alyxia

A Retrospective, Ex Post Facto

2023-12-31

Today marks the final day. We've all seen a whole lot this year, no?

Ups and downs plenty, but I'm alive. I'm working on myself, and it's going better than ever. I'm happy.

So, let's go over a couple of things I've done this year.

Joining Brik.digital

This year marks the year I started my first actual job. It was masked as an internship for school, which all in all it really wasn't. Besides the reports and assignments I had to do about my work for school, to me this was nothing like the average internship.

I wasn't treated like an intern. I was treated like a coworker. Someone who'd been there for years. I don't think I've ever integrated into a team this quick. I found my place so incredibly fast between these wonderful people, and I'm eternally grateful for being given the opportunity to stick around for as long as I did.

It was supposed to be an internship that lasted half a year, from February 2nd to June 26th, however, I was offered a temporary contract throughout the summer holiday if I was interested in that. Being willing to continue growing in this team, I accepted without hesitation. I only had two weeks of summer holiday this year compared to the usual six. But it was worth it!

I learnt a lot, was able to work on ton of cool projects, and it didn't stop there. My education was supposed to last four years, but I was told I was able to skip a year if that fit my needs more, as the third year was full of stuff I'd likely already know. So I did. And then another big switch-up happened; they moved the internship period of the fourth year from the second half to the first half of the year. Meaning that starting the 28th of August, I'd be right back in the office until the 2nd of February 2024.

There's only plus-minus one month left until that day. And that only really strikes in now. Each of the people there have been the kindest, most wonderful people I've had the pleasure of working with in a very long time. I've worked on some amazing things (some of which even publicly available!), went on a couple outings with them, helped move to the new office, and so much more. I've taught my coworkers new things, they've taught me new things, and honestly I could keep going about everything I've accomplished there this year.

It's been a great time, for any of you folks there that end up reading this. Thank you so much.

CrossCode Modding

This, like many others, is also a year in which I spent a lot of time doing more work for the community that I originally started out in; the modding community for the brilliant video game CrossCode. (it's on sale until January 4th! go buy it!)

Here's a list of personal projects I worked on this year, in order of how cool I think they are:

  • CCProjectRed: Story expansion set in a certain game area (currently private as per request from one of the team members)

  • cc-touchbar: Mod with a native Node module for controlling the MacBook's touchbar

  • CCHijack: Injects into the game before it even loads, allowing you to write your own game

  • cc-quickinfo-exp: Simple mod for showing the EXP an enemy will give you in the quick info dialog

  • cc-alybox: Library mod containing game tweaks and features for other modders

  • CCPostDLC: Allows you to continue playing the game after the DLC ends

  • CCOldMedia: Brings back a couple old assets and audio tracks from v0.7.0

Aside from these personal projects, I obviously also contributed to a couple projects on the organization, CCDirectLink:

I'd like to thank 2767mr, Emi, Nax, EL, krypek, and image not found for being such nice and clever people to interact with.

Discord Modding

And of course, just like the past three years, I've contributed and done lots of stuff for various Discord mods.

There's too many people to thank in this community, so I'll just skip over that for now. Thank you all :)

Replugged

moonlight

Personal projects

Lastly, let's go over some personal projects I've done this year. Despite there not being a lot of those, there's quite a couple things I did for them!

  • dotfiles: Lots of stuff in lots of different places here.

    • Good couple plugins for hh3

    • Started using Nix

    • Worked on the Neovim config where necessary, along with an attempt to write a new config

    • Did some script/zsh config maintenance

  • alyxia.dev

    • Rewrote my old website in Common Lisp starting Dec 30th 2022

    • Did a bunch of work over the course of this year, both functionality and UI wise

    • Got in touch with Mihai Bazon, the creator of the web framework I used

    • Currently working on a rewrite in ReScript!

Advent of Code

This year I also hosted my annual Advent of Code leaderboard, bringing out some of the people I thought were totally gonna dig a challenge like this.

Thank you to all participants:

  • Tasky

  • Niels

  • birb

  • image not found

  • krypek

  • EastArctica

  • Chris

  • Maru

  • Nax

  • Nico

  • Janneke

  • Snare

As I said to you all already, I hope to see you December 2024 for the next round :)

...and that just about rounds this year up. It's been a rough one, but we're all still here, aren't we?

I'd like to extend my additional thank you to some people who I've only really interacted with through DMs this year. You know who you are.

Happy New Year, hopefully 2024 is going to be a good year for y'all.

Cheers!