Closing out the year 2025. An overview on some things I did, played and watched this year.

Things I did for 2025

  • Took a deep dive into Linux images and containers.
  • Posted about the name generation and date of birth that I said I would do at the end of 2023. The downside is I never got around to working more on that project after the posts.
  • Took a deep dive into Anime for about three months.
  • Sat the exam for “AWS Certified Developer - Associate”.
    • Given my employer doesn’t contract its developers out it wasn’t worth the hassle of preparing for the exam or taking it.

Games

Towards the end of the year I stopped my Xbox Live Gold subscription after about 8 years, as at least for the past 2 maybe 3 I wasn’t making good use of it and the Games with Gold were not worth it.

  • Xbox Games Pass
    • Call of Duty - Black Ops 6
      • Got to Prestige Mastery (i.e. went from Level 1 to 55, 11 times).
      • Unlocked Diamond Camos on 33 weapons (this means getting 100 headshots on most of hose 33 weapons plus complete several other challenges).
    • It Takes Two - Almost completed it
    • Tried
      • Hollow Knight: Silksong
      • Tony Hakw’s Pro Sakter 3 + 4
    • Overall, I probably aren’t getting value out of this, if I do move to Black Ops 7, I will need to look at price of buying it out right to another year or two of Games Pass.
  • Spyro
    • Didn’t make any progress on the third game all year.
  • Diablo Immortals
    • Play at least three a week for raids and shadow wars.
    • Login almost every day to send the pets (familiars) off to complete stuff.
  • lichess
    • Played 998 games and won 653, with 14,836 moves.
      • 973 Atomic and 25 Blitz
      • 908 Lobby, 41 Computer and 24 Tournaments.
    • Played 2 days and 7 hours
    • Started year with a rating of 1425 and ended on 1721.
    • Longest winning streak was 30 games between 2025-02-10 to 2025-02-11
    • Longest loosing streak was 9 games on 2025-02-28.
    • Longest streak (of playtime): 2 hour 13 minutes on 2025-02-28.
    • Reached highest rating in Atomic of 1745 (August)
  • Railbound
    • This was on my wish for a while and finally saw good sale so picked it up.
    • Played through the first three ‘worlds’.

Television

  • Last few months of the year were distracted by Anime.
    • Solo Levelling
    • That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
    • The Misfit of Demon King Academy
    • The Eminence in Shadow
      • I wasn’t as keen on the sharp twist in season 2 where they focused more on the big plot points in season 2 and dropped the overall narrative (i.e they skipped the school setting).
    • Delicious in Dungeon
    • The Daily Life of the Immortal King - Chinese series but recommend.
  • Disney+ shows
    • Star Wars: Skeleton Crew - Season 1
    • Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Season 1
    • Andor - Season 1 and 2
      • I previously watched the first episode and didn’t get into it but gave it another chance and was happy, it started it very slow.
    • Ironheart - Season 1
    • Daredevil: Born Again - Season 1
    • Shifting Gears - Season 1
      • Prefer Home Improvement and Last Man Standing
    • Ended Disney+ subscription when it came up for renewal - price increase again and couldn’t justify it.
  • Netflix
    • SPY x FAMILY - Season 2
    • FUBAR - Season 2
    • Sirens - Season 1
    • Tomorrow - Season 1
    • You - Season 5
    • Wednesday - Season 2
    • Squid Games - Season 2 and 3
    • My Happy Marriage - Season 2
    • Ghosts (US) - Season 1 and most of Season 2
    • The Apothecary Diaries - Season 1 - Top pick
    • Witch Watch - Season 1 (partial)
      • Mostly watched it as LilyPichu (Twitch streamer) was the English voice for the main character.

Music

This was a slow year of music as I rarely put my headphones or speakers on.

Artists

  • IVE - 129 plays
  • We Are Scietnecies - 113 palys
  • Taylor Swift - 111 plays
  • Of Monsters and Men - 110 plays
  • THe Wombnats - 96 plays

Top Tracks

  • Golden - HUNTR/X
  • Rebel Heart - IVE
  • I AM - IVE
    • This song sounds very similar to Golden.

Talks

These are some technical talks that I watched.

Things for 2024

I only did one of the items on last years TODO list for 2023 which were the blog posts. I did think about the music and gaming page.

Upcoming blog posts

Assuming I get around to writing them in 2026.

  • Post about location generation.
  • NBD Devices
  • Load testing with Locust
  • Quick look at ostree
  • My git usage

I may also try to post ideas rather than experiments or dives into the, as well.