Monthly Review: December 2019

16 Jan 2020 15:51

monthly-reviews

My review's a bit late this month—oops! I'm also experimenting with a different format since there's very little to my reviews normally. So let's start with a few things I've been into lately:

I'm obsessed with

Cooking! I'm watching Bon Appetit Test Kitchen videos all the time and I'm trying lots of new recipes. I'm feeling more confident about my ability to attempt different recipes or techniques, and haven't had any major disasters to put me off so far. I'm most excited about my efforts with dough of all kinds: brioche, ciabatta, pizza, breakfast biscuits, and croissants coming up this weekend.

I'm listening to

Ghost by Matthew Mole on repeat. This guy sneaks Christian references into his cheery, straight-edged pop that usually turns me off, but this album is a lot lighter on religiosity so I can just enjoy the tunes.

I'm reading

The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser, which is a literary nonfiction high-end art theft story akin to The Map Thief, which I enjoyed enough to include in my list of favourite books in my 2019 review.

I'm watching

BA Test Kitchen! But also lots of Scandinavian (and a little German) TV. Most of it is okay but not amazing, but this is a good time for me to remind you to try Norsemen and Stories from Norway for excellent, silly, Norwegian comedy and Borgen for excellent Danish drama.

I'm working on

The beta for Exist Habits, a habit tracker I'm building on top of Exist. Exist Habits lets you create habits based on the data in your Exist account and tracks them automatically as your data syncs throughout the day.

I'm also working hard on sticking to small, focused releases for all my projects this year, and trying not to let myself get too scattered among various projects.

December goals

✔️ 1 social event

I went on a "friend date" that didn't work out.

✔️ Finish learning Pennywhistle on drums

I'm going to call this done, although I'm still working on perfecting it. I did learn the basic shape of the song, though, and I can roughly play it through, so that's a win.

✖️ Squat endurance

I did work on my bodyweight squat endurance when I went to the gym, but I didn't go enough. I think I made progress, but I still have some way to go.

✔️ Complete Larder native Safari extension first version

I'm so glad to see the back of this. I actually have to do a small update now with some minor changes, but the extension is in the App Store and I'm looking forward to getting away from Mac development, which I find (unfortunately) way harder than iOS. I also had some drama getting the extension approved by App Review, which I shared in this Twitter thread.

✔️ Publish 1+ post on each blog

Focus habit for December

None.

January goals

  • Release the email course I'm working on
  • 1 social event
  • 1 post per blog (Exist, my personal blog, and Hello Code)
  • Outline slides for a talk
  • Test my tuck lift numbers (the checklist I'm working on requires 15 and I think I can tick this off already, but I need to make sure)
  • 1 chin up with the thinnest resistance band at my gym
  • Publish my 2019 review

January focus

Danish. I want to get back to regular Danish practice, since we only have a few months before our trip to Copenhagen in May. I want to add to my vocabulary a bit more, but also focus heavily on basic phrases like hello, thank you, and Do you speak English? so I can really solidify them in my memory and remember them even in stressful situations.