2024 Recap

What a year, maybe

For me, personal projects are an opportunity to explore—an idea, a technology, or an opportunity—and to express some creativity. I do not always have an end goal when I start something, and for these kinds of projects, I think that’s okay. Sometimes they morph into something I publish; other times, they remain works in progress. This year, I tried something new by using Kanban boards. Overall, I think this was a success. Yes, it added a bit more work to maintain the boards, but it also helped me keep projects focused on specific milestones. So, I think I will continue this approach for personal projects in the coming year.

I made extensive use of AI in building my projects, with mixed results but mostly positive on using AI to assist me.  Again, I think I will continue with using AI in my toolset.

Something Old

Arcus
A proof of concept (POC) to explore and expand on how to use gRPC and CLI+windows services applications.  Arcus is a file vault application, with the idea originating from a very old project. Arcus is constructed as a CLI and a Windows service, with the service handling the vault’s behaviors and the CLI serving as the control.

IronBar
IronBar is a distributed ledger service—a.k.a. blockchain. This year, I proved the ability to run IronBar in AWS and Google Cloud alongside nodes running locally in a truly distributed ledger system.  So, yes, its definitively a distributed ledger now!

Cogitatio
Cogitatio is the CMS system that powers this blog. The history and decisions around creating my own CMS are detailed here, so I won’t go into the specifics again. This project is still a work in progress, with a few features yet to be implemented.

Something New

I’m not entirely sure what projects I’ll take on this year. I want to complete a few enhancements for Cogitatio. I still have an itch to build another game. Every time I use the Amazon Music app, I think it would be fun to create a better MP3 player—one without all the ads and annoyances.

I also want to dive deeper into Unity, gRPC, and cloud deployments. These areas continue to excite me, and I’m eager to see where they might lead.  I'll keep you posted.

Happy New Year.