The annual retrospective post that started in 2020 lives on for another year. Publishing right at the end of January 2025, I'd like to say it was a strategic move to avoid all the other 2024 reviews, but alas, I've just been a little slow to actually publish it.
The following are some hopefully interesting anecdotes, borderline-tech-related, from 2024 that haven’t already been talked about in a stand-alone post.
- Aside: Would you like falkus.co emails when a new post is published?
- Summary: A year without house moves
- Hardware Changes
- Software Changes
- Books, Articles, Videos
- The 2024 Projects
- Plans for 2025?
Aside: Would you like falkus.co emails when a new post is published?
Previously when asked if I had an email sign up for the falkus.co blog posts I’ve just directed users to the RSS feed. Last year I noticed my own habits for reading articles have shifted away from RSS (via Feedly) back towards emails. With that in mind, you can now sign up and get notified whenever a new blog post is published:
Tech-wise, I’m trying out the newsletter/new-blog-post-notification using ConvertKit, or now just ‘Kit’, hence the big Kit logo on the form above. I’ll probably do a follow up post later in the year with my experience, or if I’m directing users back to the RSS feed and the sign-up forms disappear you can draw your own conclusions.
Summary: A year without house moves
After skimming my journal notes and last year’s retro blog, my opening thought for this retrospective is that after double house moves in 2023 it was a refreshing change to stay in the same place throughout 2024. I’m definitely not rushing to move again.
2024 was the year I adjusted my working setup away from a traditional full time software engineering gig towards a few different projects. More on that later.
It was also the year where using AI became a regular part of my workflow, particularly when building new software for new projects. I’ve also found myself jumping to ChatGPT nearly as often as Google. I think it took me a little while to internalise the types of questions/dialogue that LLMs are good at (and what they’re bad at). With that now understood, and the models themselves being better, it really has been a value adding tool for the virtual tool chest.
I took up regular swimming to try and vary my workout sessions beyond only running. It’s been an enjoyable change and is now a protected part of my week-to-week routine that I hope to continue throughout 2025.
Now for the traditional sections to the Falkus.co year-in-review posts:
Hardware Changes
What's stayed the same?
Most of the core hardware stayed the same in 2024. I’m still using a 2021 MacBook M1 Pro as my main personal machine. The sit/stand desk that was new at the start of 2023 has continued to be a success. I wondered if I’d forget to keep using it at standing height, but actually I have a fairly routine set of calls week to week and it has been easy to form the habit of standing for most of those.
The peripherals of choice are still a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard (now looking very worn after 8 years of daily use, but still functional) plus a Logitech MX Master 3 mouse. I’m using a Dell 27” monitor, I forget the specific model, but remember that it has a 2k resolution (2560 x 1440), which I find easy to work with.
Mid-way through some ethernet runs
What's changed?
Network Cables
On two occasions in 2024 I put in days of effort running ethernet cables to different parts of the house. This has been completely worthwhile. Some WiFi flakiness that the TV Chromecast was encountering have been completely fixed (the USB-C Chromecast can use a power-and-ethernet adaptor, for those wondering).
V-Drums
The splurge of the year
Making good on my years-long threat to buy some V-Drums, I finally pulled the trigger on the idea. Perhaps surprising for someone into tech, I’m using none of the fancier features. I pretty much keep with one kit sound all the time and use the built-in bluetooth support to play along with backing tracks.
The kit sounds great, and most importantly, feels authentic. Certainly close enough to my acoustic kit to make practising enjoyable.
Klipsch Speakers
An eBay bargain, I purchased a set of Klipsch ProMedia Heritage 2.1 speakers in ‘Black Ash’. I’d been planning to buy some studio monitors, like a pair of PreSonus or Yamaha speakers, but on reflection decided that my desk is just too compact for that to work. The Klipsch was then a bit of an impulse buy after reading/watching a couple of reviews.
Tiny desktop amp does the job without hiss.
