Reflecting on 2024

Personal 10 Minutes

Another of my annual end of the year reflections. Like last year its taken me until February to finish.

This post is likely to be of little interest to anyone else, but I enjoy doing them and they’re the closest thing I have to a diary.

I’ve previously done these for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Reading

I log all my comic and book reading in Story Graph. They produce an annual wrap-up. Here’s mine for 2024.

There was a definite shift in my reading patterns this year. I basically all but stopped reading comics and graphic novels. I read 47 books: 13 graphic novels, 27 fiction and 7 non-fiction.

By way of contrast, last read I read something like 70-80 graphic novels.

Fiction

My favourites this year were:

Didn’t read a lot of sci-fi in 2024. Felt like I was in a bit of a rut so sought out some different authors. I struggled to finish Orbital by Samantha Harvey just didn’t click for me at all.

Non-Fiction

I read How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm but to be honest I found it to be naive and simplistic.

Comics

I read the first three books of 100 Bullets which I really enjoyed. Finished Lemire’s Hawkeye series which I’d been saving. Still great

I read all 1249 pages of the Infinity Gauntlet Omnibus but found it disappointing. The films were better.

I started reading some of Grant Morrison’s JLA comics and they were just awful. So bad that they basically killed all interest I had in reading any more graphic novels last year. I’ve got a few books of his which I’ve not read yet (Animal Man being the main one), but I think Morrison is massively overrated.

Listening

Still keeping to my habit of creating a playlist of “tracks that I loved on first listen, which were released this year“. Here’s my 2024 Tracked playlist.

It contains 157 tracks which is a total of 10 hours and 39 seconds of listening. Tracks are logged in order of when I heard them.

That’s 4 hours and 57 tracks more than last year. I’m still listening to a lot of 6Music during weekdays, but also spending time in the evening and weekends following recommendations on YouTube and elsewhere.

My My Most Listened 2024 includes Thee Marloes, The Last Dinner Party, Lucy Rose and The Bug Club.

Still listening to Unclassified but I’ve started regularly listening to BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks. I stick it on now late in the evening while I’m reading rather than doomscrolling.

My daughter has started joining me for this. A nice peaceful time together.

Maybe 2025 will be the year I get into podcasts?

Gigs

I wanted to go to more gigs in 2024. Here’s what I managed this year

  • Hania Rani. Jumped at the chance to finally see her perform live, and she didn’t disappoint. A much more high-energy gig than I was expecting, but it was amazing
  • Happy Mondays supported by the Inspiral Carpets and the Stereo MCs. Pure old geezer nostalgia. Lots of fun
  • King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Couldn’t go because I got my second dose of COVID.
  • Jalen Ngonda. Grabbed tickets as soon as I found out he was playing the Trinity in Bristol. Nice venue and the gig was brilliant. I’ve seeing him twice more in 2025.
  • John Hopkins. I saw Hopkins play in Bath right before the start of lockdown, my very first solo gig and my last time in a crowded room for a long time. While the Bath gig was a mix of his electronica and quieter piano pieces this set at the Beacon was a full-on assault on the senses. Brilliant.
  • Ezra Collective. I’ve never seen anyone work an audience like these guys. Uplifting.
  • Sea Sick Steve. Fantastic. Learnt what a diddley-bow is.

Gaming

I’m ldodds on both Steam and PSN if you want to add me there.

I spent a long time playing Shadow of the Erdtree which I thought was an absolute triumph. These games manage to light up parts of my brain in a way that many other games don’t. It’s the mixture of exploration, skill development, themes and tantalising secrets. I will never tire of them.

Spent some more time with Horizon Forbidden West, which I’ve still not finished. Also sunk quite a few hours into both PowerWash Simulator and Hardspace Shipbreaker which are engaging in their own ways. They provide satisfying distractions and sometimes that’s what I need in a game, not challenge.

