Travelling
I had a bit less travelling for work this year, but it was counter-acted by a lot of personal travel.
For easter we visited Norway, we visited Alesund, Stavenger and Olden along with their fjords. Olden and the fjords it sits within – Innvikfjorden and Nordfjord were the highlight of the trip. We fell in love with the village, and the scenery all the way through the valley right up until the Briksdal glacier was simply jaw dropping.
For Hugo’s birthday we spent a long weekend at Center Parcs with my parents. Lots of splashing in the pool and riding bikes around.
During the summer we went on our “Potter, Places & Portsmouth” tour. Between reading the books, watching the films and listening to audiobooks we’ve all turned into Potterheads.
- Day zero we drove down to Watford in order to go on the Harry Potter Studios tour the next day
- Day one we took the Harry Potter studios tour. It took basically a whole day to visit, which was a pleasant surprise. It was actually really good. It was really interesting to see the sets and props.
- Day two we spent moved on to Windsor where we explored and visited Windsor Castle and took the long walk. We spent an surprising amount of time searching for coats of arms in St George’s hall.
- Day three was spent in central London where after a quick stop in Tate Modern, we visited some Harry Potter filming locations as well as Westminster Abbey and the Bank of England museum to pick up gold bars.
- Day four was at Hampton Court Palace. It sprawls across space and time, the gardens are lovely and there’s a great collection of Canaletto paintings. Afterwards we drove down to Portsmouth to spend a few days with family.
- Day five we took the ferry to the Isle of Wight where we visited Osbourne House and Carisbrooke Castle
- Day six we visited Stonehenge for the nth time, and more interestingly Old Sarum for the first time.
Later in the summer we had some nights away – the north Yorkshire coast so we could visit Scarborough castle, walk and spot seals at Ravenscar and then visit Whitby Abbey which included a walking play of Dracula in the ruins. Another weekend took us the Yorkshire Dales where we visited Malham Cove (another HP filming location) and walked the grounds of Bolton Abbey, including the Valley of Desolation (not as cool, or as desolate, as it sounds).
Finally, I did some travelling for work. Faro, Algarvé in Portugal, with my team. We worked on another cool meet-up project, BBQ’d tomahawk steaks, ate pastel de nata and mostly avoided the pool due to it being surprisingly cold that week. In November I went to Munich for the division meet-up. I had a great time working and socialising with people from all around the division, I didn’t really see much of Munich outside of the English Garden and the Augustiner-Keller though. A big room with 500 people eating and drinking wasn’t my idea of fun.
Life
Another parenting landmark passed as Hugo started at secondary school in September.
On the home front we’ve managed to decorate four rooms in the house this year, which is a personal best for us. Given we’ve touched the kitchen, our bedroom and the office it’s most of the rooms I spend time in.
In the middle of the year we lost our cat Jake after fourteen years :(.
I caught something while working away in Munich and it took until christmas to completely get over it. It took the shine off of the end of the year a bit and contributed to going ten weeks without a run.
I feel sad about one of my friend groups slowly ebbing away as we meet less often and less of us each time.
Work
2023 was my second full year at Automattic, and the first in which I was able to to spend the whole year working in the same area of WordPress.com. I liked the stability and sense of ownership this brings. Through our work focusing on the theme experience, I’ve learned a lot about block themes and styling, and have been excited to see how themes evolve.
While work was settled for me, it was unsettled for the rest of the team. Every other team member took extended leave of 3-6 months at various points through the year and so there weren’t many occasions when we had the whole team together.
I spent three months in spring as the lead of my team while my team lead was out on sabbatical. I had some trepidation about stepping back into leadership, but I enjoyed it. I had some excellent 360 feedback at the end of it. It was good to have a time-limited taste of being a lead at Automattic and to see how that worked. I’ve happily gone back to being an IC, but I do now wonder from time to time if that’s how I can make the most impact.
I was happy to make some small individual contributions to the wider WordPress community:
- Published on the WP developer blog for the second time
- I had three PRs merged to Gutenberg:
Along with PRs I merged to Gutenberg in 2022, this meant I was named as a WordPress contributor for the fourth release in a row (and the last PR mentioned above will make five).
On a somewhat related note, despite being full of excitement, I flamed out of Advent of Code earlier than ever this year.
Media Consumed
See the separate post about my reading. I also finished Factorio (ridiculously addictive) and Horizon: Forbidden West, as well as Prison Architect for the second time. On TV I discovered Cunk, and binged the whole backlog.
2024 goals
I fell down at being active in 2023, I ran a 5k at least every other week but I didn’t run anything longer. I also didn’t get out on my bike very often. It will change this year.
On the reading front I’d like to hit at least a book a fortnight, and also get more non-fiction back in the mix.
I had a vague aspiration to write more in public. I’m going to be no more specific for 2024 but we’ll see what happens!
Dean Sas 