1---
  2template:
  3slug: 2020-in-review
  4title: 2020 in review
  5subtitle: Oh boy, here we go
  6date: 2020-12-24
  7---
  8
  9It's been a little over 9 months since the day I left my university
 10dorms (got kicked out, rather), in light of <span class="lol">the
 11pandemic</span>. I have my finals going on right now, and 5 days to go
 12for the next examination -- a great time to reflect on what I managed to
 13do this year. So here I am, sitting at my little home office-thing, with
 14a bad cold -- as is tradition during December -- writing this post.
 15Let's get to it!
 16
 17
 18## interning at CometChat
 19
 20I spent a good part of this year interning at
 21[CometChat](https://www.cometchat.com), mostly working as an
 22infrastructure engineer. I dabbled with some pretty neat tech -- here's
 23a quick list of things I worked on:
 24
 25- XMPP over WebSockets (RFC 7395). Also wrote
 26    [wsabi](https://git.icyphox.sh/wsabi) -- a WebSocket proxy in Nim.
 27    Never got used, but cool nonetheless.
 28- On-premise (bare metal) deployment of our stack using Docker Swarm.
 29- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) deployment of our stack.
 30
 31I think there's value in adding that I experienced a paradigm shift in
 32my view of tools like Kubernetes. I still think they're bloated and
 33abstraction heavy, but they exist to solve a problem -- and they do it
 34somewhat okay. In an ideal world, nobody would fall for the "cloud"
 35meme, and wouldn't toss everything into a container[^docker-meme] -- but
 36our world is far from that.
 37
 38[^docker-meme]: https://i.imgur.com/3eTKEZp.jpg
 39
 40## things I made
 41
 42- [shlide](https://git.icyphox.sh/shlide): A slide deck presentation
 43    tool written in pure bash. Born from a conversation I had with a
 44    friend -- quickly hacked it together over a weekend. Even used it
 45    for a talk I presented!
 46- [vite](https://git.icyphox.sh/vite): Go rewrite of the static site
 47    generator I wrote in Python, way back in 2018. It was a misnomer,
 48    since it was far from _vite_.
 49
 50## other hackery
 51
 52Self-hosted a _bunch_ of services on my Pi. The only downtime is when my
 53ISP goes down, which is thankfully not _that_ often. Here's a list of
 54things running on my Pi right now:
 55
 56- [radicale](https://radicale.org): Cal/CardDAV server
 57- [Pleroma](https://pleroma.social): Single-user federated social media
 58    instance
 59- [filehost](https://x.icyphox.sh)
 60- [gonic](https://github.com/sentriz/gonic): Music streaming server
 61- [crxn](http://deavmi.assigned.network/docs/crxn/site/): Cool network
 62    of cool people.
 63- Few other things that [Nerdy](https://peppe.rs) uses.
 64
 65My OpenBSD install is still going strong! Started at 6.6, now on
 666.8-current. This is most definitely my endgame OS -- everything just
 67works, and works very well.
 68
 69I played [r2wars this year](/blog/r2wars-2020), which was hella fun. A
 70good exercise in assembly programming. I even placed 3rd, so that was
 71awesome.
 72
 73## this blog
 74
 75Evidently, this site has undergone quite a few visual changes. It's no
 76longer that all-black with white text, with occasional bits of cyan. My
 77overall aesthetic has considerably mellowed down -- prioritizing good
 78typography over colors.
 79
 80```console
 81$ cat pages/blog/*.md | grep 'date: 2020-' | wc -l
 82      26
 83```
 84
 8526 posts this year (including this)! That's 8 more than the 18 I wrote
 86last year -- roughly 1 post every two weeks. Pretty good variety too --
 87some technical, some less so...and some controversial. Heh.
 88
 89## onward and upward
 90
 91Contrary to popular opinion, 2020 wasn't all that bad -- obviously, I
 92only speak for myself. That said, I'm looking forward to 2021 for a
 93number of reasons: for one, I'll be done with college (finally!), and
 94starting a full-time job at a company I find really exciting!
 95
 96I have a few blog post ideas that I didn't get around to writing this
 97year, so expect to see a few of those. The new job will involve a lot of
 98infra-related work -- I'm certain my incredibly sought after insights on
 99those things will find their way here, as well.
100
101Anyway, I'm going to enjoy the rest of this year playing Runeterra and
102Halo MCC. On to greater things in 2021, and I'll see you next year!