So once again we’ve completed another orbit around the Sun, and due to this special time of year it’s time to look back and see what I’ve accomplished in those last 365 days. I must admit, I’m in two minds as to how much I’ve done – on the one hand I’ve travelled more than ever before, and produced more content and brilliant photo’s than ever before, BUT some of my achievements were not on my to-do list from the beginning of the year, so I’m unsure how good this will look. Off the top of my head though this is what I’ve been doing:
Visited 6 Countries
Yep! This year it appears as though I was a jet-setter, with myself going to the following six countries:
- Japan
- Norway
- Denmark
- The Netherlands
- Bulgaria
- Austria
I spent a combined total of 30 days outside of the UK, which is fantastic in my opinion, as the further I get away from this place the better!
Completed and Reviewed 52 Games
Another year another weekly gaming! Whilst there were a few weeks where I forgot to schedule things, I did indeed complete 52 games this year and managed to review every single one of them. My list of completions can be seen below:
Ratchet and Clank
The Order 1886
Gears of War 4
Superhot
Mirrors Edge: Catalyst
Lego Jurassic World
Star Wars Battlefront
Knee Deep
Leaving Lyndow
The Videokid
Sniper Elite 4
Halo Wars 2
Call of Duty Infinite Warfare
Zelda Breath of the Wild
Snake Pass
Shovel Knight
The Witness
Late Shift
Yooka-Laylee
PuyoPuyo Tetris
Little Nightmares
Kamiko
Killer is Dead
Tokyo 42
Virginia
Jotun
Tekken 7
Monument Valley 2
Get Even
Tales from the Borderlands
Valiant Hearts
Pokemon Moon
Refunct
Super Mario Run
Submerged
Sonic Mania
Subsurface Circular
Mario + Rabbids
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Songbringer
Unchartered 4
Cuphead
Jettomero
Forza 7
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens
Super Mario Odyssey
Costume quest 2
Sonic forces
Bound
Grow up
Super Lucky’s Tale
Doki Doki Literature Club
Watch out for my GOTY article in the next couple of days!
Read 24 Books
Due to other time commitments, this is increasingly getting harder, but I managed to achieve this once again thanks to Audible. So without further ado, here’s a list of the literature I managed to get through in the last 12 months:
Wait but Why: Elon Musk
1984
Human Universe
Steve Jobs
Deep Work
Linux Exam Book
Aliens (Jim-alkhalili)
The Brain: The Story of you
User Interface Design for Programmers
Elon Musk Biography
The Long Earth
Spelunky (Boss Fight Books)
Dangerous – Milo
The Anti-Procrastination Book
Reality is Broken – Why games make us better
Video Game Story-telling
Surviving AI
The Long War
The Long Mars
The great gatesby
The long utopia
Metal gear solid
The watchmaker of filigree street
SPQR
To add to this (but not included in the list) I also read the following Manga:
One Punch Man 1
One Punch Man 2
One Punch Man 3
One Punch Man 4
One Punch Man 5
One Punch Man 6
One Punch Man 7
One Punch Man 8
One Punch Man 9
One Punch Man 10
One Punch Man 11
(shit… that’s a lot of One Punch Man).
Watched 28 Movies
Yep, another year, another 24 (or more!) movies. This year I watched quite a few classics, but easily my biggest disappointment was the latest Star Wars – so much so that even when watching the film me and Lucy couldn’t help but turn to each other in awe at how shit some of the scenes were. Regardless, here’s all the films I managed to watch in 2017:
The Killing Joke
FFXV Kingslave
Burn After Reading
O Brother Where Art Thou
Steve Jobs
Fargo
Doctor Strange
Bad Grandpa
Allegiant
A Serious Man
A Garden From Words
Hurricane Bianca
Grown Ups 2
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Wonder Woman
Batman Lego Movie
Logan
Spiderman: Homecoming
Dunkirk
Fantastic Beasts and where to find them
Blade Runner
Paprika
Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle
Thor: Ragnorok
Now you See me 2
The Dark Tower
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Baby Driver
Produced 16 Videos on Youtube
This one’s come as a surprise to me actually, with me only realising I had done this just now as I went back to my channel and counted all the videos I had made.
