Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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2020 Year in Review

It’s always weird for me when people do their “year in review” or “X of the year” any time before Jan 1st of the next year. You’re making Dec 31 feel left out. It’s one thing the Oscars get right. Anyway, here’s my personal year-in-review, such as it is.

Essay-writing section

It’s probably impossible to talk about 2020 without talking about the Covid19 pandemic that has ravaged the world. My country is sadly still under a state of quarantine/lockdown, I believe the world’s longest. I am doing relatively well during the pandemic, nobody I know personally has been infected, and I’m not exactly averse to just staying at home all the time. Compared to other people, it has for me at worst been a minor inconvenience. For that I am grateful.

I miss being able to go out to quiz nights or visit friends or eat at restaurants or even the occasional paper Magic tournament. We haven’t been visited by my the pamangkins in a while, most contact relegated to Zoom calls. I haven’t been unable to do my regular walks. Other than that my life remains relatively the same compared to last year, since any work I’ve done has been from home for the past couple of years.

I don’t feel like I have accomplished much in 2020, but maybe given all that we had to go through this year, just getting to the end is enough.

2020 Statistics:

Work, Travel, Learning and Self Improvement:

  • Hours worked: ~100 hours (estimated) - down from ~200 hours last year
    • I still have the occasional support consultancy work, but for the most part work has wound down, and I opted not to take on additional work to replace it. Maybe someday I’ll write about how I can afford to work so few hours. (Hint: It involves being very frugal)
  • Programming languages/frameworks learned: 1, same as last year
    • I learned the Flutter mobile framework to rewrite a mobile app charity project I did for some friends
  • Some other stuff/projects:
    • I rebuilt this site in the latest version of Django
    • Migrated this site to a new webhost, learned some server deployment stuff along the way.
    • Migrated my main email usage away from Google
  • Duolingo streak: 718 days (from 355 last year). It seems that I never broke the streak from 2019, so my longest streak continues. The numbers don’t add up - 355 + 366 should be 721 - but this may be because this wasn’t a true streak. I think I used the “streak freeze” powerups a few times throughout the year, so I probably actually broke the streak thrice lol. I don’t care, I’m counting it!
  • Other countries visited: 0!

Social media:

  • Facebook activity:
    • 32 posts (down from 315 last year, and 1081 in 2018). I deactivated my Facebook account in the middle of the year, so I can say Operation: Reduce Facebook Usage has succeeded.
    • 322 comments (up from 138 last year). I did however have more comments, because of quiz nights being held on FB live during the pandemic!
  • Tweets: 1037 (slightly down from 1124 last year)
  • Instagram photos: 46. Vs 108 last year. Most of these were for the usual Inktober thing.
  • Reddit activity:
    • 6 submissions (20 last year)
    • 31 comments (172 last year)
  • Answers written on Quora: 0.
  • 0 words written for Nanowrimo
  • 0 sketches submitted to r/sketchdaily
  • 115 blog posts, 98537 words worth; down from 224 posts and 119529 words last year. Some posts that I liked or got some reactions:
  • 115 links shared (all via Pocket)
  • 410 comments! Way up from 75 last year. But this was probably due to some integration stuff counting likes/shares from Mastodon/Instagram/Twitter (?) as comments.
  • Full stats for content on this blog and social media activity available here.

Media consumption:

Gaming:

This year I tried getting into game streaming via Twitch! Haven’t been super successful so far, but it’s been fun, especially when my friends are around to watch and keep me company. Subscribe at twitch.tv/twitchyroy or at the youtube channel where I upload all the stream vids afterwards.

There’s a lot of gaming stats, so they’re collapsed:

(Spoilers)
  • Games purchased (not including any I got for free for some reason): 67, again mostly from Humble bundles, up from 35 last year.
    • Steam purchases:
      • Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3
      • Divinity Original Sin 2
      • Jackbox Party Pack
      • Garou Mark of the Wolves
      • Disco Elysium
      • Knightin’
      • Root
      • Civ6 New Frontier Pass
    • Humble
      • 10 games Feb Humble Choice
      • 6 games Humble Digital Tabletop Bundle 2
      • 3 games Humble Capcom MEGA Bundle
      • 12 games and a lot of dlc Humble Asmodee Digital Play With Friends Bundle
      • 12 games Sep Humble Choice
      • 12 games Nov Humble Choice
    • PS4
      • Final Fantasy VII Remake (physical)
    • Nintendo Switch
      • Super Mario 3d All Stars (physical)
      • Link’s Awakening (physical)
      • Fire Emblem Three Houses (physical)
  • My gaming spend is waaay up this year since I decided to get a new console (Nintendo Switch)
  • Games “finished” (story/campaign completed OR achievement complete): 11, up from 7 last year.
  • Steam playtime this year: 675.68 hours (up slightly from 639.17 hours last year)
  • Most played Steam games for the year:
    • Sid Meier’s Civilization VI - 127.18 hours
    • Tales of Berseria - 119.35 hours
    • Eternal Card Game - 80.0 hours
    • Divinity: Original Sin 2 - 67.43 hours
    • Root - 63.50 hours
    • Blood Rage: Digital Edition - 40.10 hours
    • Armello - 30.67 hours
    • Batman™: Arkham Origins - 28.32 hours
    • Scythe: Digital Edition - 17.30 hours
    • Stellaris - 17.18 hours
  • I went ahead and added a Gaming/Steam stats page on this site
  • Nintendo Switch playtime this year: 159 hours (thanks Nintendo for providing a year-in-review!)
  • I also played a ton of Starcraft II Coop, up to the time they announced ending support for it, then me and my SC2 buddies got tired of it
  • Magic The Gathering
    • Best MTGA Rank: Mythic
    • MTG paper tournament games played: 0
    • MTG paper tournament games win rate: N/A (See my MTG stats)
    • MTG GPs attended: 0.
    • I find that I don’t really miss paper Magic
  • Average points per turn in Words with Friends: 29, +3 from last year!

Others:

  • Fitbit activity: 657,713 steps, 513.03 km walked. Down from 1,766,878 steps, 1,378.15 km last year. Down to a bit more than 1/3 of last year! Largely because I didn’t want to go out too much during the pandemic. Looks like my counts for Jan and Feb were on track for hitting 1.8m steps for the year, but then dropped off drastically starting March. Sadface. Hopefully I can get back into it once things settle down.
  • Donuts eaten: 2, up from 1.5 last year. In my defense, they were Dunkin donuts, which seem to have gotten smaller during the pandemic!
  • Baptisms attended: 1 (up from 0), managed to sneak one in right before the pandemic lockdowns started
  • Weddings attended: 0 (down from 2)
  • Wakes attended: 0
  • New pamangkins: 2 (!)
  • Quiz nights attended: Unable to count, since the pandemic forced the shift to more frequent online quizzes!
  • Grab:
    • Trips: 3, down from 46 last year, for pandemic reasons obviously. All 3 rides were in January!
    • Food delivery: 3
    • Express delivery: 1
  • Times I won the lotto: 0 (I declare in advance that I will remove this stat for 2021, it doesn’t mean I won the lotto!)
  • Bears defeated in single combat: 0

Moving forward using all my breath

Plans are still hazy for 2021. On a personal level, I have been feeling a bit lost in terms of direction, since there’s always so much stuff I want to do or try out. I have been considering taking the year off completely like I did in 2016, but that may need further evaluation. As always, we take it in stride, and move forward one day at a time.

Posted by under post at #yearnotes
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