2024 retrospective

2024 was slightly better than the very good 2023 (by like 1 point) only because the lows weren’t as low; the highs of 2024 weren’t as high but it was consistently good.

Overview/Timeline

January - birthday battenberg, A, return to ATU for more coding 

February - ‘Triplecon’ Akuma-Itza-Athventurecons attended; visit L in Dublin 

March - voting, was sick, the hunt begins; Theo is 12

April - Japanese Film Festival, K, finished off ATU semester 3 

May - cycled 25 days in May, went to Sweden, then Finland, then Estonia

June - home from Estonia, ran 80 km, went to Amsterdam for a weekend

July - Film Fleadh, cycled 21/31 days, hi M, Westport

August - Hagstravaganza 10 in Sligo, London AEW ALL IN

September - Culture Night, final semester begins

October - musicals, Galway Comedy Festival, jury duty lmao

November - jury duty cancelled; elections, assignments, A

December - assignments, Japanese dinner, Christmas, 31 days of strollin’

Music

46842 minutes on YouTube Premium. Slight increase from last year’s number, but it did say I had about 12000+ minutes listening to podcasts so not sure. An entire 30 days of listening to YouTube? Sounds about right.

Top 5 tracks according to Premium:

1. Stone Cold Steve Austin theme (lol, see Exercise)

2. Cult of Personality

3. China In Your Hand

4. Plush

5. Final Song

My actual top 5 (I think)

1. Just Close Your Eyes

2. Final Song

3. Rather Be

4. Plush

5. Tick Tock

Top track(s) by month:

January - COP, CIYH, the FF3 Field Theme (various) hangovers from 2023

February - Red Wine Supernova (Chappell Roan) L’s fault; the only Roan song I know

March - No Forever (Elaine Mai, MayKay) IYKYK

April - Tick Tock (Mabel) love it

May - Rather Be (Cleanest of Banditos) so good?

June - You’re in Love with a Psycho (Kasabian) fun music video. Slightly cursed

July - Plush (STP) Fab. It’s in GTA:San Andreas but it’s also quite famous

August - Final Song (MØ) Love her voice. Reminds me of Sigrid, Robyn etc Scandies

September - Cry Baby (Paloma Faith) a return from 2017/2018 whenever it was

October - Metalingus (Alter Bridge) Brood vibes

November - Just Close Your Eyes (Story of the Year/Waterproof Blonde) Fantastic

December - When You’re Gone (Cranberries) Mixed up with SOC; fabulous

Movies/TV

So 39 ish things watched? Pretty damn good anyway. I would say my fave movie this year was Conclave, a very late horse in the race to beat Furiosa. Fave tv series has to be either Shogun or Fallout, but Reindeer was good, the Boys etc. lots of good stuff.

Games by month 2024

• January - Ocarina of Time, Fallouts 3,4,NV (Very Hard, Unarmed runs)

• February - FF8 REMASTERED, FF12

• March - FF12, FF7 og

• April - GTA4 100% completion

• May - New Vegas, Civ 4

• June - FFX, Fortnite, DayZ

• July - DayZ

• August - DayZ, FF13, Resident Evil 1

• September - Kingmaker, Outer Worlds (blogged both)

• October - Civ4, Fallouts 3,4,NV (Very Hard, Endurance 1 runs)

• November - Fallout 4, Cod Blops

• December - Counter Strike Source, Civ 6 (still playing this)

More Fallout once again, my comfort video game series at this point. I also did most of my fave Final Fantasy games again, but quit halfway through 13, just too bleh. I blogged about most of the rest of these this year. Civ 6 is my current game and is pretty damn great, so much stuff to do. On 123/320 achievements atm.

Reading

I read the AJ Lee book around the start of the year, and it was very interesting. I also managed to finish ‘Germany Divided’, a history book looking at the pains of unification in 1990. Other than that I didn’t read much, the first two Sandman graphic novels come to mind. Need to go back to those.

I was also re-reading Rise and Fall again on and off but generally didn’t make much time for reading. Will have to re-learn the habit. I've fallen far from my almost nightly ritual of reading in bed from 2015-2020. I was also pretty consistent most of my childhood and teens.

Exercise

Walking

I didn’t walk all that much this year until the very end when I did an arbitrary ‘walk 31 days of December’ personal challenge. Mostly I would just be walking home from the cinema/pub on Thursday nights or if out on a Friday or Saturday. Did a lot of walking into town for nights out as well to save on taxis. So I started walking a lot more in December, also because my hips and knees are turning to dust. Hard to tell any progress so far but feeling fine and have even worn a 20 kg weighted vest to spice things up. Stay tuned.

Cycle

I cycled a bit more often in 2023 but still managed to do almost as many cycles in 2024 and more distance. Traffic and cars are just such a pain. By the end of the year I was only cycling on weekends. Will probably continue this trend into 2025, I usually only cycle on weekdays more in the summertime (May-August) as there are less students in town.

Running

I ran 48 times this year, with only 346 km done. 12 of those runs were in June when I did the Laura Lynn 80km challenge. I peaked around there, my legs started to fall apart later in the year and I stopped in late October.

Lifting

Chest/bb - still doing 2 chest and triceps a week and 2 back and biceps. I reduced a lot of the weight as it's just not working for me, will try something different again in January.

