Things That Happened in 2024

This post is part of a collection on Life.

2024 was a definitely a year. Here are some things that happened:

  • participated in the Okutama Game Jam
  • participated in Famicase
  • bought a Fujifilm XE4, my first interchangeable lens camera
  • went to Izu Ooshima
  • shot around 11 rolls of film, mostly with my Olympus XA
  • played regular game nights
  • went to Comike, Comitia, and other doujin events
  • bought a Wii U to play Kirby
  • set up a mini PC as a home server
  • took part in a Frieren escape game that was a lot of fun
  • watched every Itami Juuzou film
  • watched The Prisoner TV show
  • used a year pass for nine Tokyo Parks
  • visited Miura several times
  • revisited Tsurugisaki Lighthouse
  • went to Izu and visited the Maboroshi Hakurankai and Shaboten Zoo
  • maintained my open source projects: fugashi, posuto, cutlet, etc.
  • helped run Tokyo Indies
  • started using BlueSky
Look!

I managed to do a good job of travelling this year, taking frequent short trips. I wasn't as good about it as last year, partly due to some health issues in the summer, but that's something I'd like to do more of next year. In particular I regret not having a big trip like my one to Sendai last year, though the trip to Ooshima was excellent. I'm also glad I got to visit Miura and Misaki several times and made some friends there.

In the volcanic desert on Ooshima.

On the health front, things were mostly fine, and I managed to stay out of hospitals. I did catch Covid again, and I had a distressing problem in the summer that thankfully turned out to be nothing serious, but kept me from making any plans for a few months while I figured out what was going on.

Misaki sunset on Harman Phoenix film.

After learning the basics of photography late in 2023, I spent a lot of time taking photos this year, both on film and digitally. I still feel like I'm learning, but looking back at my older cell phone photos I can tell that I have improved, both technically and aesthetically. The process of going out and shooting, even if nothing ends up coming of it, is always great fun.

A trail at Showa Memorial Park.

One event this year was getting a mini PC to use as a home server. My main home server died after over ten years of service in 2022, and for a while I partly replaced it with a Raspberry Pi, but there were lots of things it just couldn't do. One of the first things I set up on the new machine was Immich, which has been a great replacement for Google Photos as I ran up against some storage limits there. (My ability to get extra storage with Google is limited because I have a weird grandfathered free custom domain account.)

I enjoyed this enough last year I came back.

I haven't mentioned this before, but I feel like I have a routine down for stationery as well, which is one thing that changes with the new year. I've been using a Nouritsu Techou Gold for many years and greatly enjoy it as my main notebook, mainly for recording what I've done and reflection. For a few years I've been using the PostalCo One Year calendar combined with Stalogy dot stickers. The stickers make it easy to mark recurring events of different types, like game night, visiting a park, developing a roll of film, or the like.

One addition I'm trying for 2025 is the Laconic Bank Book sized calendar (actually the same size as the Nolty) combined with Marumino sticky notes. This analog solution gives me a flexibility I haven't found in calendar apps, which is good for planning things like museum visits and short trips that can move around but still need to be blocked out.

I went here again.

I have definitely not spent enough time making games, despite playing a fair amount. I hope to change that. I'm lucky to be involved in Tokyo Indies, which should help support me once I get going. The event itself did well this year, which celebrated its tenth anniversary, and also had success with new ideas like Theme Nights. I was also delighted we got ABA Games to give a talk, ten years after I translated his blog post, The Secret to Creating Fun Games I Learned By Making 50 Games in a Year.

A board game made at the Okutama Game Jam last year.

Since the demolition of my neighborhood, the area was an empty lot for all of 2024, which has been strange. There have been some other closures in the area - a watch shop where I got a pocket watch repaired several times and happened to walk by on the last day, an old cafe, and an extremely picturesque alternative medicine clinic near Keio University. These places will be missed.

This photo is from December 2023. All the plants and signage are gone now.

There are a few things I've been working on that aren't quite ready to announce, but will come out later this year. I'm looking forward to those.

I still use deltos every day, and I made a few updates to it this year. There are some medium-sized changes I'd like to make this year, and maybe I'll make a release. We'll see.

Hopefully any challenges can be overcome.

Here's to a good year. Ψ