My own review? I really like the look of them. That’s probably a worrying opening statement for speakers, thinking about the visuals. The audio quality is also pretty good, but not perfect…
The thing is, the subwoofer has a built in amp for the two desk speakers, and it has a surprising amount of hiss, even at no volume. It is just audible enough to be annoying. Apparently it is a semi-common fault with this model. Changing audio input or different cables makes no difference.
I ended up resolving the hiss by bypassing the built-in amp and buying a tiny desktop amp (sunk costs fallacy perhaps?). This has the bonus of giving me a physical volume knob, which is much nicer to use than grabbing the remote control and pointing it at the subwoofer (which had no volume affordance anyway, just a blinking LED).
Office Chair And Storage
"With no house moves on the cards, I'd like to spend some time re-working my office furniture and storage. That doesn't [sound] very exciting, but I think a bit of a clear out/rearrange and maybe an armchair might make the space multi-functional."
I did follow up on my plans here from the year prior, finding a lounge chair that I liked at a furniture outlet near me. I think the model is a ‘G Plan Bergen’, but I’m not 100%. It looks nice and is very comfortable. It also has just a hint of Eames Lounge chair in shape.
The other office changes are a little less exciting, basically IKEA shelving and storage. The space is small, being half a dining room, so you’ve got to work a little hard to make it functional but not feel cramped.
The size has turned out to be a good constraint in many ways, getting creative with storage, but also getting ruthless with regards to things I don’t need or use, although I’m finding it’s a cycle of effort rather than a once-and-done project.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
Boox E-ink Tablet
I purchased a Boox Note 3 from eBay at the start of 2024 (eBay is a recurring theme, as the sharp eyed reader will already have discerned). The OS is Android, so it can run Gmail, Instapaper and Feedly, which are the reading apps I particularly wanted to use with the E-ink setup. I’ll typically read at the end of the day. If I don’t have a fiction book on the go I’ll pick up the Boox and read through saved articles etc. It’s been as good as I hoped. The E-ink display makes the device usefully limited - it’s that much harder to get distracted.
Honourable Mentions
- Our thermostat was swapped for a Hive system. I fitted one many years ago, although this time it was slightly harder as the wiring I expected wasn't there. Fortunately that hiccup was resolved with a little cable tracing, patience and YouTube.
- Our 15 year old Epson printer/scanner finally gave up. I replaced it with a Brother DCP-1612W Black and White Laser printer and scanner. It's been novel (and great!) to not use it for several weeks, then fire it up and immediately have super high quality output. The inkjet always needed coaxing...
Software Changes
I’ve started running Parallels again on the Macbook for various Windows tools. This has then been super charged with Cursor.
I don’t think I have much to add about Cursor that isn’t better covered elsewhere. I’ve found in the right context it can provide some secret productivity sauce for programming tasks. It is best tried first hand to find what those tasks are within your current work flow.
Books, Articles, Videos
Books
I read Scientific Curiosity by Cyril Aydon early in the year and found it very inspiring. I was most impressed with the outer space discoveries. Not only crazy proportions to wrap your head around (for someone like me with very little prior knowledge), but also crazy that we managed to find so much out about the planets and stars that are millions of light years away from us without ‘modern’ technology. The book does a good job going from scientist to scientist, discovery to discovery, to show how they built on each other.
On a fiction front, I continued with my goal of trying to read all the Dicken’s books that were given to me several years back. This year I read (for the first time): David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend (perhaps my favourite of the year).
In June I was gifted the first of the Thursday Murder Club books by Richard Osman which was an enjoyable read. Short chapters make it feel quite pacey, especially coming from a Dicken’s novel. Over the rest of the year I gradually read the other three books in the series. Turns out I enjoy the murder mystery genre, and this is a very easy going set of books for that.
Two other honourable mentions: 1) Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie, 2) Cold Comfort Farm, a 1930’s classic by Stella Gibbons.
