card PDFs into ready to print gutterfold PDFs for easier alignment of the card backs and fronts: CardFoldr!

  10. I missed the probably biggest Aurora event of the past decade in Germany, but managed to still get some shots a few days later.

    I'm still unhappy that I completely missed the aurora from Friday to Saturday (only heard about it the next day and cursed heavily) but at least got some pictures last night. It was only minimally visible by eye, but the camera was able to see more.

    And we also ended up chatting with some really nice strangers that were also out to look at the sky, so while I just kept clicking the record button on the camera while getting colder and colder, the company completely made up for it.

    Night shot over a field with a reddish aurora in the sky. Some lights on the ground.Night shot over a field. Stars in the sky and some reddish and slightly greenish light over it, the reddish looks like an aurora.
  11. I did some minor leather crafting to build myself a big roll-up dice tray for my solo RPG sessions. It has since also come in handy during the one or other board game session.

    I wanted a bigger dice tray. Had some leather and snap buttons on hand. I'm not sure if this qualifies as but it definitely qualifies as gaming related , so even while I'm under the weather (hence no climbing pictures today) I got something made 😊

    Edit: I should add that this approach to a dice tray is not my idea and there are plenty of these out there to buy. I just didn't want to buy something I had everything on hand to make myself as I enjoy making.

    A rolled up square of black leather with some snap buttons visible on the edges, and a leather strap wrapped and buttoned up around it.The leather square unrolled and the buttons snapped together. It's now usable as a dice tray.
  12. I went to GPN22 with my buddy Romses and five Datenzwerge. We had a great time there chatting with old and new friends, and getting more grey hair due to WiFi issues with the gnomes and DECT issues 😂

    A picnic blanket with an opened up DECT phone, soldering tooling, a partial Datenzwerg, and some more electronics. Also - someone’s leg and someone else’s hands holding a portable oscilloscope

  13. My book binding experiments escalated and I bound a 400 page book 😬

    My custom hardcover edition of Across a Thousand Dead Worlds is finished! 🎉

    Created the case earlier today, then glued in the textblock. While that was in the press I fetched the vinyl cutter and created a basic cover and spine print, using the same fonts that are also used in the book.

    It's not fully square, and trying to back it yesterday also caused some steps in the rounding, but I'm still very happy with the result! 😊

    Will probably still add a dust jacket, but for now it's done!

    The book sitting in a press made from two boards and some weights on top.The finished book lying on a dark table. It's covered in black cloth. On the front are the letters "ADTW" in a two by two letter square, on the spine it says "Across a Thousand Dead Worlds" in two lines.Close-up of the tail of the opened book. The spine works great.The book sitting on a book shelf and looking great!
  14. I went to EuroPython to Prague, had some amazing chats with people there, enjoyed a bunch of very tasty non-alcoholic cocktails, had a lovely time at the social event, and also experienced my first flight-cancellation and rebooking on my return trip 😅

    Good morning ! The sleep was good, the self test was negative, the breakfast was delicious, now @timothy and I are ready for day two of talks and chats!

    Me in the audience of Forum Hall at EuroPython, masked with my back to the front and my plush donkey on my head, pointing to the stage
  15. After a very stressful time at work thanks to some stats manipulation by some bad players (that btw still has me get very angry whenever I think about it) I had a very relaxing and resetting two week vacation with my partner at the north sea, filled with e-bike rides, walks through the wadden sea, our very first stint at a “Hochseilgarten” (climbing garden) and also playing through Fort Solis, Little Hope and House of Ashes together during the evenings 😄 I also treated myself to a new camera body for this occasion, a Lumix G91, allowing the G70 to stay in webcam mode for good now.

    A tiny starfish in the sand, under water

  16. While there I also blogged about my EDC 2024. For which I then promptly sewed a new custom pouch once I was back at home.

    Went down the rabbit hole recently as my bought pouch was annoying me.

    Even though my chronic vertigo is currently making me nauseous, I decided to try to distract myself from that and sewed a first version of a pouch.

    Outside is some black 600D cordura, inside red ripstop nylon for contrast, and two stripes of 50mm stretch band turned into two pockets on one side and three on the other to help with organisation. The zipper is a red ykk aqua guard.

    A black pouch with a red zipper.The pouch zipped and pushed open. The inside shows some small pockets created by black fabric stripes on top of the red inside.
  17. During September I participated in FediJam and created Cloud Shepherd, a cozy puzzle game in which you herd clouds over fields to make it rain. I did all the programming, graphics and sound effects (yes, also the dog and the sheep) myself - and I won the gamejam! And as this was my first time doing pixelart, it gave me some courage…

    The title screen of my game Cloud Shepherd, showing a rural landscape from above, with some clouds, sheep, a herding dog and a field. All of that is done in brightly colored pixel art

  18. … so throughout October I partook in the #hartoween art challenge and did a pixelart painting for every day - albeit admittedly some of them a few days later due to other committments and illness, but all 31 of them in October!

    A collage of all 31 pixelart paintings with their associated prompts

  19. For that I also figured out how to make transparent GIFs more easily shareable on social media as I also was creating timelapses of my drawings and wanted to share them with a proper checkerboard background.

  20. Also in October, I went to MRMCD24 together with my partner and my buddy Romses, and of course a whole army of Datenzwerge. We deployed 8 of them this time and it was a huge success.

  21. During that time I also played through my personal Game of the Year 2024, Animal Well!

    Can't help myself, I'm absolutely in awe at the art style of .

    That mix of highlights, scan lines and glow, plus all these details... So much to discover on every single screen, and yet the pallette still *feels* subtle.

    I have to admit, I got drawn to that game by its graphics first and foremost, but gameplay is a ton of fun too. A puzzle platformer with a beautiful atmosphere. Can recommend!

    Screenshot of Animal Well, showing a cave with some capybaras, plants hanging from the ceiling, and small lights. The grass on the ground looks like it glows.
  22. In November the 2024 edition of our hotsauce got finished. As every year we planted the chillies around February and then took care of them throughout most of the year. Sadly, the yield this time around wasn’t as great and we had to add some store bought chillies into the mix. I think the sauce still came out great though after five weeks of fermentation. Alas, I can’t taste it myself - no heat tolerance 😅

    And now they are labelled 😊

    A bunch of small hot sauce bottles on a table. The bottles are labelled. The labels say 
    
    Hellrider
    Hot sauce by Gina & Dennis
    2024
  23. After one too many quality issues with my Blue Yeti, I upgraded my office audio setup and got myself a Shure MV7+ and a Vocaster Two audio interface. And since then I’m finally happy when hearing my own voice in a recording 😄

  24. As my final work project of the year, I did some - successful! - refactoring experiments on OctoPrint that unlocked some things I’ll work on in early 2025, and I’m really looking forward to that 😊

And there you have it. My personal list of good stuff that I did or experienced in 2024! Probably missing plenty of things, but that’s all that I could think of now off the top of my head and with the help of my Mastodon account and my picture gallery 😄 Let’s see what cool stuff I’ll manage to list for 2025!