I played Thank Goodness You’re Here, which was funny and reminded me of some Spectrum games from the ’80s which it also directly references in places.

What Wakes the Deep was scary, cinematic, very well designed, but a bit frustrating a times. Having watched The Rig this year, which explores some similar themes, it was slightly surprising to walk out onto the platform and feel like I already had some sense of the layout.

I played a lot of Framed, the New York Times word puzzles and an a life-timer subscriber to Puzzmo. Though not some much by the end of the year.

I spent a lot of time role-playing, which includes planning and running games, and reading through rule books.

I’ve been running a campaign of Agon which we finished up a few weeks ago. That was a lot of fun, although I struggled a bit with the system and pacing at times. I’m also now running Blades in the Dark for an in-person group. I even bought some new dice! While I love playing online, it’s just a delight to be able to get round a table with people and make some new friends.

We finished Season 1 of that campaign just before Christmas. During the break one of other players ran a Mothership one-shot which was brilliant. He incorporated sound effects and even an app at one point. A great way to round off the year.

In a bid to play even more TTRPGs, I also signed up to play an online session of Night of the Hogmen with a group of strangers. That turned out to be a lot of fun. Hogmen is a great one-shot anyway, but the GM was great and the other players leant into the wild caper.

Watching

Film

I watched 126 films in 2024, totalling 247 hours. 22 of these were rewatches.

Numbers of filmed I watched each month in 2024

I was given an “Odeon Limitless” pass for my birthday this year. It’s the best gift I’ve ever had! I’ve been in the cinema pretty regularly this year: 32 times in total. One a few occasions I’ve just gone and watched a couple of films back to back. Decadent.

My favourite films released in 2024 were:

  • The Substance
  • Conclave
  • The Fall Guy
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Kinds of Kindness

But my favourites of the year were:

  • Conclave. I cannot state how good this film is. on every level
  • The Substance. 😮
  • Perfect Days. Lovely
  • Past Lives. This one stayed with me for a while
  • Anatomy of a Fall. Gripping

TV

Masterchef, Bake-off and now The Traitors are now core viewing in our house. Rare occasions when the family clusters around the TV.

Finished working through my Star Trek: Voyager rewatch and started in on Deep Space Nine. Started rewatching Black Mirror and they haven’t all aged well.

Favourites of the new stuff:

  • Scavengers Reign. Amazing world-building. Obviously they’ve now gone and cancelled it, but the series is self-contained enough that it’s worth a watch
  • The Rig. Enjoyable sci-fi
  • Disclaimer. Gripping
  • Severance. Stylish and mysterious. Please let them end this well
  • Skeleton Crew. Of all the disney shows this year, I think this was the best. I enjoyed the Acolyte and Agatha All Along but neither landed as well as this.

Writing

I wrote 14 blog posts in 2024, totalling 10,993 words.

That’s more than I remembered writing to be honest.

I didn’t feel like I had much to say this year. Or that I had things to say that other people weren’t already saying better. And who needs to hear from another middle-aged white guy?

That’s an odd place to end up given that I still believe I’m mostly writing for my own benefit. Given that I’m doing less research and analysis I have less need to organise my thoughts in the same way.

That said, I think old-school blogging is more important than ever. So I may end up writing more this year but probably about different things? I don’t know.

I do have a larger writing project planned but haven’t begun the drafting in earnest yet.

Coding

I’m spending all day writing and review code, alongside planning and product work for Energy Sparks, so less interested in doing side projects and I have other uses for my spare time. Those films aren’t going to watch themselves.

But I did make something in Downpour and I did finish that Doom WAD bot for Mastodon. Although in December botsin.space shutdown so I’ve moved it to mastodon.me.uk.

I still want to do more creative coding projects.

Cooking

Like last year, I didn’t really log what I was cooking in 2024. I’ve bookmarked some recipes here. Only one new cookbook this year: The Latin American Cookbook by Virgilo Martinez.

