2024 in review

Twenty twenty four, wow, that was an odd year. Fun at points, stressful at others. For me, the beginning of the year was better than the latter half. Hopefully 2025 is better overall.

Statistics

Starting, as always, with some fun (and hopefully interesting) statistics. According to the FitBit app, I "covered" a total of 1,948.02 miles and averaged 5.32 miles per day. In 2023 I "covered" 1,707.99 miles while averaging 4.66 miles a day. In terms of steps I did 4,334,665 steps over the year, averaging 11,843 steps per day. As before, the distance covered seems to only include walking and running, while the step count converts other exercise into steps.

I also completed the Race the distance 2,024 miles in 2024 challenge. For this you track your movement (walking, running, riding, wheelchairing - it's up to you so long as you cause the movement) with an aim to reach the goal. At each milestone (500, 1,000, and 2,024 miles) you get a medal.

I averaged 6 hours and 42 minutes of sleep a night, according to FitBit, compared to 7.5 hours a night average in 2023. Apparently I hit my "sleep goal" on sixty days across the year. A reduction in sleep is probably not healthy (too much late night reading after binge watching box sets), so I think for 2025 I need to better protect my sleep.

Reviewing my 2024 goals

I managed to achieve 50% of these

• ❌ Gain legendary status on all Welsh Duolingo units - I gained more legendary units, but didn't complete all of them
• ✅ Be able to read and understand more Welsh literature (books, magazines, news articles)
• ✅ Attend at least one cyber security conference (online or in person)
• ❌ Have a more regular blog posting schedule, at least one post a month - not only did I fail to post once a month, I posted only 20 posts compared to 29 in 2023!
• ✅ Reduce the number of blog posts I have in draft - down to 13 from 20 or so. A slight reduction at least, and I cancelled a few posts I had in draft
• ✅ Undertake more training for professional development (or personal)
• ❌ Journal (in English or Welsh) semi-regularly - I ended up writing in batches, and got stuck in July. I'll go back and complete the year, but I think I've concluded journaling isn't for me
• ❌ Implement some of my home automation ideas - I didn't implement any automations this year ☹️

Laptop upgrade

I finally decided it was time to replace my gaming PC (probably 12 years old), and laptop (about six years old) with a single device capable of doing everything I wanted. I try to hold on to my tech for as long as possible, to reduce electronic waste (eWaste), but my Novatech laptop's build quality wasn't very good, plus its graphics capability wasn't much better than my failing desktop PC.

After much deliberation, I settled on a Framework 16 laptop with a pretty decent spec (below). I really like Framework's mission of trying to reduce eWaste by producing modular laptops that you can service and upgrade yourself. I wrote a post introducing Framework and talking about the build process, and then a follow up post after a month using the laptop as my main home computer.

• Processor: Ryzen™ 7 7840HS (Up to 5.1GHz, 8-core/16-thread, 24MB Cache)
• RAM (memory): DDR5-5600 - 64GB (2 x 32GB)
• Storage: WD BLACK™ SN850X NVMe™- M.2 2280 - 2TB
• Dedicated Graphics Module:  AMD Radeon™ RX 7700S
  • Plus the expansion bay shell module (so I can have a lighter / smaller unit when desired)
• WiFi: Intel 6E AX210 (non-vPro model)
• British English keyboard (QWERTY)
• Numpad module
• Black bezel for around the monitor
• 180W power adapter
• Expansion cards: 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A, 1x HDMI, 1x Display Port
• Two black spacers for when I don't want the number pad installed
• Ubuntu Linux

Conferences and events

In November I attended the ISC2 Secure London conference in person, and it was a fun day. My workplace kindly allowed me to have the day as professional development, and paid for my attendance, for which I'm grateful. Of the six talks, some were really thought provoking, and I really should put together a post about it. As you'd expect, "AI" was mentioned a few times, but I was pleased that "AI" wasn't the single focus of the conference. I particularly enjoyed a talk about Industrial Control Systems and the panel session on de-risking your supply chain was interesting too.

