2024: Over Already???
I’ve aimed to make it a habit to take a retrospective on my year since 2022. While I did miss out 2023, we have once again hit December, so here I am! 2024 has been an absolutely huge year for me. It’s almost hard to believe its over because its been like the year that never ends. You can tell I’ve been busy because if you look at this blog, well, there’s nothing to look at. 2023? 22 posts! 2024? just 7. But that’s fine, its not a competition :)
Ironically, given that I’ve just talked about how busy my year was, when I look back on January, really not much of anything happened. In both 2022 and 2023 I met up with a group of friends and we all had a big party at new years, but not this time, and funnily enough, I suspect that won’t happen for 2025 either :p
This Whole “Gender” Thing
I guess the biggest thing of note for this year is… well… I’m a woman now! :) Its… a lot, but you just take these things step by step. I think gender questioning is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, it was the third of ~three things happening back-to-back in 2023 that ruined that year for me, and I finally found out who I am towards the start of February this year. It was kind of crazy, my mental health improved literally overnight.
I did, however, put off transitioning per se for a good while after that. I’d been dressing in feminine clothing in private, and occasionally around the house since August at this point, but I had a few months of college left, and I knew that I would then have plenty of time alone before university to really go for it. So I waited.
I took the time to get used to picking a new name and going by it online, which helped me be sure of myself before I had to start telling people I knew in person what on earth I was doing. One of my friends IRL did actually pick up on my Discord profile and messaged me, but that was it until much later on.
Fast-forward to early August and I had told both my parents, and most of my closer IRLs. I am ever thankful that they have been supportive and accepting to me, and neither took it personally that I found it, frankly, very difficult to get the words out. A couple days later I started going by my new name, which was very weird at first but just feels right now :)
My mum bought me a necklace with my name on it for my birthday and I felt like I could cry when I opened it (in a good way!). God.
Another month on, I had gone and bought a load of more feminine clothing which was nice.
After arriving at university I introduced myself as Hazel but didn’t mention the whole trans thing… (I still visually looked (and do now too) like a guy at first glance, really), but ended up wearing some she/her pin badges around and they kind of just picked it up which was a relief.
At the end of October I finally got my hands on the holy grail: Estradiol. As I write that makes it about 2 months ago. I can definitely say by now that I’ve been noticing effects, but nothing major so far.
Finally, as I get home from university after Christmas break I was able to find someone to witness my name change deeds 🎉, which means I am now officially Miss Hazel Leif Atkinson, very nice!
I went to the post office to grab a driving license application form and the guy at the counter said “can I help you sir” as I stood there in a fuckin skirt, nice one lol.
But I’m just waiting to hear anything at all from the DVLA, and that’s about as far as the milestones get here for now.
I wore a super pretty dress on Christmas Day, it looked great, but I definitely wouldn’t want to wear something like that regularly, its quite restrictive.
Fun Stuff I Did
Jumping right back to February again, I went to see Enter Shikari live! That was really really good.
I went through a bit of a phase of playing all the Zachtronics games, and bought the physical Exapunks zines and SHENZHEN I/O Manual, which are really awesome and I have been protecting them from sunlight religiously ever since, though I haven’t used them a lot.
As I started to play around with my 3DS on a technical/programming front, I also started using it more for its intended purpose, and got into Fire Emblem: Awakening. It’s fun! Also I love Marth Lucina :D
I went on holiday with my family around this point to south Wales, which was pretty fun. I enjoyed it a lot :) It was fun taking Holly (dog) into the sea for the first time.
In mid-august I met up with a bunch of friends and we had a mini party and a barbecue. That was really fun. I love those guys.
I picked up a game I dropped years ago called Hacknet, and finished it! It’s pretty good. I also returned to an old Minecraft map I used to play as a kid, The Republic of Flashteens, unfortunately though, Minecraft is a performance nightmare, especially in this map. That was fun for a bit.
I went to visit Santa Pod! The top fuel days are just something else, some of the loudest and fastest things I’ve ever seen.
After arriving at University, I went out with my new flatmates for an Indian (hell yeah), then we did a pub quiz, and WON! :D
We went on a pub crawl the next night of the 8 (!!!) bars on campus. I ended up collapsed in a beanbag staring at some twinkly lights aimlessly and feeling very content indeed while the others… played chess. Yeah I don’t know, alcohol does odd things to you.
I played a game called The Operator in one sitting, it’s also very very good.
As the calendar turns over to November an- wait what, already? no surely that’s not right… Well okay. It’s November now somehow, and I meet up with a certain bunny, hehe.
The following day I take a train home to hang around with my friends back home, which is nice. We all sit around a campfire and eat food n stuff.
When I got back, I played around a bunch with RFID stuff, magic mifare and all that jazz. It was fun but I didn’t get anything practical done. I then proceeded to fry a cpu. :upside_down_face:
I’ve been playing around with trying to make half decent coffee for months by now, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, lol, might help me cut down on going to that coffee shop I really like on campus… speaking of which!:
University!!! (And other academic stuff)
I did my exams in June, and then had to just… wait for ages, but clearly I did okay because, well, I’m at University now :p. It’s pretty fun!
