2019: A Year in Review

Wow... this crept up on me a bit.

It's December, yet again, and so it's time for me to write a blog post going over what on Earth it is I did this year. If you're interested in reading previous years' posts, then you can do so here: 2016, 2017, 2018.

With that out of the way, let's jump right into things with January. Things kicked off with me and my friend building a computer, thanks to a prize I got for doing well in my first year's exams (you can see the specs of it here)! This was a massive improvement over what I had before, which was a several-year-old laptop could just about run Minecraft, but not too much besides.

Following that, I was back at uni for the second half of my second year. As normal, exams aren't especially my idea of fun, but there's no way to avoid them. I wasn't in the top 10 of the year this time, but I still did reasonably well so I'm quite happy with that 😊

This year, the Minecraft Gameshow project that we started last year reached the point of releasing to the public! We managed to keep to our weekly upload schedule (amazingly) and so, from the middle of April until the middle of September, we released over 6 hours of fully edited, multi-camera gameshow goodness! We also held a live "Community Matchup" (one final face-off featuring the two teams with the most votes from the viewers) where we tried to improve on our last attempt at a live show in 2017, with more production values than ever before! Not everything went exactly to plan, but the folks at RASA Studios are absolutely wonderful and able to adapt to changing circumstances brilliantly.

Looking back on the project, which technically still hasn't ended (there are still edited VODs that we plan to put on the channel from the live matchup), I can say that it was stressful, and it was a lot of work, but I can also say that I wouldn't change it for the world. I've been able to collaborate with some incredibly skillful artists, sound designers and editors to put together something that we'll be able to look back on in the future fondly. (If you want to watch the entire season, then you can do so here)

We also had a couple of charity streams, one for Children In Need and one for Special Effect, raising over £550. In the summer, we held a larger-scale GameJam, where 3 games were made simultaneously over the course of 12 hours. In addition to that, we had a bunch of meetups!

At Easter, we went to the Insomnia Gaming Festival (see the vlogs here). Then during the summer, we had a weekend away in Manchester (which we didn't vlog, but this video exists 😛). You can read more about these here. In October, a few of us went to London for the day to go to EGX! We vlogged that one too, and you can find it here.

(Wow, this post has turned out to be a lot of videos so far, hasn't it?)

At uni, I again took part in Hacktoberfest, this time working on my "waiting slides" repository for HackSoc. In November, I volunteered at the annual HackNotts event, where I was on the night shift. This was great fun and had a really great atmosphere, and I'd absolutely recommend going to a hackathon if you get the chance. 🙂 I've also been working on completing this year's Advent of Code problems, though I've got a bit behind thanks to uni work (solutions are here as always).

So, 2020? Well, I'd like to continue to improve my programming skills, as usual. I'm going to try to work hard to keep up with my uni work, including my dissertation (😱) and also try to manage my time a bit better, so weekends aren't as much of a mad scramble.

I'm so thankful to all of the people in my life. I'm thankful for all of my family, who have been there to support me through stress and deadlines and exams. I'm also thankful for my friends, who have also been there throughout the entire year, and been great fun at meetups. You're all just... you're the best 😊

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and, until next time,
o/