Here are a few things I did in 2022, in no particular order:
- I love drawing and sketching. In order to refine certain aspects or skills, I started the first few lessons of the free and rather popular online course Drawabox.
- Different languages and cultures have always been one of my hobby topics of interest, so I learned Devanagari, the Hindi writing system, and a few words and phrases in Hindi. I may never need this, but it was intriguing anyway.
- The Internet™ suggested that instead of using a standard, ordinary, flat keyboard as input device, typing on a mechanical keyboard can be much more satisfying and in turn enhance creativity. So I bought a mechanical Keyboard, the Keychron K6 (ISO), disassembled the thing, lubricated every switch, installed sound dampening foam and ended up with a pretty satisfying keyboard experience. Take a look here.
- Also keyboard related, I wanted to see if or how my typing speed can be improved, so I trained on 10fastfingers and Monkeytype with different keyboards and different languages. The result is a rather steady 95 wpm average for German language input with the occasional wpm count over 100, and 87 wpm average for English language input. For reference, professional typists type at speeds of 43 to 80 wpm. Flat keyboards, such as the Apple magic keyboard, tend to be better for speed than mechanical keyboards. My overall improvement was negligibly somewhere in the range of 5 wpm.
- I read a lot about self-reflection and how to relieve stress, solve social problems and overall live a happy life in general. One book in particular stands out as easy recommendation: "The courage to be disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga (2013). In their book, a young scholar and an experienced philosopher argue about different perspectives on how to solve social problems, based on concepts of Alfred Adler.
- In the age of AI based image generation, I made a habit of generating silly monsters among other things, as seen here.
- The Corona pandemic has somewhat leveled out where I live, so in 2022 I was able to re-start doing numerous online and in-person trainings about Web-Security and Secure Coding.
- Just for the fun of it and to stay on top of my game, I solved a few HTB challenges, which is somewhat like the solo puzzle version of CTF. Similarly PortSwigger Labs can be highly recommended as well.
- After probably more than 20 years, I listen to DnB again. Here are some highlights. I find that listening to DnB makes exciting tasks even more exciting.
- Due to family time constraints I cannot attend Aikido trainings at the moment, so I started doing the "7 minute workout" on occasion. It turns out that it helps me concentrate and be overall more relaxed and attentive throughout the day.