While I was waiting, I went back to my college to help out with their applicant events for prospective students. Lesson learned: I am terrible at delivering a math lesson LOL.
I moved in right at the end of September, and it was kind of weird to get used to at first. So much admin to do. So much. But I got there eventually, and we’ve mostly settled in.
I got really lucky with my flatmates, they’re very cool.
I’ve been managing pretty well all things considered, but I have been busy as fuck, and definitely have struggled at points to keep up. Luckily that only usually lasts a couple days.
I already had to find a housing group for next year, but we got that sorted out and signed. It happens way earlier than you’d think! About early-mid November!
Software
As much as I tell myself I need to focus on my studies, etc., my passion lies in software, so I’ve kept myself quite busy over the year with it.
In general I’ve continued to work here and there on shelter, just general maintenance. It doesn’t need much keeping alive at all due by design, but it never hurts to add things.
The earliest thing I got done was Ouroboros, a frontend for Headscale (a self hosted Tailscale control server). I have got a lot of use out of that since, I’m very happy with it.
Next up I started work on Rockhopper, a still-very-wip async runtime for the D programming language. It’s immensely fun to work on but has some tricky bugs to try to figure out. I can’t wait to get it into a more production-ready state.
I wanted to add some fun visualisations to uwu radio, but that never saw the light of day. Here’s a demo video I got part way into development:
Around July, I started out on trying to write some 3DS Homebrew of my own! I wanted a not-shit simple http downloader app, and figured I’d just have to write my own. I ended up getting annoyed at having to use C, and instead of the natural solution of using ctru-rs, I decided to not only make an XMake based toolchain for the 3DS, but to port the D programming language to it. Suprisingly enough, this actually worked, and ys-3dskit is a somewhat unfinished but workable solution for building D applications for a Nintendo 3DS. mad.
Around early August I setup Monica, a “Personal CRM” (basically a very fancy contacts system). I originally just set it up to be a store of personal information for my own reference, but I later found that its Journal feature was hugely convenient and completely took over from my paper diary. It has given me some issues, but I got them ironed out eventually.
In September, I spent most of my time on foldiff, a (surprisingly for me!) production-ready diffing tool for entire folders, not just files. The intended use of this is for storing complex versioned backups, such as account data exports, and backups that you just need to add a file to real quick. I have found it to be incredibly successful, and it taught me a lot.
Late into the month, I setup a nightly backup system on Michiru using resticprofile, and some cobbled together email scripts for reporting. It works great.
In October I built aart, a mirror for Cover Art Archive release images, which caches them and can convert on-the-fly to WebP and JXL, as the Internet Archive servers backing CAA are really rather slow.
I then started work on HRTrack, a very unfinished project to build a specialised HRT tracker app. I am excited for what it could be when finished, but haven’t made too much progress yet.
In November I start way too many projects, it’s kind of silly, probably ADHD hitting. First up is a typeset and contract printed physical version of the D language specification. This has not gotten very far despite significant work on my part.
Next up, I started on YSBase, a base set of D utilities including allocators, smart pointers, and containers. This didn’t get far at first but I since have put a lot of work into it and its coming along nicely.
Then, along with a lot of help from wiz, I got a brand new and much improved injection method for shelter out, sheltupdate! This had, to be frank, a LOT of teething pains, but we’re finally in the clear now, it’s a highly reliable and stable injection method for shelter and other client mods - including some you might of heard of, say, Vencord ;) - and who doesn’t love pretty statistics, those are a bonus. Oh, and it’s rootless on Linux and per-user everywhere. Nice. It’s also the first shelter injection method to resist host updates on macOS (we had fixes for Windows and Linux could be janked around with package manager tricks).
To go with this, we have a brand new updated shelter installer, and a fancy new shelter website (this was previously only developer documentation).
Finally, fast-forwarding to literally the day I write this on December 27, I worked with Tasky to bring Rolldown support to Lune, the shelter plugin dev tool, which is pretty awesome.
Conclusion
This blog post is very self indulgent really, and god, it’s long, but its been a busy year.
I want to thank all of my friends for continuing to be just absolutely and completely amazing, I love you all so much, I could never express enough.
I guess I want to tie together some kind of closing thought for 2025, and honestly, when I look at the direction the world is going, I see a lot of negative, but I also see plenty of room to make the best of what life is throwing at us nonetheless.
The next four years are going to be brutal for all my friends in the states, and it seems most of Europe is swinging towards similar places, definitely it’s happening here in the UK, but you can’t let yourself be overcome with fear and stop living your life.
Go to conventions. Visit your friends. Tell those you love that you love them, and remember that they love you. You’re strong, and I’m proud of you. Break a leg (figuratively).
With 2024 in the rear-view mirror, here’s to 2025.
— Hazel.