I used to plank to a few different 3 minute tracks, 1 minute plank, 1 minute rest, then 1 minute plank, but I largely settled on the original Stone Cold Steve Austin theme ‘Hell Froze Over’ and with 612 listens, 2 planks per listen, means 1224 planks (by late November). That’s almost twice what I did the year before, so that’s good.

Travel

Dublin - February 

I got to stay very near the Spire, visit the Gin Palace, hang out with L.

Sweden-Finland-Estonia May/June

I hadn't been to Sweden, Sverige, since 2012. Finland, 2019 and same for Estonia, 2019. The latter two are dear to my heart. I think I blogged about them elsewhere but was a good trip.

Amsterdam June

I didn't really budget for this but went to see L again while they were on this continent. Amsterdam is always a good time so was not a stretch.

Mayo July

Always a good time with the fam! Climbed Croagh Patrick once again.

Sligo August

Hagstravaganza 10! A nice trip and got to stay the night in nice accommodation with 4 friends.

UK London August

Myself and my cousin got to see AEDubya All IN 2. Was fun but a lighting quick trip.

Work/College

I didn't work at all in 2024. College was fine, 2 modules in Semester 3 and 3 in Semester 4. I think leaving a year between Java was my undoing; though I'm still doing the final Java OOP assignment as of writing, it will decide whether I get a 2:1 or 1:1; I don't really deserve the latter so we shall see.

Writing

I passed on writing during NaNoWriMo 2024; I did it at last during 2023 and the whole organisation is just too cursed. I'll write at my own leisure... one day it will all see life.

Wrestling

I didn't really watch much wrestling this year, other than obviously AEW All In in August. Oh I watched Wrestlemania 40 and it largely went the way I thought it would. Though I still follow the backstage gossip via podcasts I have chilled out a lot on my following.

D&D/board gaming

I recently updated here on my 5e game, other than that I played very few, if any, board games. I will correct this in 2025, tbc.

My own weird shit

Personal challenges per month (cycling, running, walking, post per x etc) I ran 346km in 48 runs (not great) 108 cycles for 1217km (little less than last year) and walked 200km in December anyway.

Necut? It still does be developed. It is at the point now where it has a life of its own. I decide something and organically, of its own accord, it defies me. Tbc.

If I refer to you/ye in some way, it's cause I like ya.

The blog itself

2 post per month

Terrible idea but admirable. Will revert to 1 a month in 2025.

Plans for 2025

Stay alive and thrive!

December post #1 Civilization VI "initial thoughts"

 I picked up Civ 6 within the last year or so plus some of the DLC. It was just sitting there, unused, as I was still trying to clear Civ 5 of all achievements. I only have 7 achievements left for Civ 5 but they are all the absolute hardest ones.

So with Civ 7 on the horizon (Feb 2025) and spotting that Civ 6 was on sale for 6 euro on Steam a few days ago, I bought a copy for Cathy as a 'Christmas present' and we played our first game ever.

I went for Peter of Russia because in this version he is the leader/civ with extra added border expansion upon founding a city. Build a city, start with extra territory. Love that. The Shoshone in Civ 5 were my faves because they could do that. Cathy went for Catherine de Medici of France.

It was OK, some initial confusion on both our parts but we managed to push through as far as the renaissance or just before the industrial era, I can't recall exactly.

---

I played another couple games after that by myself, one as Russia and one as the Netherlands on an islands map.

I won the second game and my first ever victory by Diplomacy somehow? I had launched the spaceship and was waiting for it to land and then randomly I had acquired enough Diplomatic votes or whatever to win. None of the drama of Civ 4 where it's a binary choice for Diplomatic Victory and you can see the votes tallied afterward, or the very clear tomfoolery of Civ 5 with city-states inflating your votes. It just sort of happens. The Congress in 6 is worse than 5 for sure.

I won my second game (barely) by score; Archipelago, Standard, Quick, Netherlands (randomly chosen). It's an islands game so no one was anywhere near productive enough for space. There were less than 50 turns left and I spotted I was maybe 100 points or so behind Genghis Khan who had settled all over the map. I just settled 3-4 towns on random scraggly islands to inflate my score and destroyed a bunch of districts to build Wonders and took the lead.

---

Warfare is difficult, not that it's hard to do but units last way longer, cities are almost impossible to reduce health/have shields now because of walls and stuff. I fired a nuke at someone after my Diplomatic Victory and I spotted it reduced health and shields to 0 so that was good I guess. I also fired a nuke at a volcano near St. Petersburg for the craic, damn thing kept going off.

Natural disasters kind of suck, I think they're cool it's pretty ominous when the game suddenly zooms in on them happening but I find the penalties seem to outweigh the benefits. In that Russia game I had a volcano next to my capital and had 4 cities around it and built my Campus districts around it so every time it rumbled it would blow them up. My science rate didn't suffer that badly as I could rebuild them quickly but was tedious.

I LOVE Eurekas. Adds a lot of incentive to try and do a whole load of different things in order to speed up a discovery of a tech or civic.

Districts and governors are kind of cool but after a while it all boils down to my main takeaway from 2 and a half games played:

It's just like Civ 5, but not as good (so far). I'll keep at it for a while but I'm not blown away.