retrospective on foosel.nethttps://foosel.net/tags/retrospective/Recent content in retrospective on foosel.netHugoen-usGina Häußge (foosel)Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000What cool stuff did I do in 2025?https://foosel.net/blog/2025-12-30-2025-retrospective/Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://foosel.net/blog/2025-12-30-2025-retrospective/Highlighting some of my personal achievements of the past year to combat the negative vibes of this yearJust like last year I’ve decided to sit down today and write my very own retrospective. The year has been difficult in several ways, but whenever I took another look at last year’s post it put a smile on my face, remembering the good things about life in general.

In the hope that this will continue to work, here we go with the same look at cool stuff that I did or experienced in 2025…

  1. I started the year with my by now traditional deep clean project, this time taking care of my hallway and the built-in closet. That also included recycling my first ever 3d printer with which everything OctoPrint started - a step I had to do for space reasons, but which still felt weird.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Continuing my start-of-the-year clean-up project tradition (for last year's project see chaos.social/@foosel/111687404).

    Today I tackled the hallway shelf and the built-in closet. Filled up several garbage bags once more. Ouch, my back 😅

    I also decided to throw out my first 3d printer that was still stored in the closet, as much as it saddens me. It's no longer working & it's taking up too much space for that. But I'll keep the front plate & Pi 😊

    No before pictures for you bw - too embarrassing 😬

    Hallway shelf with some games, bottles, COVID/health related stuff and storage for empties. To the left two stacked up chairs from the dinner table. Built-in closet. Kitchen stuff, household and DIY things, some hung up jackets and bags, tools, airbrush stuff, foldable trolley A slightly modded original Ultimaker built from laser cut wood
    January 2, 2025, 20:05 (UTC)

  2. I painted all of the (core) miniatures of my copy of “Sub Terra”, making sure to also use a bit of UV colors for some special effects under black light.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    It's been years since I last painted some , and since then several have moved in that come with some.

    As I find painting quite relaxing (it allows me to focus on something I'm doing with my hands while making my brain shut up), I recently decided it was time to get back into it. I also wanted to try something new and got myself a set of Army Painter Speedpaints.

    I started with the core game of Sub Terra yesterday and am quite happy with how things are looking now 😊

    Miniatures of the core game of Sub Terra, mounted on corks and painted.
    January 5, 2025, 16:13 (UTC)
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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    And since this is a game that can be played in the darkness under UV light, I decided to add a little extra too...

    The same shot under UV light, showing the monsters glowing green and the headlamps on the characters glowing white.
    January 5, 2025, 16:16 (UTC)

  3. That also prompted me to finally kit up my painting stuff on a small cart that fits into the freshly cleaned up built-in closet.

  4. As it is also becoming traditional by now, I spent some wonderfully calm days with my partner in the southern Black Forest again. We spent the days taking long walks/hikes through the snowy landscape, and the evenings playing through “Rise of the Golden Idol” - quality time! 😊

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Spent a beautiful week with my partner of now five years in the southern Black Forest, to celebrate our anniversary by taking a short time out in nature 😊

    While I'm admittedly not too thrilled to return to work again tomorrow, this was the kind of reset I needed and it did a lot in topping up my energy levels 🥰

    Apart from hiking and a wellness day in a spa, we also played through Rise of the Golden Idol in the evenings 😊

    Me posing next to the summit cross of the Belchen mountain. Behind me there's an ocean of clouds against a blue sky. The outlines of the Alps are visible in the far off distance. Selfie of me and my partner, both of us wearing sun glasses against the glaring sun and hats and winter clothes against the biting cold, smiling into the camera.
    January 19, 2025, 19:46 (UTC)

  5. Back from that, I finally found the time to frame the bits of my first 3d printer that I kept and hung them in my office - that way it’s not fully gone but taking up way less space than it did before.

  6. At the end of January, I gave my first talk in front of a live audience since the start of the pandemic, at a local Women in Tech meetup. To say that I was incredibly nervous about this would be an understatement, but everything went smoothly once I got started 😊

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Another one for the collection to remind me that I in fact now CAN give talks without turning bright red thanks to crippling stagefright 💪 It was a long process ^^

    Slides are now also up on foosel.net!

    Thank you Christian for the picture!