Articles
- LLMs in 2024 - This just sneaks in the 2024 review, but was a really good summary, especially for someone like myself that isn't super on top of all the latest and greatest in the AI field.
- The Big Cloud Exit FAQ - sort of along the same lines as Choose Boring Technology.
- How a stubborn computer scientist accidentally launched the deep learning boom
Videos
Two videos to mention here, as per previous years, I’ve enjoyed behind-the-scenes from classic software and games:
- RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind.
- How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations - All the Ars Technica War Stories videos I've seen have been great. Their Crash Bandicoot video is a classic.
The 2024 Projects
Silencing a Neff Hob
Soon to be silent Neff hobs...
Let’s start with an unusual one. I swapped out our gas hob for an induction hob (can you guess where I bought it?). These are easy to fit, but on first use there was an immediate problem. The unit beeps for every button you press. That can be slightly annoying, but what made it practically unusable was the crazy loud volume of the beep. You turn it on. BEEP. You adjust the temperature. BEEP BEEP BEEP! Outrageous.
Something had to be done. The next day I started working out how to disassemble the unit. This was a little fiddly but the thing that had me stumped was I couldn’t tell which component was actually making the beep.
Neff put high resolution images of their spare parts online. I looked up a high res image of the circuit board for the hob then started googling chip part numbers for items that I thought might be producing sounds. Eventually one was a hit. Part number USMT-9355TA, which is a miniature audio transducer. Probably easier ways to solve this for those more familiar with electronics.
After some careful de-soldering, no more beeps! Great success.
Mini Software Projects
- Offline Movie Browser was the most popular blog post from last year. I've been enjoying hearing from people running their own versions. I probably open up my offline movie browser page every few weeks.
- VoIP Toolbox continued to get some interesting traffic, but no major developments in 2024 really.
Start Up Time
Without repeating what’s already been covered so far in other posts, 2024 was the year of job adjustments. The tl;dr version is that in the last quarter of the year I switched to splitting my time between Dstny, Haptap and Goldbyte.
I wondered if the split of focus would be a challenge, but so far so good. We’ll see if that remains the same once I’ve been in the routine for a good while.
Plans for 2025?
Have you ever heard the advice that to live the life you want you should start by writing your own obituary? You then start living accordingly to make it true. That sounds a little difficult to do, but I follow the reasoning. The below points are from the perspective of what I’d like to be able to say I did at the end of the year.
Big Projects
At the moment there is perhaps only one big tech project on the horizon for 2025 in the form of Haptap, which will launch its initial product in the first few months of the year. It’s hard to make too many plans beyond that as product feedback will decide the direction.
I’d like to look back on 2025 and certainly think that opportunities that came up with Haptap, which were worthwhile, were enthusiastically acted on.
The Smaller Projects
I have the opposite problem for small projects, probably too many ideas and not really the time and resource to act on them all!
- Building a guitar amp cabinet. I've got a broken (and old) Laney amp that's pretty large, yet I've also got a small office. It could be a really enjoyable project to save an amp destined to be scrapped and make it in to something useful and unique.
- Networking improvements (part 3?) - No need to run cables under the floor anymore, but now my attention is back on the loft. I never quite finished part of my original plan to use PoE to provide a hard link to the furthest TP Link access point in the house. Maybe 2025 will finally be the year.
- Further my LLM/AI skills. Partly keeping up with the main developments, but partly understanding how I can better utilise the tools in my new development projects.
- Boogle solver for iOS - take the web app from years ago and build an iOS app. My thinking here is that it would be really cool to use the phone camera to capture the game letters, rather than having to type them in.
- I'm going to dust off my Raspberry Pi again. The initial motivation is to run Pi-hole. I'm also wondering about Home Assistant as a way to keep long term data from the Govee temperature/humidity sensors I have dotted around. I think I only have Pi's that are 3B, which probably isn't easily powerful enough to run both, so 2025 might be the year of purchasing a Pi 5.