2020 in review

Since 2018 I have written a year in review on Twitter about some things that I did in the year. This year (2020) is the first time that I am doing that in this blog :). At the end of 2019, I decided that I would have a blog and it’s here.

2020 was an unusual year for everybody because of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 and for sure this year will be remembered. Even knowing that the pandemic won’t finish this year and will keep for the next ones.

Books

I usually try to read a book per month but this year I wouldn’t do that because I was very busy because of some interesting work opportunities. So, I decided to go down.

However, along the way, I realized that I was missing reading. It is interesting how reading keeps our brain stimulated at least for me. That way, even with a lot of things to do, I decided to go back to my routine of reading almost daily. In total was ten books.

  • Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker;
  • The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work – Scott Berkun;
  • O amanhã não está à venda – Ailton Krenak;
  • The Road to GraphQL – Robin Wieruch;
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll;
  • TypeScript Deep Dive – Basarat Ali Syed;
  • Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne;
  • Dom Casmurro – Machado de Assis;
  • The Time Machine – H. G. Wells;
  • Construindo APIs testáveis com Node.js – Waldemar Neto;

Games

At the end of 2019, I bought a Nintendo Switch that made a big difference for me in the quarantine especially when anxiety was high. It was one of the things that helped me to turn off a bit of everything that was happening. Playing alone or with my wife.

Finished games:

  • Golf Story;
  • Hollow Knight – the most liked game so far;
  • Zelda: Breath of the Wild;
  • Katana Zero;
  • Overcooked! 2 – with my wife helping;
  • The Stretchers – with my wife helping;

Other games:

  • Mario Kart;
  • Mario Party;
  • Some old Super Nintendo games;

Other things I did

This year I decided to learn how to type better. Although I already could type “fast” and use almost all fingers, I thought I needed to get better. So, I started to practise the exercises on the TyingClub website.

Even after all of these years using the computer, the start was hard. Putting into practice what I was learning made me type slower and it was easy to get frustrated. I thought of giving up and returning to my old way of typing. However, I kept going on and slowly recovering my speed and feeling more confident while typing.

Altogether, I did 25 hours of practice. It’s a lot. But it’s worth it because now I feel that my interaction with the keyboard is more fluid and comfortable. Although it’s not required to type fast while programming, interacting better with this tool is important. If you use Vim, it makes a big difference (I use it sometimes). Ah.. I didn’t buy a mechanical keyboard yet.. xD.

Another thing was putting on production a small project for those who try to ingress in the public service in Brazil: the Local de Prova. Basically, this is a catalogue of the places where tests were applied and might be useful for those who will apply for the test in another city. I built using Gatsby.

This year I go back to dedicate more to acoustic guitar. I bought a course and I am trying to study at least 30 minutes per day.

I watched all seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Harry Potter movies (I didn’t watch any).

2021

Keeping using mask, keeping social distance, trying to avoid closed places and maybe getting the vaccine.

I don’t promise a lot of things, but I would like to keep doing the basic: programming and studying (and writing more on this blog)

See you next year!