I’m happy that I’ve come up with a style for my thumbnails, and will continue to improve the quality of my uploads – with lots of animations and actual formulaic structure that I can consistently rely on in the future – making it faster and easier to create more videos.
Overall I’m quite happy with this goal, as my expectation was that I had done a lot less. Regardless of this, I’ll definitely continue to push out content, and hopefully pick up a few new subscribers along the way!
If you want to view some of these videos, you can by all means visit my channel below:
https://www.youtube.com/caesoose
Attended 2 Game Jams and Created 2 Prototype Games
Yep! This year was the year that I finally thought fuck it, and met some people at games jams. First up there was the JanJam in Oxford at the beginning of the year where I helped contribute towards “Beleaf”, which you can read about below on Rosa’s website:
http://rosacarbo.co.uk/janjam17
It was a delight to meet my fellow jamers, so much so that it made me realise how little I knew and how much I had to improve in games development
Secondly, I attended Splashjam 2017 in Norway – a fantastic experience that took place above the arctic circle. To say it was a trip of a lifetime is an understatement – I look forward to going back to Norway once again in the future, and will take what I learned from the experience and use it in spades over the coming years.
You can view more details about the game I created (Earth 2167) at the link below:
https://itch.io/jam/splash-2017
Started work on my second game
Whilst not complete, and with constant set-backs, I have indeed started working on my second game. This one is based on Nintendo’s Streetpass game, whereby players would earn an amount of coins based on how many steps they have walked on a given day. Using iOS, and an extension available on the app store to access apple’s Healthkit data, I’ve managed to come up with a prototype of a player calculating how many steps they’ve done, and then getting an amount of coins based on those steps. Players can then spend this money on puzzle pieces, of which the completed puzzles will be my own landscape photography.
The players stats and whether they’ve collected a puzzle before or not is all stored within a local db (all of this is new technology to me, so it’s taken some time to get used to it all). I’m hoping to have the finished product available on iOS sometime in 2018.
In 2018, I’ll make sure to write a weekly blog of my progress on the game. I’ll update this article accordingly to link to that blog.
Prepared for Linux Exam
Whilst I haven’t taken the Linux Exam just yet (I’m terrible at actually arranging things), I have read through my Linux exam book and have been working towards doing the actual exam by using Linux on a regular basis.
Come the new year I seriously need to sit down, book an exam date asap, and get on it, revising daily to pass the test.
Started Taking Photography More Seriously
Throughout the course of this year I’ve realised how much I do truly love photography, and how much joy it brings me to go out of my way to capture an image and share it with the world. So as of April, I proceeded to purchase a nice expensive DSLR camera: the Sony Alpha A6300. For quite a while I was leaning towards Canon camera’s, but after weighing up what I wanted to do with the camera (Video record + photography) I settled on the a6300 due to it’s 4K 100mbps recording (using the full 6k sensor and downsampling), and great 24mp shots.
To give a hint of the types of shots I’ve taken, you can see some of my images below. Suffice to say, I’m happy with my purchase, and have even gone on to purchase more lenses for the camera throughout the year:
Tooks 365 photos on instagram for #DailyDan
Yep! I decided to take part in the daily instagram challenge, and successfully took 365 photos this year! You can see my results and a daily snapshot of my life at my instagram account:
https://www.instagram.com/caesoose
Oh! And whilst you’re looking at my instagram stuff, maybe take a look at my photography account:
https://www.instagram.com/caesoosephotography
So whilst I’m sure there’s so much more, for now, this is all the things I feel I’ve achieved in 2017.
I hope you’ve all had a lovely year, and I look forward to 2018 being a bigger and better year!
See you in 2018!
-Dan