Year in Review 2022

Well, disastrous world events continue apace, but I'd call 2022 another solid year. Maybe not a *great* year. I lost both of my surviving grandparents, I pretty well healed up from CIDP (or whatever it is) but then I caught COVID and it came back, and it's hard for me to think of many spectacular events. But we can call this a "foundation-building" year. I've made significant, if quiet, progress, and I'm excited about where 2023 is going to go.

I think it's also been a great year for internet friendships, in spite of Facebook slowly fading into a ghost town and then Twitter splitting at the seams. Thank you all again for being here. Thank you for following my work, having good conversations, and sometimes even looking after me when I get upset. When I first started blogging, I expected to have "an audience," but never thought it would be this good.

Ursula inspects Version 3 of the mechanical eyeball.

So here's a quick rundown of what I did this year:

*Added support for coordinating conjunctions - the last missing part of speech - to Acuitas' text processing chain, and achieved improvements on Parser benchmarks.
*Put a lot of work into better Narrative comprehension and Theory of Mind frameworks. I feel almost ready to take a crack at a particular story I've wanted to do, and ... *whispers* maybe text adventures? Next year, next year ...
*Got partway through a major refactoring and tidying of the Narrative module, to lay a good foundation for the new work next year.
*Finished reading all the publicly available papers on Pei Wang's recommended "AGI Education Advanced Topics" list.

A story flowchart (generated by Acuitas' Narrative Engine) for the "Altan Finds Water" story from this May.

*Bought and initiated the Anycubic Vyper printer, which is amazing. I still used my X-One 2 to help with all the Christmas projects, but the Vyper is (in many ways) so much nicer that it's hard to make myself go back to the older model.
*Completed a redesign of all ACE's leg joints and spinal frame, and got him to ACTUALLY STAND passively at his full height. Next year - motion? Maybe? Or another small redesign when I find out those motors just won't cut it.
*Took Atronach's Eye through a couple of design iterations, and got a better understanding of the issues with its mechanics, but didn't really solve them. There's another saga that will continue into next year.

Ill Gotten Games' Pocket-Tactics starter set, printed for a Christmas present

*Queried a few agents with my first novel, then decided to change tactics and boost my portfolio before trying again.
*Wrote four short stories.
*Published more than two blog posts per month (on average) - that's almost double the amount I was able to write the previous two years.

*Got almost ready to wrap up what has been my main project for the past few years at Day Job: parts of the data processing and storage box for an imaging satellite. That's not as glamorous as a launch announcement, which I don't suppose will be coming for several more years - and we made this one for Germany, so from our perspective it's not classified, but I have no idea how public the launch information will be. In any case I'm looking forward to shipping it and doing something new!

Butternuts green on the vine. In the far backgound is the acorn squash, which really tried to produce but didn't make it before the freeze.

*Successfully harvested butternut squash for the first time, in addition to the usual potatoes.
*Kept the book consumption rate higher than the book acquisition rate ... only by a little, but the queue is almost empty. Soon I will once again be justified in buying books on impulse, soooon ...
*Pushed my creation work rate over three times the maintenance work rate for the year, just barely. It wasn't the most productive year - I let the work rest for a while and did a lot of traveling - but I still completed most items on my planning schedule.

Happy New Year, everyone. I hope 2023 turns out better for us all.

--Jenny