Here’s some things that went on for me in 2024.

Obviously, the central event of the year was the birth of my second child, which happened in August. He is well, very smiley, and big and strong for his age. Overall, he’s quite an easy baby. He already sleeps pretty well; it’s his toddler bother who is the real handful…

It’s a wonderful period, but it takes a real toll on your time. fLaMEd has a recent post on this that I relate to on basically every point.

Blogging

I have kept this blog going (barely) for a whole year, which I am proud of. According to my tinylytics, a few people even read it (and perhaps a few more via RSS). Posting more than these little bulleted digests is all I can currently manage, but that’s okay. As my life changes, so can my blogging habits.

I participated in two blogging challenges: micro.blog’s April photo challenge and Blaugust

Stuff I read, played, etc

I’ve not had much time to sink into games, but I played Final Fantasy VI and Bloodborne for the first time this year, both great, and I replayed Metal Gear Solid 3. I’m trying to replay Metal Gear Solid 2 now to keep up with Resonant Arc’s “book club” series on the game. I didn’t read loads, probably only about 6 books cover-to-cover, which is pretty bad, but I’m very glad to have read This Life by Martin Hägglund, and I enjoyed getting into the short stories of Ted Chiang and Borges. I managed to see a few films, such as part two of Dune, but again, not many.

Work

  • My first full two year GCSE cohort did well in their exams, and I passed my ECT (early career teacher)
  • At the start of the year, I’d have said my goal was to get out of teaching for my own sanity asap, probably into a dev job, but that’s lower down in my priorities now, thanks primarily to the fact that…
  • I went part-time, which has been of some benefit to my mental health despite the financial strain.
  • I am teaching an extra-curricular course to my very best students about algebraic plane curves, which is proving immensely stimulating for me. Despite the material being very basic, it’s fun building their geometric and algebraic intuition using only elementary algebra — obviously there can be no ring theory, topology, sheaves… there can’t really even be maps in any great detail. I’m also more-or-less working entirely over R, which is messy, to say the least (I plan on introducing complex numbers near the end). But there is a decent amount you can do with GCSE-level knowledge — you can define affine curves, study their singular points via tangent cones, define the projective plane and projective curves, classify the quadratic projective curves, and study the asymptotes of affine curves via their projective closure. I may post the notes when they’re done.

Other bits and bobs

  • Me and most of my family (including my sister’s side) got flu in February. It was rough.
  • I also got covid. So did my wife, and it gave her hearing loss in one ear, which seems to be permanent. Probably the biggest bummer of 2024 for our family.
  • I published a handful of crosswords this year. I think my most recent one is my best yet.
  • I started this year with good fitness habits (continued from 2023, not just new year resolutions!), but wasn’t able to keep them up following the baby’s birth.