    Me standing on stage, giving a talk. I'm wearing an OctoPrint shirt and a mask. Behind me there's a slide about me, with my avatar on the right and a short bio on the left.
    January 30, 2025, 08:54 (UTC)

  7. Using my vinyl cutter I created some custom Mass Effect merch! Happy to say that the design indeed held up through several washes now - this thing has become my favourite hoodie and I’m actually wearing it as I’m typing these lines.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Took care of a I had planned since before Christmas and turned a hoodie off mine into something a tad nerdier. This is now my favourite hoodie on the citadel!¹

    ¹ I just hope it survives the laundry, still my first steps with HTV 🙈

    Me wearing a dark grey hoodie jacket. On the breast of the jacket there's a print with a prominent "N7" logo from Mass Effect. Close-up of the print. It says "Alliance Special Forces Training Program" around a circle, and there's the alliance logo in the middle with the N7 logo underneath.
    February 2, 2025, 12:55 (UTC)

    I also created two more shirts, and another hoodie for my partner:

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    When the world becomes too much, I tend to make things...

    Paragon shirt and Cerberus Normandy SR2 hoodie for my partner, Renegade shirt for me 😊

    Three freshly created Mass Effect textiles next to each other, a shirt with the Paragon logo in blue, a short with the Renegade logo in red, and a zipper hoodie with the Cerberus logo and "Normandy SR2" in white and orange.
    February 24, 2025, 17:28 (UTC)

  8. I finally played through “Dredge” and had a blast doing so!

  9. I bought a new vacuum and immediately fell into love with it, so much so that I printed a whole bunch of holders for its adapters 😂 Peak adulting ^^

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    For the record, my new cordless vacuum arrived early last week and I'm really in love with that thing 😅

    And after printing some holders yesterday and today, I now have it hanging in the built-in closet with all the adapters right next to it, ready to go every second 👍😀

    Picture of the vacuum and its adapters in the built-in closet. The vacuum is mounted right behind the door. On the inside of the door there are some 3d printed holders holding all the adapters and a hose.
    February 23, 2025, 16:08 (UTC)

  10. I started on my journey to reduce my footprint on US clouds:

    • I switched from Google Drive to a NextCloud instance hosted at Hetzner in a german data center
    • After adding some more storage to my NAS I migrated all my pictures from Google Photos to a self-hosted immich server
    • I switched my homelab’s backup approach from Synology’s proprietary stuff to Borg/borgmatic

  11. I started playing “Starforged” and for journaling my adventures built myself a traveler’s notebook.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Currently learning how to play and as I apparently enjoy the journaling part of it I just built myself a traveler's notebook 😊 Apart from two notebook inserts, this also has an insert for holding my character sheet and my assets, plus a move cheat sheet.

    A traveler's notebook made from brown leather Craft paper insert with a big pocket for some asset cards. Notebook insert with a part of my current run Craft paper insert holding my folded character sheet.
    March 19, 2025, 21:05 (UTC)

    This in turn led to me starting a Bullet Journal in an A6 sized self crafted traveler’s notebook, and that’s been used daily since. I’ve been meaning to write a post about that, I really need to do this asap…

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    After really enjoying using the traveler's notebook I built for use recently*, I've just now built a smaller version for regular note taking. While I'm a huge fan of @obsidian, not everything needs to be digital and I want to try some analog brainstorming and possibly journaling again.

    * see chaos.social/@foosel/114191126

    A passport/A6 sized traveler's notebook sitting on a table
    March 28, 2025, 18:13 (UTC)

  12. On Easter my partner surprised me with a self-designed Lego Brickheads kit of us, which I had a blast building together with him.

    Custom Brickheads of “Gina” and “Dennis” built and standing in front of the custom made box

  13. I finally bound a book again, creating my first ever paperback!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    I haven't bound a book in a while but wanted to turn my copy of The Perilous Void into something physical for use on my adventure. Originally I planned to go with ring binding, but the printout didn't leave enough space for that so instead I went for a double fan bound paperback. Not perfect, but I'm still quite proud of it 😊

    The finished paperback lying on a table. Closer look at the spine of the finished paperback. The book held open by my hand. Close-up of the bound spine while held open.
    April 26, 2025, 15:42 (UTC)

  14. I upgraded my Framework 13 Intel 11th gen to a new AMD Ryzen AI 300 mainboard. It’s my daily driver that I use for basically everything, and so I also put all the RAM in there that it supported: 96GB, which back then cost me 180€. Given the RAM prices now (the same kit now is getting sold for 900€), I am incredibly happy about this foresight 😬

    Screenshot of the System Information of the new laptop. Device name: mariner; OS: Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition); Hardware Model: Framework Laptop 13 AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series; Processor: AMD Ryzen HX370 w/ Radeon 890M x 24; Memory: 96GiB; Disk Capacity: 2.0 TB

  15. During an evening walk through my partner’s home town with him I made an incredible find in a “book closet”: A book about home computers from the mid 1980s.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Auf dem Abendspaziergang gerade dieses Kleinod in einem Bücherschrank gefunden und ich bin hin und weg. Das hätte ich gerne als Kind gehabt! Geht richtig tief in den Erklärungen und ist finde ich sehr schön aufbereitet. Ich bin gerade total glücklich über diesen Schatz und werde es in Ehren halten!

