A Look Back on 2024

Don't want to read about my year? Watch my 1 Second Every Day video instead! This is the eighth year I've been recording short clips every day to stitch together into this six-ish minute video. Lots of biking, sorry (not sorry)!

1 Second Every Day 2024

Quick Overview

This year was fairly stable, and I'd say a good year for me personally. The largest life-change would be moving to a new apartment (two blocks away) in the summer. It's larger, has better light, more ventilation, better appliances, and amenities. Seven years in The Wedge neighborhood! I was able to travel a lot last year, finally getting to Mexico, skiing in the winter, some weekend trips, and a long three-week trip to Europe which I'll talk about later. I stayed quite busy with routine volunteering, work, and socializing most days (especially the summer!) of the weeks.

I turned 30 this year and had a great party at HeadFlyer Brewing to celebrate. I hear great things about being in your 30s, so I'm hopeful that it's true for me. In more recent years, I've befriended more people in a wider range of ages, both younger and older, so age is really meaning less to me the older I get.

My 30th birthday

Friends spotted me on my bike at a stoplight

I'm entering 2025 with much more concern for our country and what things will change with the incoming administration. We're in some trying times, and I hope we can rally around making the change we need. I've been spending more of my time on local advocacy and politics, which I think has a much better chance of making real change. Local politics have their own challenges too, but we are making good progress in the Twin Cities and Minnesota as a whole.

Work

I've been working at soona all year as a Senior Software Engineer, over 2.5 years there now. Building on last year, I've been getting more comfortable working with backend code. I'm a big fan of Ruby on Rails these days, and love working with Vue for most of my frontend code. In the earlier part of the year, I worked with some React and Next.js applications and a NestJS API. A big variety this year!

Some more notable projects that stuck with me personally include

Rewrote part of our main application's user navigation (I swear I do this annually, no matter where I work 😆

Helped with a huge refactor of some core database structure and rewrote and improved code functionality across lots of our app. Virtual scrolling pages of images has never been so smooth at soona!

Paired with a coworker and quickly implemented a rich text editor and all of our stretch goals in about a week and a half for a new feature to help our crew.

Migrated many legacy cloud functions to API endpoints

Volunteering

We brought JavaScriptMN back for two in-person events this year! The first events to be IRL since February 2020. It's been my sixth year co-organizing the meetup, it's fun to get some fresh energy and excitement again. We still have virtual meetups every month (when not in-person) which have been a great way to connect with more people and have some larger discussions with all attendees.

I finished up my third year on the board for Streets.mn. My personal focus was on reducing costs in the earlier part of the year and then launching advertising in the later part. We switched hosting providers in March, and a few months later followed up with adding a CloudFlare cache in front of the site, and finally hooked up a CloudFront CDN in front of the uploads 🤦🏻 (why didn't I do that two years earlier??). We launched AdSense in December, and it's been fun being at a point where I know WordPress well enough "to be dangerous with it" now. There's been massive WordPress ecosystem battles this fall, which has me a little concerned, but hopefully things continue to not affect us.

I volunteered this year with the MoveMN Minneapolis Volunteer Team, with another year focusing on our Livable Lyndale project advocating for a safer, more accessible, and people-centered street. We met with project staff from Hennepin County a couple of times and held three rallies to show them the support for our goals. The county is working on a recommended design now, let's hope it's a good one when they announce it in the late winter/early spring.

Media

I really fell off my roll and feel like I barely watched anything this year, outside of Star Trek.

Movies

I watched 13 movies this year. I don't know what happened, that's barely anything. My favorite was definitely Palm Springs (2020) starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti. It's a very good time loop comedy/romcom movie (I love a good time loop!). I feel like it didn't do as well given its 2020 release on Hulu only, but it's never too late to catch up!

Saturday Night (2024) was a fun homage to Saturday Night Live, in the midst of its 50th season right now. I re-watched The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience (2019) twice, a 30-minute visual album from The Lonely Island. It's a wacky and perfect 30 minutes. I also finally watched The Lonely Island's 2007 movie, Hot Rod. Solid watch if you like their style of comedy. Desk Set (1957) was an interesting romcom (I guess?) movie from the later 1950s and the looming threat of jobs being taken away by a computer.

TV Shows

I continued my progress through watching Star Trek: Voyager, and am now nearly halfway through season 5. This show is so good right from the beginning, and something like 90% of the episodes in season 4 are true bangers. I'm excited to finish the show in 2025, and get started on Star Trek: Prodigy and/or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine after.

While Star Trek: Voyager is great, Star Trek: Lower Decks is truly magnificent. It's a hilarious animated show, fast-paced, and filled with references to the Star Trek universe. Season 5 just finished, and I'm so sad that it's the last one. Seriously, watch this show! You'll still love it even without having seen other Star Trek.

Sorry, one final Star Trek paragraph. Star Trek: Discovery ended with its fifth season this year. It was the first of the new Star Trek shows (starting in 2017), kicking off some great new shows, stories (especially Star Trek: Strange New Worlds), and characters! It was a much more intense show, but found its place, especially in the later seasons.