I also managed to attend a number of codeHarbour (my local tech meetup) sessions, and was pleased to see that BCS Kent has resumed hosting talks following a change of venue. Sadly this year I didn't give any talks, something I hope to rectify in 2025. If you're interested in talks I've given before I list them on my public speaking page (some have links to recordings).

Work

In May 2024, my employer got bought out by a larger company operating in the same industry. We wrote software that complemented the software they wrote, so this made sense, but understandably it was a bit nerve-wracking. Having left the public sector after seeing five restructures in four years, the prospect of these changes wasn't something I looked forward to.

What was clear after the acquisition is that there wasn't an equivalent post for me to move into. I was the Senior Information Security Officer (SISO) that was responsible for security across all areas of the business. The company that purchased us was ten times our size (employee headcount) and already had a security team of about nine people plus contractors. There wasn't an overarching role for me to move to, and I was offered a post as a Senior Information Security Engagement Consultant instead. I've struggled, for months, to consider this anything other than a demotion but ultimately I think that's the only way I can really describe it.

Hopefully during 2025 I'll be able to find happiness and interest in my work.

Professional development

Besides attending talks / conferences, and reading articles, I don't think I've done well on the professional development front this year as I've not done much study or completed many courses. FC, also known as Freakyclown, published a course on Udemy, Physical Social Engineering for Red Teams: Foundation course, which I enjoyed. Initially I was confused - this was a one day course but the video content was only about an hour long - but everything made sense once I got started. The course is one day long because you have to do a fair amount of research and planning. And no, I didn't break into anywhere!

Gaming

I'm still playing Terraria with my daughter, and we're enjoying journey mode - you can enable infinite health ("god mode") and clone items so you have an infinite number of them. We completed the game by defeating Moon Lord, albeit with god mode enabled.

Satisfactory finally exited early access and became version 1.0 - the full release. This adds a plot line, changes the map a bit, plus alters some of the recipes and goals. I'm still not playing that regularly, so I've not completed the game, but it's still very enjoyable. Often I'm joined by my cousin at the weekends, so we chat while building our factories (and shoot at each other / remove the floor so someone falls down...).

New Year's eve saw me install Unreal Tournament 99 GOTY on my Framework 16 [1]. This game was 25 years old in 2024, and is something Andee and I used to play a lot. As Andee was round we spent a few hours playing. Needless to say, the Framework 16 didn't even use its dedicated graphics card, so the fans barely span up and I ran on battery for quite a while.

eVitabu

In September I had the privilege to help lead a conference about eVitabu, back at the venue where we launched the app in 2018. My journey out to Uganda included an unscheduled day-long stop in Rwanda, due to flight delays, so Geoff and I arrived a day late. Overall the conference went very well though, and our delegates had some great ideas and feedback to give us. Some items I implemented quite quickly, others will take more work, while others still aren't necessarily relevant to the app at all - eVitabu isn't designed to do those things.

I'm still not spending as long on eVitabu as I'd like, something I need to try and rectify. I managed to use one of my charity days (a perk from my employer) to work on development. I need to make sure I use those properly in 2025.

Books

I did reasonably well with reading in 2024 and have listed some of the books I really enjoyed below. I still can't easily read a full magazine article or book in Welsh, but I'm certainly getting better at that.

• How I rob banks by FC aka Freaky Clown
• If it's smart, it's vulnerable by Mikko Hypponen
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• Force Multiplier by Cory Doctorow
• Underwood by Michele Thiella (I proofread the English translation for the author, original in Italian)

Goals for 2025

• Gain legendary status on all Welsh Duolingo units
• Be able to read and understand yet more Welsh literature - I have a Welsh magazine that arrives every couple of months (Lingo Newydd), and a few Welsh books now
• Be able to hold a spoken conversation with my Welsh friend
• Implement some of my home automation ideas
• Find happiness and interest in my day job
• Give at least one talk

I wish you a fantastic 2025!

Banner image: "tango office calendar", from OpenClipart.org, by warszawianka.

[1] You can now download the game for free, by getting the ISOs from archive.org: Disk 1 ISO and Disk 2 ISO.