After a four year absence it’s time to get back on the yearnotes train!

Work

Join Together

2024 was a good year for Join Together. Our main focus was a chunky project for the National Education Union (NEU). As well as replacing their online join process, we also built them a bespoke service for upgrading existing student members to full membership after graduation.

The NEU are one of the largest (and more tech-savvy) unions in the UK, so it was a pretty big deal for us to win the project. And despite a fair amount of complexity and esoteric requirements, we totally nailed it, leaving the folks at the NEU over the moon with what we delivered.

We also shipped projects and updates of varying sizes for a good number of our existing union clients. It’s become clear that updates and ongoing development with existing clients will make up a healthy chunk of our revenue, which is helpful, as bringing new unions onboard can be a long and arduous process (it took a whole year from first contact to signed contract with NEU).

Side gig

By the tail end of the year Join Together’s projects were wrapping up and a previous client of mine got in touch asking if I’d be available for a short contract. They needed urgent help shipping some major updates in a short space of time. With no new Join Together projects starting until the new year I was able to take them up on their offer, and spent the last couple months of 2024 working on their mission. It turned into quite an intense project, working mostly solo to make significant changes to their user modelling (primarily separating admin-related code/authentication from their generic User model⁽¹⁾). In the end it all went smoothly, which was very pleasing, and I was wrapped up in time for Christmas.

I imagine this won’t be the last time I take on short contracts outside of my work on Join Together. Although we’re busy when we have projects on, the in-between time tends to be quiet as the platform mostly takes care of itself. As long as my partners in unionisation are not also on outside contracts, and can take care of urgent issues, it’ll be a good way to keep busy and the bank balance healthy.

Maintainable Ruby Podcast

This summer I made an appearance on the Maintainable Software podcast. I really enjoyed chatting with Robby and sharing my reckons about software, teams and some of the things I believe helps keep software maintainable. Some people have said nice things about the episode, so that’s good.

Conferences

I was sad to miss Haggis Ruby (I got Covid), hopefully they’ll be back in 2025. I did make it to Brighton Ruby tho (ten for ten!), which is always one of the highlights of the year. Andy puts on an incredible conference (and has great taste in cocktail flights). The talks are generally good, but for me it’s about spending time and catching up with Ruby friends, old and new, in lovely Brighton. Have you got your tickets for Brighton Ruby 2025 yet?

I did submit one talk proposal this year, to both Brighton Ruby and RailsConf, but was unsuccessful. It’s for a talk on i18n in Rails. My thesis is that everyone writing Rails code should be making more use of i18n, even when the app isn’t actually being localised into other languages, and that following the less well known Rails’ conventions for i18n can lead to simpler, clearer and more maintainable code. I’d still like to develop this talk at some point, perhaps to share with NWRUG.

Life

Welcome to the world baby Ela! That’s four nieces now, my siblings sticking to what they know.

Travels

Myself and Lauren had an Easter break in Malaga. What we hadn’t realised was that Easter is a big deal in that part of Spain. Our arrival coincided perfectly with Holly Week (Semana Santa), when various brotherhoods parade through the streets wearing unfortunately-appropriated pointy hoods and carrying massive Jesus-themed floats. It’s quite a thing to behold.

In August we went on a trip to Copenhagen by train, stopping off in Brussels and Hamburg on the way. Earlier in the year I’d managed to snag a table at Noma for their final Vegetable Season before they close as a permanent restaurant. An eye-watering amount of money for a meal, but as an experience it was one I won’t forget in a hurry and one of my main highlights of the year.

Copenhagen itself is a beautiful city and checks many of my travel boxes: great food and coffee everywhere; lots of interesting art and culture; plenty of things to do. The main highlights included: Swimming in the pristine harbour; Wandering around Freetown Christiana; The Design Musuem; and Louisiana, a beautiful modern art gallery just outside Copenhagen with notable work by Franz Gerscht, William Kentridge, Louise Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama.

We were only there for a day, but Hamburg is also somewhere I’d love to go back to and spend more time exploring.

Walking club

Although once again we failed to make it to Snowdon (due to untimely illness), it was another solid showing for our Walking Club this year with big walks every month except August. The highlight for me was an epic hike up Scafell Pike on a glorious sunny day in June. Get out in the wilds people, it’s good for the soul.

DJing

I started DJing regularly again towards the end of the year with a bimonthly residency at Ōdiōba, a lovely little listening bar in Stockport. It’s been great fun playing records out again, and it’s got me reconnecting with my record collection. The sets will be making their way onto my Mixcloud if you’re interested (December’s should be up shortly). I also DJ’d the launch for my friend John’s new book A Time ⋅ A Place, which I would encourage you to buy as it’s great, but it’s also sold out, sorry.