Doctor Who had it's first full season with Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor and Russell T Davies as showrunner. It's a delightful return to the show's feeling in the later 2000s, but with modern production styles and themes. I didn't love every episode, but as a whole thought it was a good season and am more excited about the show than I've been in a while.

The 2024 Complete List of Shows I Watched

Agatha All Along

Doctor Who

Fallout

For All Mankind

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Saturday Night Live

Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Lower Decks

Star Trek: Voyager

What If…?

Books

Uhhhh, I think I only finished one or two books this year. Maybe I'll do better next year. I bought a Kindle at the end of last year, which made reading a little more accessible, but I still struggle to prioritize the time to actually read.

Music

I really got into remixes/edits again this year! I've been using Soundcloud more often and love finding remixes of songs and some fun genre mashing of styles. A blend of electronic and hip-hop music is one of my favorites, and remixes are a perfect way to get that sound. My favorite remixes I discovered this year are as follows

Don Toliver - No Idea (Joel Fletcher Remix)

MLBRN - Dis N Dat (Josh Tee Remix)

deadmau5 & Lights - When The Summer Dies (Will Sparks Remix)

Halsey - Trouble (Reece Low Bootleg)

Rye Rye feat. M.I.A. - Sunshine (Will Sparks Remix)

Migos - Hotel Lobby (TAZI Bootleg) (starts at the 3:58 mark)

Avicii - Levels (elusyv Bootleg) (Stranger Rework)

Alexandra Stan - Mr Saxobeat (Yarpo Remix)

Central Cee feat. Lil Baby - BAND4BAND (SpaceYeti Remix)

Example - Changed The Way You Kiss Me (Brahma & Simex & BlurryFace - Remix)

My top artists are once again Will Sparks and Joel Fletcher, after listening to them for over ten years now. I love the Melbourne Bounce/Minimal and Big Room Techno styles, and have discovered many new artists and their music through them and related artists. I've been dabbling with other electronic music styles too, Techno, Trance, Drum & Bass, and some Dubstep sub-genres, among others.

I use both Apple Music and Spotify, so my end-of-year summaries are all over the place. On top of that, I have a lot of music in my Apple Music library that is uploaded (mostly remixes), which isn't part of Apple Music's replay at the end of the year. I'd guess I listened to around 70,000 minutes of music.

For shows this year, I toned it down a little from the previous year. I was lucky enough to see Restricted, Will Sparks, and Timmy Trumpet play at Skyway Theater this spring, one of my favorite shows ever (the Will Sparks set was so good)! I saw Tape B at the new Uptown Theater, followed by FOVOS at The Vault the next day. Throughout the year, I went to a few local events for music. Mechanix shows for Drum & Bass music, Transcending Events shows for Psytrance music, and a few Boombox MN shows for a variety of electronic styles. It's cool to see a smaller and more local scene in town!

Will Sparks at Skyway Theater, April 5, 2024

FOVOS at The Vault, December 21, 2024

Check out my Last.fm artists page for my list of top artists and other data for the year.

If you want an unhinged and handcrafted Christmas playlist, I got you.

City Exploration

I use the website Wandrer to import my Strava bike rides and track progress towards my goal to bike nearly every street in Minneapolis. This year, I've reached to 75.84% complete with 961.27 miles (ca. 1,547 km) by bike out of 1267.39 miles (ca. 2,040 km), at the time of this writing. That's only an increase of 2.92%, but I plan to be back with more than that next year, hopefully into the low 80% range. Please let me know if you have an idea how to ride on Hiawatha Ave safely!

Every street in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul that I have traveled by bike, since late summer 2017

Beyond biking, I use the app Fog of World to track everywhere I've been at all (since spring 2014). Check out my new spots since last year! Notably, I rode the MetroTransit 62 and 68 bus routes for a Streets.mn event showcasing the future G Line and explored more by bike: Bryn Mawr/Harrison, a little bit more of North Minneapolis, and some of the U of M campus.

Compare Fog of World exploration from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024

Biking

As probably most of you know, I sold my car in 2021 and get around exclusively by foot, bike, public transit, and sometimes carpooling. I track my rides with Strava and with the Premium tier, you can see a map of all of your rides from the year. Stretching from Victoria to Stillwater, and a ton in the more central part of Minneapolis, you can see my regular routes and some random spurs.

Heatmap of where I biked in the Twin Cities in 2024

I set a goal to ride 3,500 miles (ca. 5,633 km) this year, and am excited to share that I hit that exactly, on New Year's Eve, only needing a 5.2 mile (ca. 8 km) ride to hit it! Next year though, I think I'll go without a numeric goal, it was always on the back of my mind running my life, making it less fun. I just want to ride for fun and to commute around town!

In April, I started biking daily for 30 Days of Biking and then didn't stop until I was traveling in September. That ended up being 179 days in a row of some sort of biking (normal, Divvy bike share in Chicago, Lime e-bike, and one hotel bike trainer). There were a few periods I really should have taken a couple of days off, but now that's a lesson I can say I've learned ✋🏻👁️👄👁️🤚🏻.

