Some Thoughts on 2022

It seems like the last two or three years, with every new start of a year I come out swinging, meaning new posts much more regularly, but I don't question, just go with the flow. And today I look once more back to the previous year, what I liked, what I didn't like and what else was happening.

Things I liked

  • Sonos Support, at the beginning of the year I had some issues with my Sonos Surround setup and I was impressed with the speed and quality of their support.
  • Yellowjackets Season 1, Lord of the Flies with a very disturbing twist. Loved the first season.
  • Half-Life Alyx, I wrote a short like post about it because this game is insanely good and a breathtaking VR experience
  • Paddington 2, I never thought I would love a movie with a talking bear this much.
  • The first episode of Severance (and the rest of the season) is probably the most surprising TV thing this year, just because it came out of nowhere.
  • Kirby CMS, I never thought I'd leave WordPress and never look back, awesome small CMS, the perfect one for me.
  • The first 10 minutes of Cha Cha Real Smooth, because I never cried this fast when watching a movie. I think it took me less than 5 minutes.
  • Watching Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar The Way of Water on a big IMAX screen. Both are spectacular, and especially the last act of Avatar is probably one of the best action scenes in a LOOOOONG time I've ever seen.
  • The bold filmmaking of The Northman is something that I loved. Just someone's vision without any compromise.
  • The third season of Barry had some amazing build-up and very unusual but effective action scenes.
  • David Fincher directing an animated short for Love Death + Robots is something special. Plus the short film Jabiro
  • Andor because it was an adult Star Wars Show I always wanted.
  • Taking part in some local Music Quizzes with some friends.
  • Bad Sisters was such a sweet but dark and funny mini-series which had me guessing how it all ends.
  • So sad to see Better Call Saul end but what an end to such an Amazing show which I now consider being better than Breaking Bad. Saul and Kim, a couple for the ages. Will miss all those characters dearly, even the bad guys.
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once. The movie has everything all at once and shouldn't work but not only does it actually work, but it's also such a deeply personal and touching story. The biggest movie surprise and my number-one movie of the year.

Things I didn’t like

  • Too much nostalgia manipulation from movies like Ghostbusters Afterlife and Jurassic World: Dominion. Plus they are not good movies.
  • The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi made me think Star Wars is officially dead (until Andor was released)
  • The ending of Ozark was not good, bad endings always leave a bad taste at the end of a show. Even if up until then it was good or great (looking at you Game of Thrones).
  • Rich annoying silicon valley billionaires in silicon valley shows (Super Pumped, WeCrashed and The Dropout)
  • Bad sound in movie theatres, kinda ruined Wakanda Forever for me.
  • The last season of the Walking Dead, glad it's finally over, it clearly overstayed its welcome. The first 3 or 4 seasons are good, the rest is sometimes laughable.
  • The fifth season of The Handmaid's Tale is laughable as well and starts to tarnish the first 2 seasons.

What else did I do?

  • I did a whole CMS switch by migrating over 900 entries. It was a huge undertaking.
  • I switched note-taking apps and switched from Bear to Notion. Notion is such an excellent application that I am considering paying extra money for the Notion Plus option.
  • I also switched from Bitbucket for all my code repositories to GitHub and actually made some of my code public so that everyone can judge my code.
  • Got into API and Javascript frameworks a bit more. Played around with Svelte and Astro which are both very cool frameworks

This is not a complete list I am sure but one I created early and filled with notes throughout the year. When I look back, it was another weird year where I started strong with lots of energy which I think got used up with the whole CMS transition. The entire second part of the year, I felt really down and started to retreat. But I think I overcame that phase with help and now I can look forward with a more positive attitude.

Let's hope it sticks a bit longer this year.