Garden makeover

Almost ten years after moving in it was finally time to sort out our garden. I’m prone to procrastination, especially when it comes to major house projects like this, as personal head space tends to be in short supply. Thankfully Lauren forced matters this spring by calling various trades people for quotes on paving, kicking off a short stint as a garden designer. It’s a small garden (not much bigger than a yard really) so designing it became a careful balancing act between space for planting whilst maintaining enough room for general hanging out when the Manchester weather permits. Here’s the obligatory before and after shots for you:

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. It’s a much more useable space, and we were able to make the most of it this summer before winter kicked in. I’m looking forward to more planting and outdoor fun times in 2025.

Film, TV and Theatre

Three films stuck out for me this year: Perfect Days, The Zone of Interest, and Soundtrack to a Coup D’etat. Each was striking and moving in their own way, and I’d recommend all three as must-see films. Honourable mention to Civil War, Dune 2, Kneecap, Longlegs and The Substance.

On the TV front I don’t think it was a vintage year. Post strike/Covid/ZIRP slump? Shōgun, Industry and The Penguin stood out. House of the Dragon, The Bear, Slow Horses, Black Doves, English Teacher and Agatha All Along were all serviceable fun. The show I enjoyed the most however was a reality TV show on Netflix: Culinary Class Wars, a thoroughly entertaining and over the top cross between MasterChef and Squid Games.

We got to the theatre a couple of times, and the most memorable thing for me was Dark Noon, a fantastic and intense retelling of the birth of modern America by a predominantly black South African cast. If you live in Australia anywhere near Sydney (and happen to be reading this in January 2025) I would highly recommend you check it out at the Sydney Festival.

Music

I thought it might have been a quiet one for new music this year, but looking back through the releases I picked up there are some standouts for sure. Two of my favourites come from friends of mine: Private Joy’s Desire! EP and Jamie Finlay’s Sun Dogs album. Other releases that stood out were new albums from Nala Sinephro, Don Glori, Shabaka, Thandi Ntuli and Carlos Nino, Greg Foat ,Lady Wray, Sam Gandel & Sam Wilkes, Allysha Joy, Bricknasty and Hiatus Kaiyote.

Aside from new music, I’ve continued to dig out old gems in various record shops and fairs on my travels, including at Record Planet in Holland, one fo the biggest record fairs there is. Imagine two aircraft hangers full of stalls selling vinyl from all over the world. Two days digging through the crates was exhausting, but loads of fun, and I managed to come back with a modest haul of tasty records, including some I’ve been trying to hunt down for some time. It also happens to coincide with Le Guess Who?, which is a fantastic music festival.

Speaking of festivals, We Out Here was, as always, a wonderful weekend of sunshine, dancing and incredible music. I’m already looking forward to 2025.

Other live music that hit the spot this year included gigs by Shabaka, Lady Wray, Bricknasty. And not forgetting Manchester Music for Gaza, a moving day of music, talks and activities that raised over £10,000 for Medical Aid for Palestinians. Well done Ian, Yousef, Zoe, and all involved. Free Palestine! 🇵🇸

Games

I didn’t find a huge amount of time for games this year. The highlight was probably the Resident Evil 4 remake, which I thoroughly enjoyed: spooky, cinematic, and difficult in the right sort of way. Animal Well was also enjoyable, if a little baffling and opaque. I lost interest in uncovering all the eggs after getting to the end.

I also picked up Cyberpunk 2077 after the PS5 update hoping to get lost in an epic adventure. And whilst the graphics and world building are very impressive, it took too much effort (and more than a few YouTube tutorials) to wrap my head around all the systems and mechanics and feel vaguely competent in the game. And by the time I was in my stride it felt like I’d already seen most of the content. With that said I apparently put over 70 hours into it, so I guess it was alright?

I’ve only got a little way into Astrobot and so far it’s a joyful and fun experience that manages to capture some of Nintendo’s magic sauce. I’m looking forward to spending more time with it in 2025.

Honourable mention to Overcooked! All You Can Eat, which several years later continues to eat up countless hours as myself and my friend Lucy wring every last drop of fun out of it trying to 4-star all the levels⁽²⁾. No co-operative game has come close to its combination of chaotic fun and charm. It’s a shame Ghost Town have given up on further expansions as we’d buy them in a heart beat. Here’s hoping their recently-announced new co-operative game is able to replicate some of the same magic.

Looking ahead to 2025

After a couple years of various random issues I’m aiming to get my health and fitness back on track, and generally have a more relaxed and mindful approach to life in 2025. More time for some creative projects. And of course Snowdon must finally be conquered!

Footnotes

1: Perhaps I should blog separately about the patterns and techniques I used to do this iteratively and without any downtime?

2: Unfortunately this may actually be impossible with just the two of us as the target score on some levels appears calibrated for three or four players. Still we plough on…