I'm super late with this post, but again, better late than never. I just couldn't find the inspiration and drive for writing last year. Generally, I lacked motivation and wasn't really productive.
Generative Art
As for my art, 2021 wasn't as fruitful as the year before, but I did finish a couple of drawings. I'm still very much into it and lately I have found my drive again.
AxiDraw, the pen plotter, continues to be my favorite purchase ever. Here are a couple of my plotted drawings from the last year:
I wrote a separate post about the creative process behind the last drawing - Breaking down Krypton.
Blog
Oh boy, did I neglect this blog last year. I wrote only four posts. But I really couldn't find the inspiration and will to write. Naturally, the number of visits dropped, and it was a little above 90K. The fact that adblockers now block Goat Analytics also had an impact on numbers.
Luckily, now I have way more drive to write and keep the site updated.
This February, the blog got a redesign that I planned for a long time. I wanted to add "Art" and "Projects" sections, but I kept redesigning it over and over again. Finally, when I decided to switch from Jekyll (I'll probably cover that in a another post.) to Zola I was able to focus and finish the redesign.
I did the design myself, using the thing or two I picked up from my designer colleagues. I released it as soon as I had something presentable. It was super bare bones and I'm still tweaking it and adding more personality, but nonetheless, I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.
Fun fact, you can try my layout debug mode, I kept it in the production on purpose.
Work
Last year was productive for my company as a whole. I had the pleasure of working with two clients, TED and IBM Research. In both cases, teams consisted of wonderful people and I feel proud that I was able to help them build and improve their digital products.
Side projects
I tremendously enjoy these small pet projects. Generative art was a big part of this in 2021, but beside that I did a couple of other things. At our Belgrade office we did a weekly code challenge which was a lot of fun.
I got a 3d printer, Prusa Mini+, so I started playing with some 3d modeling (using code of course). Few days ago I found out about JSCAD, so I started making some models using it.
I also got my hands dirty with some soldering and electronics. Which takes me to:
Retro frame
This one is really close to my heart. I created a physical pixel art frame and I call it "Retro frame". This is just a teaser, as I'm waiting for a new wooden frame and making small adjustments. But don't worry, I plan on doing a write up and open sourcing everything.
Just looking at this video (Check the original animation on the artist's website) makes me happy!
I have a similar project planned, including an e-ink screen, so stay tuned!
npm packages
Number of downloads of my npm packages was up slightly, which is nice because I haven't done much work on that front. The total number went over 10 million!
Thank you!
To all people who actually read my ramblings, thank you! I sincerely hope that you occasionally stumble on something you like on my website - a solution to a programming problem, inspiration or just find something interesting.
To a better year, cheers!