Things that went down well with the family this year:

Still mostly vegetarian although some meat has crept back into the diet. Meera Sodha recipes are pretty reliable for midweek family dinners.

Isaac Korean Street Toast has now cemented itself as a pre-Xmas family dinner tradition.

Gardening

A mixture of poor rain and no desire to do a big groundwork project — to rebuild the raised beds and refresh the soil — left me spending weekends doing other things.

Grew some tomatoes in pots which did well. Otherwise did nothing else in 2024. Garden is in sore need of some attention.

Working

Energy Sparks is going well. My decision to step away from consultancy roles to focus on building something was absolutely the right one and I continue to enjoy my day to day work. It’s varied, and I’m learning enough, that I’m not getting bored.

Like every other charity and non-profit we’re still struggling to grow whilst remaining sustainable. The funding situation is always a worry but we’ve managed to shift our mix of revenue streams so we’re not as entirely reliant on grants as we were.

By the end of 2024 we’d grown to 10 people and back up to 1000 schools again. The expanded team includes someone responsible for marketing and comms and I’m hoping we can add a business development / sales role next year.

It is frustrating to see the government pour a lot of money into expensive retrofit projects for schools, when there are so many gains to be made through simple low cost energy efficiency interventions. There are a lot of schools that need refits and investment, without a doubt. But energy efficiency advice and the data infrastructure needed to support that also needs investment. Will write more about that another time.

In terms of product development and architecture we’ve made some satisfying improvements. By the end of 2024 we’d grown to 10 people and back up to 1000 schools again. But we’ve improved how we deploy and manage our infrastructure, pruned the codebase, sped up some core features, and have a good sense of what other features might be useful. But as always, more user research needed.

Everything Else

Last year I decided I wanted to get out more and meet some new people locally.

I’m not sure that going to the cinema counts, as I’m usually say by myself in a darkened room. But I’m still out. And I have ended up chatting to other regular cinema goers whilst we’re waiting for the film to start.

Early in the year I went and spent a few sessions volunteering at Bath Community Farm which was brilliant. I cut down some trees, helped to build a woodland wildlife garden, and planted up some new trees elsewhere on the site. It was a lot of hard work but in a beautiful setting. I spent time working alongside and chatting to a bunch of the loveliest people. Tiring but came away with a sense of peace and connection which I haven’t felt in a while.

Unfortunately there weren’t many of these opportunities as those events were part of a funded project. But still keeping an eye out for other chances.

I’m also out now pretty regularly playing TTRPGs with a new local group. So have met a bunch of other nice people and we’ve had some great sessions. For several of them it’s their first time playing any TTRPG, so I’m happy to be able to give them that opportunity.

Getting out to gigs also also been great.

Spent some money improving my desk layout and setup so less prone to back and neck aches.

Did a lot of DIY over the summer including redecorating the kitchen. We’ve been wanting to get our hall replastered and decorated for ages, so bit the bullet and go that done too. Kitchen roof has started leaking so hoping to get that sorted soon.

I checked out of social media as the US election hit its peak. Deleted apps and logged out of everything. Finally deleted my twitter account. Spent time reading and filling out my RSS reader with new blogs instead.

I really haven’t missed it. While I’ve been checking in again on Bluesky and Mastodon a bit recently as an experiment, I’m not sure it’s working for me anymore.

There are better ways to stay informed. There are better ways to feel part of a community. I do not need to witness every batshit or distressing thing that happens or read all of the analysis. None of that really impacts my sense of what is right.

Noticed an odd patch inside my mouth in November. Looks benign but ended up having to go for a biopsy. I was a brave boy but they didn’t give me a sticker. Still waiting on the results which I should get in February. 🤞🏻

Unknown's avatar

Published by Leigh Dodds

CTO at EnergySparks (https://energysparks.uk), previously Director of Delivery at the Open Data Institute. Proud Dad.

Published