A few years back I used to write up a review of my year, not sure why I stopped but thought it would be a good time to start it up again so here's 2023:
Looking back I've achieved a lot, both professionally and personally.
Professional Achievements
I finally took the time to invest in obtaining some certifications. This began in April with achieving my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, alongside that I was running through the hands on AWS Cloud Quest which is my much preferred way of learning! Keeping up to date with the various changes in AWS is key, especially when I might not be working with these resources day to day.
The following month I achieved my Certified in Cybersecurity℠ - CC from ISC2 and have been working on my CPEs for the rest of the year.
In June I had the opportunity to travel to the Barbican for the LeadDev London 2023 with only a select number of colleagues. This was a fantastic event.
In October I completed the Green Software for Practitioners (LFC131) from The Linux Foundation.
Another goal of mine was to work with .NET, this being Blazor. When I built a tool in Blazor Web Assembly (WASM) - Blazor Interactive which gave me the opportunity to give a talk on the subject at my local meetup - Blazor Interactive (Talk). This was a fantastic experience to be able to stand up in front of my peers and talk about something I am passionate about. I'd been giving various talks internally at work but these were via an online meeting.
In October I contributed to Hacktoberfest 2023. Open Source is key in our industry and I urge anyone to help, no matter how small the piece of work, I tend to do documentation as that's the last thing most people like to do and it's just as important.
Finally, December can mean only one thing - ⭐ AoC 2023. I had fun in C# again, got quite a few days done at the start then couldn't really get back into after having a week off. The good thing is I can go back whenever I want and I also got my sticker from the competition at work.
Personal Achievements
In March I began my official journey learning the 🎷 Saxophone. This is something I've wanted to do since being at school, just never got round to it. It's been quite a challenge. Learning to read music has been rather difficult and at times I've lost motivation but I've kept it going and thoroughly enjoying it. One day, I may share my private YouTube playlist of my progression.
Fitness has been lacking this year, I've not done as many The Conqueror challenges, but I did complete The Conqueror 2023 completing over 1700km for the year. I also completed my 1st Parkrun, many thanks to a dear school friend who drove over and ran it with me, knacked my knee as I hadn't done any running at all this year, but it hasn't put me off doing another, just need to train a bit more first, 5km as my first go probably wasn't the best idea!
Having dabbled with electronics over the last couple of years I worked more on my inventr.io 30 Days Lost in Space and started building my own "Smart" 🃏 Poker table, it's still a WIP but has been a lot of fun bringing various disciplines together, especially the fact I got to do some woodwork in my workshop (aka the garage).
I've continued my 🎳 Bowling with the local league I joined last year. I've stayed consistent and still having lots of fun with an average score of 119 which isn't bad!
About 18 months after my first beginners course I completed the second in the series: Blacksmith Tools. This had me forging many of my own tools ready for my own workshop, one day... This was much more difficult than the first course and I maybe won't leave it as long between the next, more so because I don't have my own forge to practice, so took a while to get back into the swing of things. Very happy with what I produced, and a tough but rewarding 3 days of great work.