Great things of 2019

This post was originally released on my old personal blog, instanceof.coffee on the 12th of January 2020.

The best of 2019 that I discovered, loved and kept close to me. This blog post is inspired by fogus: The Best Things and Stuff of 2019. Everything is in no particular order.

Great blog posts read

• We Need Chrome No More
• Public hacker test on Swiss Post’s e-voting system
• List of stories set in a future now past
• I interviewed at six top companies in Silicon Valley in six days
• Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People
• Let’s stop copying C (2016)

Great articles read

• How to not be alone (2013)
• Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job (2018)
• A Sleeping Disorder That Turns Life into a Waking Dream
• SIM swap horror story: I've lost decades of data and Google won't help
• Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)
• The wave of unicorn IPOs
• Your digital identity has three layers, and you can only protect one of them

Favorite podcasts listened to

2019 was the year I started listening to podcasts actively. I regret not having done that much earlier, when I first found out about them.
Well in my defense, I only subscribed to Spotify Premium this year (even thought it's not the only way to listen to these!)

• Startup - I loved the episodes about Gimlet, the company that created this podcast. It is a genuine great and emotional adventure about the journey of creating a startup and I enjoyed every second of it. I binged all episodes about Gimlet in less than a month.
• Reply All - I found out about this podcast from Waveform (the one below) and the stories told are seriously great.
• Waveform - In-depth discussions about the latest tech from MKBHD, the largest technology channel on YouTube. Having high expectations when this was announced, I was not disappointed when I actually listened to it.

Favorite musicians discovered

All artists here are in the Lo-Fi genre. It is my favorite music genre and I listen to it almost exclusively, both at home and on my almost daily public transport rides
to work/school.

• City Girl - I love that almost every song has a story behind it which completes the City Girl character.
• Dontcry

Favorite shows discovered

• A Place Further Than The Universe
• Gabriel Dropout
• Hibike Euphonium
• I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
• K-ON!
• Kaguya-sama: Love is War
• The Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Favorite games discovered

• Muse Dash (Android)
• Cytus II (Android)
• Overwatch (PC)
• Business Tour (PC)
• Anxiety: An Interactive Story (Web) - A interactive game where YOU play as the anxiety. Small demo that I really enjoyed. Looking forward to the actual game!

Countries visited

For the first time in:

• Qatar
• United Kingdom

Visited again:

• Germany
• Philippines

Great tools discovered

Everything from apps, platforms, extensions etc. that I discovered in 2019 and use (almost) daily.

• Spotify Premium - Unlimited skipping, no-ads and offline listening. Don't know how I survived 2018 with just Spotify free. Streaming is just too convient.
• SponsorBlock - Automatically skips sponsor spots in YouTube videos, don't know how I was able to watch YouTube without this.
• Tildes - News aggregator like HN but with higher quality comments and posts. If you want an invite, just send me a tweet via Twitter, I got a few invite codes.
• Neon - Banking startup in Switzerland. Great product and easy to use app, will probably switch to it fully in the future once it IPO'd (or got acquired).
• GSMArena - News and information about everything smartphone related - as I'm a tech enthusiast I check it out on the daily.

Programming languages I hacked in

• Rust
• TypeScript
• Go
• PHP

Tech products I bought

In order of bought starting from the beginning of 2019 until the end.

• Samsung Galaxy Watch - Having a smart watch is just too convient and I see why these days so many people in my age have one.
• Sony WH-1000XM3 - Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) headphones really made a huge difference. Suddenly I was actually looking forward to the almost daily public transport rides.
• Logitech G Pro - My old mouse stopped working after four years of use so this'll hopefully be a worthy successor.
• Huawei Matebook 13 - Got it at a discount and honestly a great, fast and portable laptop.
• Nintendo Switch - Wanted one since the beginning of 2019 and was able to get it off on Black Friday. Really cool console which I love for its portability. Finally I can really game on the go.

Plans for 2020

• Write a blog post at least once two months.
• Start building a portofolio on GitHub.
• Contribute more to open-source projects.
• Shrink my Plan to Watch list.
• Pass my upcoming Cambridge CAE exam in March.
• Pass the four month personal project we have in school in August.
• Stop some coping mechanisms.

So let's start this year with high spirit. See you maybe for the "Great things in 2020" blog post.