exo : blah

I saw Matthew’s year note thing and liked it so figured, why not, let’s try something like that.

cycling

I’m not sure it was a banner year but it was a one of just chugging along. I mostly rode on the road because I like the bike and I got some fancy new wheels which added a bit of fun.

The most satisfactory riding was a round trip to Glasgow to watch the World Champs in easly August, partly as the aptness was pleasing and partly as riding to Glasgow has been on my list for a while. It was not the best ride because tbh as ridden it wasn’t the most scenic of rides, plus it was very damp on the way there so not entirely pleasant. I think there’s probably better routes to take but overall I think there’s other places I’d rather ride so I’ll probably consider that box ticked.

Had a UK holiday and took the gravel bike so had some riding in a new place which was good. As ever a bit hit and miss on the routes but always lovely to see new areas.

Not really sure there was a standout ride though. Had a lot of good rides but nothing absolutely spectacular. Which is fine.

Distance and time wise it was much of a muchness with recent years, although did lack any 200+ km rides which I’d like to resolve this year, as well as shifting the balance back towards off road a bit.

pictures

I got a proper camera again which was good. 90% of the pictures I take are still on an iPhone because I always have it and most of the photos I take on bike rides. Plus it takes good photos. However I did take a chunk of photos with the proper camera that would not have happened without it including probably my favourite of the year.

The main obstacles with the real camera is it’s much more of a faff to get photos off it because loading from a card, and that I haven’t really settled on a process or app for browsing and editing photos. I am mostly using Apple Photos because it’s there and it does just about enough but it still feels quite klunky. I am loathe to pay the Adobe tax and start on Lightroom but thus far all the other alternatives I’ve looked at have’t been convincing. More work required.

work

I do not talk at all about work here so this is an exciting first, although I’m going to be brief because I don’t talk about work here. I built a crowdsourcing website from scratch which was largely enjoyable and pretty successful according to the people using it. Otherwise it was mostly improving stuff from the last couple of years of work on our Climate Programme.

As Matthew said we had our 20th Anniversary this year of which I’ve been there a bit over half. Was nice to see lots of familiar faces at the party and really heartening to hear from people who have found our tools useful. If you like that sort of thing there’s a 20 year retrospective you can read.

books

Elsewhere is my mostly complete list of books read so you can go look at that for the raw details.

Highlights were Matrix, Piranesi, The Midnight Lie, When Women were Dragons and Saint Death’s Daughter. Nona the Ninth was also a delight but I expected it to be so somehow that makes it not a highlight. Likewise A Day of Fallen Night.

I was a bit better at noping out on books I wasn’t enjoying although I still read all of The Stars are Legion and Babel despite not enjoying either so still work to be done. I am at least of to a good start for 2024 on that front having already given up on a book that’s been sitting half read for months.