2018

2018: My year in bullet point review. How was yours?

It’s the last day of 2018. Somehow time managed to move at a relatively steady pace for another year.

In summary, MMXVIII was the year that…

  • I wrote and published 79 posts, 40 more than last year.
  • Google continued to alienate people like me, their more privacy aware costumer base. And I continued my mission to tell the world about their shenanigans: You Might Be Helping Pentagon Train Killer Drones and Dump Google are among the posts I wrote about the subject.
  • (On that note, I also added a few more posts to my PRISM Break series.)
  • We had long, cold, and snowy winter, followed by an abnormally hot and sunny summer.
  • The anti-vaccionation idiots continued to recruit more mindless drones, and I wrote a post about the morons: Don’t Speculate. Vaccinate!
  • I spent 14 wonderful weeks at home in parental leave with Daughter Two Point Oh.
  • I covered about 300 (~186 miles) by bike delivering and picking up the kids at their kindergarten during my parental leave.
  • Self-driving cars got a lot of bad press, mainly because they started killing people. Personally, I love the idea of autonomous vehicles - preferably the non-killing kind - and I wrote a few (wolf in sheep’s clothing-style) posts about the subject.
  • Stellaris was the game I sunk most time into. I’m not sure exactly how many hours I spent taking over the galaxy this year, but my total playtime is now at 214 hours. Yikes!
  • I made my first Firefox extension, the Google Translate Firefox Extension, that 271 people and I are using on a regular basis. Yes, I still use some Google services. Getting out of their sphere takes time.
  • November and December was full of home-with-sick-kids-days. I look forward to when their immune systems get up to speed.
  • Excessive energy drink consumption continued to kill people all around the world. But that didn’t scare me, and I briefly considered getting back into the energy drink review business. While that never actually happened, I wrote notes about a dozen different energy drinks. Perhaps one day the notes will see the light of day.
  • I thought I was taking a break from writing on this site, but it turned out I just had to burp.
  • After two years with the lovely Independent Publisher theme, the site got a design overhaul, and is now running a slightly modified version of Anders Norén’s Hoffman.
  • I ran 349 kilometers (~217 miles) on the treadmill, and ended the year with an inflamed heel. Feels a lot better now, though.
  • The kids brought all kinds of germs from the kindergarten, and I was out with the stomach flu for three days. Good times.
  • Twitter continued its transition into a breeding place for all kinds of hate, which made me look for alternatives. I found Mastodon, which I dismissed as a dud at first. But now I find myself gravitating more and more towards it, and the user base is growing. To make the Mastodon even more approachable, I helped translate the Mastalab Android app to Norwegian.
  • I turned 40! Time sure flies when you’re having fun.
  • We went to the Kristiansand zoo and amusement park, and Daftö during the summer.
  • I wrote a record number of opinion pieces, also known as “ramblings”, something I guess is part of turning into an old fart. Here are a few of the posts: When Will Marcus & Martinus Take Social Responsibility?, Why Not The Sun?, and Electric Cars Are Total Nonsense!
  • The 2018 FIFA World Cup was played in Russia, and I once again tried my luck at some sports betting. The result? I lost everything.
  • I didn’t watch a single F1 race. That slick bastard Lewis Hamilton won the championship again, so it turned out ignoring the series for another year was a good choice.
  • I followed through on the A Book A Month project. In total, I read 17 novels and short stories this year. I even wrote a post summarizing my year of reading.
  • The A Picture A Day archive grew with one picture a day, exactly as planned.
  • I became a doomsday prepper of sorts.
  • Facebook decided to screw their users numerous times, which resulted in me deleting my Facebook account (again). You should to it, too.
  • A few new one-liners were added to the one-liners collection on the first of every month. The collection now contains 1,813 one-liners.
  • And least, but not last: The entire world didn’t go completely to shit, which is good. But the forecast looks greyer than it did at the beginning of the year.

All in all, 2018 was perfectly uneventful. Here’s to 2019 being just the same. Happy new year, everyone!

Here are summaries from previous years: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.


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