A look back at some of the things I learned or enjoyed during 2022.
Rust was the first new programming language I played with this year. I used it to build a simple to-do CLI program and had a pretty good experience with it. The main things that stuck out to me were the compiler's helpful messages and memory safety checks.
I don't expect I'll be working with Rust very much in the future though. It just seems best suited for systems programming which isn't really my thing.
I also started learning Go during this year's Advent of Code and loved it. It combines some of my favorite parts of other languages, like the readability of Python and the speed of a compiled language. In my opinion it doesn't excel in any one area, but it's very well rounded and fun to write in.
This was a pretty fun project to work on because of the wide range of features it eventually ended up including. It started as a service to simply search for and subscribe to podcasts over the gemini protocol. Over time I added other features like a proxy to allow downloading episode audio over gemini and various social features to share episodes with other capsule visitors.
This was one of my favorite albums this year and it was probably the one I had on most consistently throughout the year. That's not super surprising since two of The Smile's members are from Radiohead and I've been a fan of them since 2014. There's a lot of variety throughout and it deserves to stand with many of Radiohead's albums.
I found a lot of new artists this year and these guys are my favorite out of them. I think they're among the best in their genre which, according to Spotify, is "dreamo". Not sure I really like that name but I guess it fits. I'd describe it as a blend of post-rock and metal. Definitely give Holy Fawn a listen if you're a fan of either.
They released their second album this year and I was able to catch them on tour. Their show was by far my favorite that I went to this year. Holy Fawn's music is really hard hitting, even more so live!
My top movie of 2022. It's fun, ridiculous, heartfelt, and original. I'd love to say more but the less you know before watching it the better.
A superhero movie that somehow manages to avoid making me feel like I've already seen it dozens of times. It's right up there with the Dark Knight movies at least.
This surpassed a lot of my expectations. It's just a really fun action movie with great, funny characters and I wouldn't hesitate to watch it again.
A niche game, but if you enjoy exploration you'll love it.
A coop ghost hunting game. It's been a go-to in my friend group ever since it first gained popularity and we keep coming back to it.
An immersive and tense VR survival shooter.
The anticipated sequel to 2019's Boneworks. I've enjoyed playing with its modding tools even though the campaign feels a bit lackluster compared to Boneworks.
The one game I play most consistently. I've always been into music games growing up, and I think part of what makes Beat Saber so addicting is how physical it is. Also the modding scene is insane.
- moddedBear / 2022-12-30