2018 on fournm

music, in review

Fri, 25 Dec 2020 14:14:22 -0800

Okay, so–I’ve been a Google Play Music user for the past 7 years or so, which has meant that unlike most people, I’ve not had a Spotify Wrapped. I’ve tried to use Last.fm reliably over the years, but it just takes one “I reset my phone and forgot to scrobble” to leave my trends messed up for most of the year.

But someone put together a script that builds a list based on your play music activity! This is really neat! That only goes back so far, and the 2020 numbers are just fucked (technical term) between the GPM shutdown and the pandemic. However, I’ve got a working ListenBrainz setup (and mostly local playback) going so I should be able to get good numbers for next year. I might switch to Maloja instead, since it looks pretty cool and I’m into the self-hosting thing, but finding some easy ways to make a python server accessible for as little cost as possible is… not trivial. Sigh.

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2018 shows

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 14:01:19 -0800

Shows!

Lego Elves was surprisingly good. Little Witch Academia was adorable. She-Ra was AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING, Noelle Stevenson worked absolute magic with that reboot. Hilda was fantastic and full of Gravity Falls feelings. The Dragon Prince was a great spiritual successor to Avatar?

Look, we all know I’m lying if I say that I mostly started watching any of those with the kids. I did not.

I didn’t track web series this year, but if I had, they would have mostly been Katherine of Sky’s let plays.

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2018 movies

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 14:01:08 -0800

I want to say I didn’t watch much in the way of new movies this year, and I suppose that’s mostly true, but the year just felt so long that most of the first time watch or new movies … well, they stopped feeling that way.

Black Panther was incredible. I can’t believe it took me this long to see Only Lovers Left Alive. Oops.

terry pratchett’s going postal
partly cloudy
jak jak attack
piper
pirates of the caribbean dead men tell no tales
star wars a new hope
mulan
black panther
kiki’s delivery service
star wars the last jedi
kingsman the secret service
kingsman the golden circle
atlantis
deadpool
only lovers left alive
the forbidden kingdom
crouching tiger, hidden dragon
space jam
moana
dirty computer
hercules
pacific rim
teenage mutant ninja turtles
thor ragnarok
muppet treasure island
sherlock holmes
ponyo
porco rosso
howl’s moving castle
the sword in the stone
the foreigner
mary and the witch’s flower
castle in the sky
muppet christmas carol

2018 games

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 14:01:03 -0800

Next up, we have games. Whew, there were some really good releases in this year in addition to all the older games I finally made it around to playing (and sometimes even finishing!).

Disgaea 5 is hands down my favorite entry in the series now, at least from a mechanical standpoint. The story and characters.. well, they’ve grown on me. I did complete basically all of it other than the Baal fight, so I’m counting it as complete.

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2018 books

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 14:01:00 -0800

Here we go! To kick off the series this time, we’ve got books.

It’s a fairly short list, but also, in the past week I’ve picked up about 30 more things that I would like to read after my first trip to Powell’s City of Books.

Yes, I’m disappointed that it took me three years of living in Portland to make it there as well, but here we are.

Tales from Earthsea was my introduction to Le Guin outside of her blog, which was perhaps a strange choice. We’re entering the final year of Wicked and the Divine, and there were a lot of other good comics that I didn’t entirely get to as well.

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