wait, it’s over?

it’s certainly been one hell of a year. let’s recap!

timeline

january

• i created version 1 of this very website, which was very quickly abandoned.
• alongside this, i started working on my first vrchat avatar, mangrove! _{see below}
  • she was my main avatar for the coming months, and was meant to closely resemble my website.
  • she also, for reasons no longer known to me, had a protogen counterpart named buggy…
  • although i no longer represent myself with mangrove, i did learn a lot about avatar creation through her.

february

• i started working on spectrum, which ultimately became abandonware. maybe next year?
• around this time, revision for my GCSE exams kicked up, so i suppose i didn’t code as much.

marsh march

• continuing the vrchat trend, i helped alyxia work on her avatar.
• i began work on version 2 of this website - you’re looking at it right now!
  • it has been through quite a few revisions since, though.
• it was around this time that i began work on turning my PS4 into my home server. you can read the blogpost on that here.
• this coincided with me getting back into Sonic Robo Blast 2, and, on a whim, i hosted a gameserver for it on the PS4.
  • it was a ton of fun, especially seeing the reactions to it both in-game and out.
  • we even reached the player limit of 32, albeit with several mishaps.

april

• i started the month with the creation of a very special private project.
  • i still can’t discuss this, but hopefully the stars will align soon™.
• as part of it, i publicised argus, my cli argument parser. it’s so cute!
• i created kintobor, a tool to register unorthodox SRB2 servers on their master server.
• sometime during this month, i setup an akkoma instance on the PS4. it was my only social media for some time.
• i published switchboard, a simple interface to download split APK files of the Discord mobile app.
  • this project has been vaguely neglected since, and i should really give it some love soon.
  • it does have a really cool progress bar though, courtesy of kasimir.
• as with any game i truly enjoy, i started work on an SRB2 cheat for educational purposes. it never saw the light of day _{(thankfully!)}
• towards the end of the month, i decided i wanted to make a discord bot. her name is ashie!
  • despite the 2 pieces of art created by valerie to represent her, she is far from complete.

may

• after all i had done in april, i slowed down. my exams truly began now, as well.
• despite this, i did create my second vrchat avatar - ivy!

june

• getting back into the swing of things, i worked on a few existing projects during my 2-week exam break.
• i also setup rdt-bundle, automating the creation of embeddable React DevTools bundles.
  • this tool, although cool, did not get used for very long :<
• in the later parts of june, i decided to give this site a visual refresh, mainly with the intent of long-form blog posts.
• i took this one step further, seperating the styles out into their own repo, dubbing it murky
  • doing this allowed me to reuse the styles across other projects, such as switchboard. it’s quite nice.

july

• i finished my exams! i had truly no idea how i’d done at the time, but felt confident nontheless.
• despite having little free time for most of july, i created two more vrchat avatars, fern and okee! _{pictured below, in order}
  • fern was created as a demonstration/walkthrough for slicey.
  • i had no idea she’d go on to become not only my main avatar, but my primary “brand” too!
  • okee goes beep boop.
• i went on two vacations, one for each side of the family, in celebration of my exams.

august

• i got my GCSE results! i did, thankfully, do quite well, most notably getting the highest possible grade in Computer Science.
• i played CrossCode for the first time in a while, and created CCSelector.
• the purchasing of 3 or so windows phones resulted in a day-long excursion trying to mod them. didn’t really get anywhere :<
• i also started working with the lovely folks at GreggCraft to create their Season 3. it’s come a long way!
• some divine intervention also pushed me towards using NixOS on both my laptop and desktop PC, too. i loved it - until i didn’t.
  • i am still proud of my NixOS flake, though!
• i Contributed to Open Source™ via strawberry, my fork of spitroast.
  • more specifically, i fixed up their build process and unit testing, moving to modern tooling.
  • strawberry is a hard-fork due to scoping differences between it and the upstream project.

september

• this month began with what would become a running theme - branding indecisiveness!!
• i reworked my stylesheet away from the old purples into a blue-black gradient style… which lasted about a month.
• work on private projects continued, making my GitHub commit graph very empty. oops.
• i started college! i’m really enjoying it thus far.

october

• my birthday!! i was 17 on the 8th, and had a wonderful time celebrating.
• fern became extra spoooooky for halloween, too.

november

• a thought popped into my head this month - what if we used the web as art? the answer? we probably shouldn’t.
• on a whim, i also setup a Bluesky PDS on the PS4, and went somewhat viral for it? crazy stuff.
  • i’ve met some lovely people through this, too. it’s now my primary social media!
• i also tried applying some knowledge from my mysterious private project to modding the Bluesky mobile app, although i haven’t published any of it.
• toonlink and jules nerdsniped me hard into working on a custom SSG/SSR framework using KDL as a DSL.
  • i was hoping to have finished this by the end of the year… keep an eye out for it, though!

december

• winding down the year, i attempted to participate in Advent of Code.
• however, i realised very quickly i don’t work well in environments like it, and so only reached Day 4. oh well.
• instead, i opted to make “fern v2”, a slight update to her design, using a different avatar base. i’m very happy with how she turned out!

looking towards the future

and there we have it. overall, 2024 was a good year for me. i became more confident, met a ton of new friends, and made some lasting memories. there’s likely a few things missing from the timeline above, but you can, of course, find a somewhat constant stream of my thoughts on both bluesky and fedi. if you know me as a friend, you’ve also likely heard of my other less public/sillier escapades in your DMs or in person :p

here’s some other photos i like from this year:

in the new year, i want to be more organised - both online and offline. i too easily fall victim to overthinking and procrastination. i also want to consolidate my “brand”, making something i truly resonate with. i’ve got lots of ideas for this in my head. who can truly know what the future holds, though. whatever happens, let’s make it a good one.

— marsh