There were so many memorable rides this year. Even though routine rides like to work or the bowling alley are nothing special, they are such a lovely commute along the Midtown Greenway and add up to something much more than any one specific ride could. My longer rides include the Fulton Medio Fondo, Tour de Lucé to all eight Pizza Lucé locations in the Twin Cities, MS150 after five years since I last rode, out to Stillwater and back, and a few bike camping trips. Some of the most fun while biking was for the Joyful Riders and Perennial Cycle DJ/Dance rides. The sound equipment and live DJ setup on a bike trailer is truly impressive and is so fun to bike party with 25-100 others!

DJ Dev in the DJ bike trailer

brat ride

DJ Dev during a rainy spring DJ ride

Group ride on Nicollet Mall

I almost got through this year without buying another bike, but then September happened. The Hub Bike Co-op closed for a second time (it's for real now though) and I couldn't resist an All-City Zig-Zag (road bike with a steel frame, carbon fork, and the Shimano 105 groupset) bike on a closeout sale. I plan to sell my Jamis Renegade next year and see how long I can be an all All-City hooligan with my four All-City bikes.

My new All-City Zig-Zag

Travel

I like to spend nearly all of my PTO at work on travel, and I was able to visit a lot this year.

Mexico

To kickstart the winter, I visited Mexico with two friends for a week in January. We flew in and out of Cancún, but spent most of our time in Valladolid, Mérida, and Isla Holbox. I had never been to Mexico, and it was so refreshing and exciting to visit a new country and experience a new culture. Beaches don't excite me much, so I was very happy we decided to head west into the Yucatán Peninsula. We visited a few cenotes, the Mayan ruins at Chichén Itzá, and learned a lot about the history of the region. The bus connections were fantastic, with so many options! We took ADO as well as a few collectivos. The food was truly top-notch, I'm always reminded why I love to travel when I eat new and local food.

Mérida, Mexico

Cenote near Homún, Mexico

The Temple of Kukulcán, Chichén Itzá

Skiing

I think I skied more this year than any year since I was on the slalom ski team in high school (mind you I was an awful racer, but I had fun and learned how to ski). I had the Indy Pass this year with a friend, and we visited several local ski hills, but also had a weekend at Lutsen, MN (the best skiing in Minnesota), and Mount Hood Meadows outside of Portland, OR. Finally, I also visited my cousin to ski at Powder Mountain and Snowbasin in Utah. My cousin absolutely left me in the dust (snow?) on the steep and tree-lined slopes, but I was kind of able to keep up, even on the double black diamonds un-groomed faces!

Mount Hood Meadows, Oregon

Lutsen, Minnesota

Powder Mountain, Utah

Snowbasin, Utah

Europe Tour

This fall, I spent three weeks in Europe, largely with family, and some solo traveling at the end. We visited family and did some of our own touring in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. I love Scandinavia so much, and am so happy to visit family and friends every time I am able to return. It was great fun to take the DFDS ferry from Copenhagen, Denmark to Oslo, Norway again, a relaxing 18-hour overnight. We took the train from Oslo, Norway to Bergen, Norway which traversed through incredible scenery the whole journey! My parents and I had a lovely few days in Prague, Czechia in the middle too. The tram system in Prague is unreal!

After a return to Denmark for some more days, I left my family and traveled through Germany on Deutsche Bahn ICE trains to Zürich, Switzerland, with short overnight visits in Hamburg and Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany along the way. Some solo traveling and downtime on trains was a great way to wind down the trip. Before this, I had only been to Berlin, Germany, so it was great to visit (albeit briefly) some other cities and areas of the country. Zürich was a very cool city to visit and learn about. A friend shared many tips and showed me around the city for a day, which helped to get a lot more out of the city too. I finished the trip with a delicious fondue dinner with some other travelers at my hostel 😋.

Bergen, Norway

Zürich, Switzerland

Nyhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark

Older tram in Prague, Czechia

Weekend Trips

I had a few closer to home weekend trips this year too.

Took the Empire Builder Amtrak train to Chicago for a weekend filled with Malört

Camping in Proctor, MN and Hinckley, MN while riding the MS150

Finally making it to the group campsite at Carver Park Reserve with for a bike packing trip

Cabin weekend with friends in Lindstrom, MN

Malört flight at CH Distillery, Chicago

Fun Facts

For the third year in a row, I did not drive a car at all this year.

I played 26 games of bowling, and got a new personal best, 191, beating my previous high of 190 (only one point higher 🙃). 22 strikes, 25 spares, 2 turkeys, for an average score of 124.667.

I bought a Pioneer DJ DDJ-FLX4 controller and have been dabbling in DJing for fun. I've only played for friends once, but maybe more of that next year!

I co-hosted a Malört party (let me know if you're genuinely interested in this for next year, Malört lovers only).

My favorite weekend of the year at home was a combination Art-A-Whirl/Doors Open Minneapolis in May. I cannot wait until next year's events! Be sure to check out the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, Blue Line LRT Maintenance Facility, and the Pillsbury "A" Mill!

Taking advantage of more space in my kitchen, I bought a Gaggia Classic Evo Pro espresso machine (in yellow). It's been so fun to learn how to make espresso and have more coffee options at home.

Sunset on the Cedar Lake Trail