    Und ich glaub ich gehe Mal auf die Jagd nach den anderen Teilen 😅

    Ich hab noch keine Jahreszahl gefunden, aber die PLZ des Verlags ist noch vierstellig, also wohl vor 1993.

    *edit* Wohl ~1985 😀

    Cover von "Schreibers Schlüssel zur Computerwelt: Heimcomputer". Das Cover zeigt eine grafische Darstellung eines alten Mikrocomputers. Doppelseite des Buches, "Was ist das - ein Computer?". Diverse Textboxen und Zeichnungen zeigen und beschreiben verschiedene Bestandteile eines Mikrocomputers. Doppelseite im Buch, "Die Sache mit den Bits". In verschiedenen Textboxen aufgelockert mit Grafiken werden Binärkodierung und -operationen erläutert. Die Rückseite des Buches zeigt die Teile der Reihe: - Heimcomputer - BTX für jedermann - BASIC - Taschenrechner ganz einfach - Daten im Haushalt - Heimcomputer Lexikon
    May 14, 2025, 18:27 (UTC)

    The rest of the evening was spent reading through it quite excited, and hunting down some other ones from the series on ebay 😂

  16. I went to PyCon Italia - my first conference since the start of the pandemic - and not only went climbing with some fellow Pythonistas but also met Jacopo, who’s been helping me a lot with OctoPrint’s security!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    For the past few days at @pycon I got to hang out with Jacopo Tediosi, who has helped me a lot in improving OctoPrint's security over the past year. It's always great when something like this happens!

    Me and Jacopo are posing in front of the photo wall at PyCon. We are both smiling.
    May 31, 2025, 11:20 (UTC)

    I’ve already got my ticket for PyCon Italia 2026 😊

  17. The refactoring work on OctoPrint since late 2024 finally paid out and I was able to print from the in progress Moonraker Connector Plugin for the first time.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Have been spending the week so far working on a plugin for 's new comm layer that will be part of 1.12.0 & as of earlier today I'm able to print on Moonraker enabled Klipper based printers😁

    This went faster than expected thanks to all that refactoring that I started shortly before x-mas, and I'm incredibly happy that the architecture approach I had worked so well & actually makes adding support for a different connection type this easy!

    Plenty of bugs to fix ofc, but it's ALIVE!

    Screenshot of OctoPrint's state panel, showing a print from "SD" in progress. The progress bar sits at 34%.
    July 3, 2025, 10:35 (UTC)

  18. I went to EuroPython in Prague again, and this time even gave a talk! Of course, support plushy Timothy was there too 😊

    Me giving a talk at EuroPython 2025. Support plush donkey Timothy is sitting at the front of the podium.

  19. In August I went to WHY2025 - my first camp in the Netherlands since 2009. We took the Datenzwerge with us of course and deployed all 10 of them across the camp grounds. It was some very intense but awesome days!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Some pictures from ...

    Led lights on the dark A led curtain Colourful led bulbs on the side of a tent, in the dark Some high grass in the dark, lighted in deep green. In front the shadow of a bicycle
    August 16, 2025, 11:23 (UTC)

  20. While at WHY I met Erika Heidi whom I so far only had known virtually through GitHub Stars. We nerded out SO MUCH about tech, bouldering and 3d printing, it was a ton of fun :D

    Me and Erika taking a selfie at WHY

  21. For my partner’s birthday, I created yet another custom shirt utilizing the vinyl cutter and some HTV, this time with a logo from Dead Space. The design was based on in-game graphics, and weeding it was a bit of a nightmare 😂

    Custom logo of the “Ishimura Planetside Team” from Dead Space

  22. I also got my partner an OLED Steamdeck for his birthday, and therefore also had to create new custom buttons. While at that, I also finally created some green ones for myself, and also created a whole new mold for the digi pad. Now my Steamdeck is also nicely customized 😊

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Finished my custom buttons and d-pad and put them into my 😊

    Had to sand the d-pad on the center spike as otherwise it didn't work well, but I think now things are fine. Almost ran out on the rub-on letters too, my last X is now on there 😅 I'm thinking about getting a custom decal sheet made.

