This year’s recap can be summed up from three angles: the blog, tech, and life. To be honest, if I don’t sit down and think it through, my head gets a little fuzzy. At first glance it feels like I didn’t really do much this year, but on second thought, I did tinker with quite a few things. I’m not going to talk about work here—too dry, not that interesting, and I doubt my future self would care much either.
On the blog side
- The blog shifted toward a more lifestyle-focused direction;
- I adjusted how friend-link applications are handled;
- I switched from Hexo to Typecho;
I gave up on the Hexo theme I had heavily modified for about half a year. It was a Heo-style theme, and even though it wasn’t original, it was still fairly complete. Through it, I learned Hexo’s framework and syntax, and I also got familiar with and integrated quite a few plugins. That sense of accomplishment was real. Even now, I still think the Heo theme is excellent: the loading feels smooth, and the interactions and animations across the site are hard to fault.
That said, Hexo requires extra deployment work, and many plugins depend on third parties—comments, search, deployment, and so on. It all felt a bit cumbersome. On top of that, the blog was getting more and more overworked and flashy, so after weighing it for a while, I decided to move on.
I’m the kind of person who likes to act first. If I can do it myself, I won’t easily ask someone else—unless I’ve really hit a wall or simply don’t know how. Starting in August this year, I began learning PHP, with Typecho as the main playground. So far, I’ve “made” two themes:
- a Memos-like TP theme
- a minimal theme called tp-simple
Neither of them is truly original. They’re both based on ideas from other people’s work, or inspired by designs and presentation styles I found appealing and then adapted for my own blog. My references include Dai Ge, Mobius, Weiyan Weiyu, Xiaopanglian, Huomiao, and Zhao Ajjuan.
I believe it’s faster to start on the shoulders of giants than to design and build every single thing from scratch. A lot of what happens online is just people learning from each other and borrowing ideas from each other. I’m not going to do anything that crosses the line ethically, and I also respect original work. If a commercial theme is worth buying, I’ll pay for it myself.
On the tech side
When it comes to technology, it still mostly circles back to the blog. I taught myself some PHP and Python syntax—not because I’m particularly strong technically, just because I’m interested.
For PHP projects, I mainly studied things that I can write and modify on my own, since my energy is limited and I won’t spend too much time diving deep into every detail. The ones I looked into include:
- xiunobsay forum
- Typecho 满心记
- WordPress 满心博客志
- Python scripts for pulling data from the web
As for operations, it’s not really serious ops work. I just set up a low-power server of my own and deployed a few apps to play around with. The ones I use most are FlexCdn, NasCab, KodBox, and Alist. Of course, these are all just small-time experiments and pure hobbies. Work-wise, there are much deeper things going on, so I won’t go into that here.
On the life side
Yes, I’m that unlucky one who bought a house when interest rates were at their highest. It nearly turned into a half-finished project, too. Then after the renovation was done and everything had finally settled, the interest rate, down payment, and purchase restrictions all got loosened. Honestly, it didn’t exactly feel great. I never expected buying a home could be such an intense experience. The good news is that the new place was eventually delivered, and I handled the mortgage-to-public-fund conversion as soon as possible. Things are now moving in a healthy direction, which is at least comforting.
Wuhan also got hit by a rare mix of sleet and freezing rain this year. Normally, sleet just covers the ground, but this time it piled up 2 to 3 centimeters. It didn’t freeze solid, so stepping on it felt like walking on sand, which made getting around very difficult. The freezing rain was even worse. Every morning before work, I had to carry a bucket of hot water downstairs to scrape ice off the car. It went on day after day. After work, I had to avoid even the slightest slope on the way home, or the car would lose control completely. Luckily, my commute doesn’t involve any slopes, so it was a close call but nothing serious.
The little one at home is growing up healthy, without any illness so far, which is a real relief. From where I stand now, raising a child doesn’t seem to cost that much money, but it absolutely drains the parents—especially at night. The sleep disruption is brutal, my eyes are often bloodshot, and it gets genuinely uncomfortable. I can clearly feel that I no longer have much personal space; my time belongs to the family now. Maybe that’s just the price of growing up.
Cooking-wise, because there’s too much sketchy stuff in outside food these days, we barely dare to eat out. Almost everything is cooked at home, and without exception, I’m the one in charge of the stove. A lot of the dishes were ones I tried for the first time, and many of them weren’t even recorded anywhere, but surprisingly, everyone’s feedback was very good. They all said it tasted great. The dishes I learned best this year were:
- spicy crab
- braised chicken
- grilled fish
- stir-fried pork
- dry-pot cauliflower
- spicy hot pot
They’re all home-style flavors, and cooking at home at least means the ingredients are fresh and clean.
Looking ahead to 2025
As the little one grows older, I’ll definitely be taking them out more often. I also still have a lot of room to improve in the kitchen. In 2025, I want to learn how to make cakes, skewers, and Western food. Of course, home cooking doesn’t need much mention—I’m already good at that. That may sound a little boastful, so let’s just say I’ll keep at it.
On the blog side, I want to slow down and write properly again.