According to tradition, I write down my annual plan at the beginning of the year, but this is the first one written on xLog.
So, to start with, the direction of the 2025 plan is health, academics & career, and interests, with interests being the largest part. As for socializing and traveling, they might be quite important to you, but since I tend to be more of a homebody, it's fine if I don't focus on those aspects.
The areas included in my interests, according to an old post I wrote, include audio, painting, graphics, animation, literature, games, computers, and natural history. Next year, the emphasis might be on audio, painting, literature, games, and computers.
A#
Health#
I don't expect to be happy, just living like a normal person is okay.
From the high workload and late-night overtime at the end of 2024 and ongoing insomnia, my body has developed quite a few issues. Plus, moving from Wuhan to Xi'an for school, I still have some adaptation issues, especially with the local cuisine, which is heavier in flavor (though Wuhan's cuisine is also heavy, I usually prefer lighter dishes, but here in Xi'an, there aren't many options).
The current issues I've encountered (prioritized by severity) are:
- Indigestion
- Gingivitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome (mouse hand)
- Otitis media
- Cervical spondylosis
- Severe myopia
- Significantly high blood pressure (>140/90mmHg)
The most directly affecting issues are indigestion, otitis media, cervical spondylosis, and high blood pressure. Once I actually have some free time or a holiday, I need to see a doctor. High blood pressure can be quite serious, so I hope to improve myself next year by staying up late less and adjusting my diet and lifestyle to lower my blood pressure.
Academics & Career#
I want to become a front-end expert.
Honestly, I’m not very confident. I probably won't finalize my research direction for my master's degree until around February next year, and then I'll focus on reading papers and preparing for my thesis proposal.
It's quite surreal; I self-studied C in high school, but after being brushed off, I learned Java. In college, I couldn't choose the C course and was forced to learn Python, becoming a DL worker. During the summer before graduate school, I joined the KiraKira group to learn Vue3, and in my first year of grad school, I spent a semester writing in React. My thesis research direction seems to be a combination of C and Python, casually applying front-end. I have this strange feeling of knowing a little bit about everything but not being able to write anything complex.
Regarding work, I feel half anxious and half not. I'm not anxious because there are no internships available in my group; the internship opportunities will come in my second year (it’s already generous to allow internships, and I have to sneak in, or else I might have to extend my graduation). I'm anxious because I’ve never done any computer-related work (I have no internship experience; I worked in civil engineering during my undergraduate studies). I heard that my group might be sent out on business trips later, so I can only wait for the bridge to naturally straighten out.
If I were to say where I want to work in the future, it would be BAT -> Xiaomi -> game-related companies/game programming or testing -> telecommunications -> others. My biggest wish is to become a tester, partly influenced by "NEW GAME!" and "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid," and partly because I find bug hunting and fixing quite engaging (though it can be frustrating when bugs take a long time to fix; most of it is due to insufficient technical accumulation, and I’m still not at the level where fixing a bug could lead to a published paper). About one-third of my late nights are due to being addicted to fixing bugs. That said, since I have no internship experience, and the only work I've done is waiting for client requests at my grad school desk, I still need to learn more this year.
B#
Audio#
Let's set a plan to at least write two pieces of music, around 2-3 minutes each.
I actually started with audio in 2016, but by 2018, I had somewhat restrained myself and stagnated. I hope to pick it back up in 2025.
The main focus is on arrangement. Although I'm already proficient with FL Studio, I want to learn Cubase now. Thanks to 🇷🇺Friends Team R2R for the Cubase Crack (site:rutracker.org). I haven't seriously written any melodies before, and my DAW is limited to what FL Studio provides, which isn't great; I often get criticized for poor sound quality, so it's time to change things up—along with that comes the potential issue of insufficient hard drive space, so upgrading to a larger drive is also on the agenda.
For listening, I’ll check out a few "pain-free jazz" albums that I recommended before, which are relatively easy to listen to, and explore Hitech types. I’ll continue listening to J-Pop, math rock, and rock, but I need to tone it down a bit.
Painting#
Just doodle a bit; strive for the art style you want.
It seems I don't have a particularly strong desire for painting. Given how busy I am, expecting to become a novice painter in a year is a bit difficult.
Currently, I'm leaning towards a few styles: one is the coloring style of サインこすdoujin artist, which has a very anime feel; another is fumiko, which has simple light and shadow; and then there's tkmz's black-and-white comic style.
Literature#
First, read "No Longer Human," then look for interesting books on my reading list, like André Gide's "The Immoralist."
Oh, and I still haven't finished writing my "World Machine."
In the second half of 2024, I was awakened to the desire to write by the legal text "REWRITE" by Yao, but unfortunately, it was extinguished by stronger academic pressure. Fortunately, I did manage to write a bit.
Given my current situation, although I've heard a lot about it, I still want to know whether my current state is better or worse than Dazai Osamu's.
For next year, I want to revisecompletely rewrite my previous work "World Machine," which had good inspiration but poor writing, and just throw in some long and short sentences without too many demands.
Maybe I should illustrate "World Machine" with some drawings.
Games#
Are you more concerned about life topics?
I guess I've reached that age.
I should play "VA-11 HALL-A" and "eden" in my library.
Writing games is quite difficult without friends inviting me; without motivation, I hesitate to invite others for fear of being flaked on. In 2025, I’ll focus on playing games.
I'm particularly interested in Cyberpunk Bartender Action and eden, as well as the upcoming S4U early next year and Cosmic Ultramarine in the middle of next year. I recently watched some game reviews and heard that it's a big year for games, but I'm really not interested in those AAA titles and new releases of old IPs; I can't afford to expend that much energy. I just want to focus on understanding these games and see if I have the interest to discover some new fun ones.
Computer#
Hmm, rather than Annoti, let’s finish magpie first.
Here are the things I want to work on:
- Annoti: A reading tool primarily for annotating txt/md/pdf files, currently still in the design phase, and I haven't figured out which architecture is more suitable. Most likely Windows Native or compatible with Linux and Mac. Yes, as a developer, I haven't even used a Mac, and I don't often use Linux; my current main development environment is Win11.
- moon: The Chinese version of my personal main site.
- magpie: The artist section of my personal main site, currently planning to use a framework similar to React called Svelte for development and deploy it to CF Pages.
- kirakira: Currently, there’s still a lot of testing work, and the front-end commits are relatively few. I hope to learn more and strive to contribute to both front-end and back-end, as well as projects like Lycoris.
In short, I still need to learn more programming and make more commits (though most of the commits I write for my own pages are unstandardized lol).
In 2024, counting Gitee and GitHub, I had about three to four hundred commits; for 2025, I aim for 600-1000.
Others#
Hmm, let me think, is there anything I missed?
One thing is to remember to keep a diary; let’s see how high the completion rate can be when I don’t forget.
I have a jellyfish on my phone, which requires feeding every four days and changing water every seven days; I hope I can keep it alive. Additionally, there's a potted pothos in my dorm; let's see if it can survive through this winter break and the upcoming summer break.
Oh, and regarding the previous first blog post, there was an issue with information theory; I shouldn’t be too greedy, just take in some ordinary nutrients of information.
This year's congratulatory illustration
Happy New Year 🎇
In short, Happy New Year, friends!
PS: I'm also turning 24 this year; is it my zodiac year? But I'm not that superstitious; 24 isn't anything special.