    Close-up of custom made green action buttons in a Steamdeck Close-up of a custom made green d-pad in a Steamdeck Steamdeck OLED with custom made green d-pad and action buttons.
    August 30, 2025, 20:55 (UTC)

  23. During this time, I also played through my personal Game of the Year, “The Drifter”. That also spawned a whole Point-and-Click-Adventure phase for me again 😂

  24. Over the course of October I took part in another month long daily art challenge, “Cosytober”. I once again painted 31 pixelart pictures, this time limiting myself to 64x64px and the ENDESGA77 palette.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    And that's a wrap on for me!

    I'm very proud that despite everything I managed to do one every single day throughout this month! And I'm also very happy with the drawings, I think I improved a lot, and am really enjoying doing pixelart!

    Like last year, I compiled all of the drawings of the month into a wallpaper and you can find that below.

    Do you have any personal favourites? I'd love to know!

    cc @RosieSoCosy

    Wallpaper of all 31 pixelart drawings of "foosel's Cosytober"
    October 31, 2025, 11:21 (UTC)

    I also started taking part in the Pixelart Dailies during October and kept that going well into November, when I ran out of energy.

  25. During Cosytober I also got myself a used Surface Go 2 tablet off of ebay and turned it into a pen enabled Linux based tablet, perfect for working on pixelart from the couch 😁

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    I've been back to Linux on the desktop for several years now. For the longest time I was wondering how Linux on a tablet would work. So say Hi to this Surface Go 2 that I bought used on eBay for cheap and liberated from the Windows 10 that it came with. 😬

    It now runs , and pretty much everything worked out of the box. The only a tad annoying thing is entering my password via the touchscreen. Amazing tablet for ! 😊

    More detailed blog post when I'm back on my feet 🤧

    Picture of the Surface Go 2 running Linux. It shows the system info. The system's name is "Tendi" Picture of the tablet running Aseprite with a pixelart drawing of a squirrel currently open.
    October 15, 2025, 18:17 (UTC)

    And yes, I know, I still owe this blog post 🙈

  26. In early December this year’s hotsauce finally got finished and labeled. The chillies were planted in February and the fruits harvested in early October. As always, it was a project that was in progress throughout most of the year!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    May I present? The result of our : Firestarter 😁

    We continue our run of naming the yearly sauce after a song 😉

    Several hot sauce bottles on a table, now labeled. The label says Firestarter Hot Sauce 2025 Made By Gina & Dennis
    December 2, 2025, 19:28 (UTC)

  27. Also in early December, I fell completely in love with the game “Mars First Logistics”, which I can only recommend if you are into Lego Technic.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    Choooo choooooo!

    Screenshot from Mars First Logistics, showing my transporter being carried by a Monorail running through the reddish landscape.
    December 17, 2025, 20:03 (UTC)

  28. And finally, shortly before Christmas I tried my hand at making Vanillekipferl for the first time, and greatly succeeded!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    I also tried my hands at Vanille Kipferl for the first time in my life!

    Several freshly baked Kipferl in a tin.
    December 20, 2025, 17:12 (UTC)

And that’s a wrap on 2025 I think! I probably once more missed some fun stuff or awesome stuff I did or experienced, but reading through all of that written down here it feels like less of a crappy year already 😬

Like last year, this list was compiled with the help of my Mastodon account and my picture gallery 😄 I’ll see that I do one of these again in a year’s time. For now I wish you a happy and safe 2026!

]]>What cool stuff did I do in 2024?https://foosel.net/blog/2024-12-30-2024-retrospective/Mon, 30 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000https://foosel.net/blog/2024-12-30-2024-retrospective/An attempt at highlighting some personal achievements of the past year, to combat the constant negative vibesI 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 ;)

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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
    December 30, 2023, 13:13 (UTC)

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

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    January 5, 2024, 16:47 (UTC)

  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!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    February 11, 2024, 18:24 (UTC)

  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!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    February 16, 2024, 17:45 (UTC)

  7. I learned book binding and got into solo RPGs!

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    April 28, 2024, 17:06 (UTC)

  8. I also got into crafting print-and-play games!

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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 game Front and backs of the cards
    May 7, 2024, 19:05 (UTC)

  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.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    May 12, 2024, 12:52 (UTC)

  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.

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    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    May 17, 2024, 15:34 (UTC)

  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 😬

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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!
    June 23, 2024, 12:11 (UTC)

  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 😅

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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
    July 11, 2024, 06:42 (UTC)

  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.

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    August 20, 2024, 20:52 (UTC)

  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!

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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.
    October 11, 2024, 19:22 (UTC)

  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 😅

    Mastodon avatar for @foosel@chaos.social
    Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

    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
    November 3, 2024, 13:37 (UTC)

  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!

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