It’s the last day of the year, and thus time for the annual bullet point recap.

In summary, MMXX was the year that…

• The site only saw a measly 76 new posts, 23 less than last year. 2020 started out quite good, but both November and December have been abysmal in terms of new content. If you want to read through this year’s incoherent ramblings, everything is safely tucked away in the archive.
• Was pretty active on the draft front. I wrote no less than 39 drafts, ranging from quick notes and links to almost-ready-to-publish posts that just don’t sit quite right.
• I posted new one-liners to the collection every month.
• The A Picture A Day project got its daily update. I summarized this year’s adventures in this post.
• I only managed to read 8 books, 4 books short from my annual target of A Book A Month. I summarized my year in books in this post.
• My war against surveillance capitalism intensified when I installed Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi. Since then I’ve not seen a single privacy-bashing internet ad.
• I was diagnosed with IBS, a blanket diagnosis that you’ll get when there’s something wrong with your inner plumbing, but the doctor have no idea what the fuck is going on. As a result of the IBS, I’ve been on a low-FODMAP diet since April. If you’re also “enjoying” IBS, I can highly recommend trying a low-FODMAP diet.
• The site was moved from WordPress to Hugo. Using a static site generator is a very hipster and indieweb thing to do, and while using Hugo makes a few things a bit harder compared to WordPress, I haven’t missed the latter for a minute.
• We finished watching Game of Thrones, just a year after the series ended.
• I had a few good sessions on the rower, but getting back into the boat following last year’s surgery took a while.
• We spent the summer in Tønsberg, Norway, and in Legoland and the surrounding area in Denmark. Good times all around.
• I successfully managed to fool at last one reader with my April Fool’s joke; I Never Wrote Any Of This.
• Our oldest daughter discovered Pokémon. It has not turned into the obsession I see with some other kids, though.
• I played a bit of video games, but didn’t really find a game that appealed to me enough to sink a lot of hours into it. But I did play enough games to write 6 video game reviews this year.
• After being a Spotify premium subscriber for 10 years, I jumped ship and started using Deezer instead. Same shit, different wrapping, except it’s a bit cheaper, and it’s the underdog. I like underdogs.
• Desktop Linux came back on my radar, and I tried both Pop!_OS and Solus on my old Dell XPS 12. Both could easily have been my daily driver for everything except for gaming - the XPS is not a gaming laptop - but the wireless network card refuses to work properly after waking up from hibernation, which annoys me to an unhealthy degree.
• I went to the movies exactly once and saw Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. It was pretty meh.
• We purchased an Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headset in a moment of poor consumer judgement. I have to admit it’s great fun, though.
• I tried cloud gaming for the first time with Google Stadia and played some Cyberpunk 2077. Stadia was a surprisingly good experience, and Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t too bad either. Casual gamers like myself shouldn’t really need to purchase a gaming computer or console ever again now that cloud gaming works as well as it does.
• We purchased a trampoline and became even more stereotypical suburbanites.
• For no particular reason, I wrote two posts about how to spot phishing e-mail.
• I spent way too much time diving into the surprisingly complicated world of mechanical keyboards, and purchased an ortholinear, stacked, 40% Planck EZ keyboard that I’m still struggling to get used to.
• Oh, and the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world, but I’m sure you don’t have to be reminded of that. This site has been virtually free of mentions of the ongoing pandemic, and that’s very much intentional. It’s enough COVID-19 talk everywhere else, so I’ve made an effort to keep this site pandemic-free.

All in all, the year wasn’t too bad, I’ll even go so far as to say that it was pretty good at the end of the day year. Sure, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, but at least I’m in it with my family, and we’re living in a country that has things pretty much under control.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a dress rehearsal for when a really contagious and dangerous disease, like full blown Ebola, hits us. It’s obvious that the governments and citizens of some countries are not prepared for when that happens.

Here’s to a much less eventful and healthier 2021!

Here are summaries from previous years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.