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  "path": "/blog/2023/12/2023-in-review/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-07T00:20:35.676Z",
  "site": "https://cheeaun.com",
  "tags": [
    "Got",
    "Made a diagram",
    "Excalidraw",
    "Made a nice video",
    "1",
    "2",
    "4th jab",
    "Tumblr account got restored",
    "Started paying for make.com",
    "got reviewed in a podcast",
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    "redact text with pure CSS",
    "some pretty cool multi-column UI designs",
    "suspended",
    "a really weird bug",
    "a new regional library",
    "My old Yahoo! Mail account entered inactive state for 1+ year",
    "my chain mails 🙈",
    "cool demo for Google Maps’ Photorealistic 3D tiles",
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    "Learned a life hack",
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    "Fediversary",
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    "10th anniversary of KopiJS",
    "Looked for alternatives",
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    "trying out GPT-4 with Vision",
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  "textContent": "This is probably going to be short as this year is perhaps the most _unproductive_ year I've ever had.\n\nAs usual, I start this off with a compilation of monthly \"highlights\" that I've already listed in my monthly newsletter.\n\n**January**\n\n  * ⌨️ Got my first wireless mechanical keyboard.\n  * 👨‍🎨 Made a diagram with Excalidraw.\n  * 📹 Made a nice video.\n  * 🎮 Played around with some pretty cool UI (1) (2).\n\n\n\n**February**\n\n  * 💉 4th jab.\n  * 🫴 My Tumblr account got restored.\n  * 💸 Started paying for make.com because it rained so much.\n  * 🙉 One of my apps got reviewed in a podcast.\n\n\n\n**March**\n\n  * 🎨 Did a simple 3D thing.\n  * ✨ Made some shiny progress.\n  * 📥 Dropped my token.\n  * 💿 Upgraded to Ventura 13.3 and iOS 16.4.\n\n\n\n**April**\n\n  * 🙈 Found a way to redact text with pure CSS.\n  * 📊 Did some pretty cool multi-column UI designs.\n  * ✋ One of my Twitter app got suspended.\n  * 🐛 Found a really weird bug with `<datalist>`\n  * 📖 Visited a new regional library.\n\n\n\n**May**\n\n  * 😩 My old Yahoo! Mail account entered inactive state for 1+ year. All contents were deleted. Really miss my chain mails 🙈\n  * 🗺️ Made a cool demo for Google Maps’ Photorealistic 3D tiles and got featured on Maps Mania.\n\n\n\n**June**\n\n  * 📲 Trying out iOS 17 beta, as always (every year).\n  * 🦊 Worried about Firefox.\n  * 🤩 Learned a life hack on how to eat yoghurt without a spoon.\n  * 👴 Got older.\n\n\n\n**July**\n\n  * 🥳 My web app finally got listed.\n  * 👖 Somehow got really impressed by a K-pop group called NewJeans.\n\n\n\n**August**\n\n  * 🌳 Did a little 3D trees tinkering.\n  * ☕ Attended the 55th KopiJS hangout.\n\n\n\n**September**\n\n  * 🤔 Learned something about `less` and `jQuery` thanks to GitHub’s new newsfeed\n  * 😢 My iCloud backup has been failing since updating to iOS 17 stable (from beta)\n  * 🚀 Made some interesting changes on Phanpy (my web app project).\n\n\n\n**October**\n\n  * 🫣 Tried to use iOS 17’s new “Screen Distance” feature. Gave up after a week, too annoying.\n  * 😩 Got annoyed by YouTube’s anti-adblocker attempts.\n\n\n\n**November**\n\n  * 📜 Did some cool CSS scroll-driven animations.\n  * 🥂 Fediversary\n  * 📦 Tried the Wayback Machine tweets archive tool.\n  * 🥳 10th anniversary of KopiJS.\n\n\n\n**December**\n\n  * 👀 Looked for alternatives to GitHub Copilot.\n  * 🎁 Did my #GitHubUnwrapped.\n  * 🎉 It’s been one year of building Phanpy.\n  * 😎 First time trying out GPT-4 with Vision.\n\n\n\n## Extended unemployment\n\nI was expecting at most 1-year of unemployment before I get bored and wanting to start work again.\n\nBut somehow I don't feel like working yet. Feels like a gut feeling thing or I'm still feeling fatigued. There's a sense of guilt building up but I decided to just do what I want and not get pressured or stressed by it.\n\nRoughly one year after my unemployment, tech layoffs were _still_ happening, so it doesn't feel like things are going to be smooth-sailing yet. It's quite and not quite post-pandemic at the same time, as most folks are still working from home on some days of the week as part of the \"new normal\" working arrangements. Not a lot of tech meetups too, compared to pre-pandemic days.\n\n## Projects\n\nI should say, just one project, not project _s_.\n\nI've spent the whole year working on Phanpy, a 3rd-party web client for Mastodon-compatible social networks. It's been surprisingly enjoyable and challenging, as I use _all_ my front-end chops, design skills, usability knowledge and years of experience on creating my _ideal_ social media client.\n\nI've added so many cool features since the first inception last December.\n\n  * **Thread count indicator** – automatic marking of \"1/X\" on threaded posts so that authors don't have to type it themselves.\n  * **Boosts Carousel** – group all reposted posts from the timeline into separate horizontal-scrolling carousels to prevent them from hogging the timeline.\n  * **Multi-column mode** – Tweetdeck-like UI for multiple configurable columns of timelines.\n  * **Post translation** – full-fledged translation UI with auto-detection of source text, configurable source language and even includes pronunciation text.\n  * **(Non-native) Quote posts** – links to other Mastodon/Fediverse posts will be expanded to look like quote posts.\n  * **Web Push notifications** – push notifications on the web, a feature that's more widely available now since the release of iOS 16.4.\n  * **Profile posting stats** – quick visualisation of an account's posting habits showing percentage of original posts, reposts and replies within the last specific number of days.\n  * **\"ALT\" badge & inline captions** – Instead of just showing ALT badges, they're also conditionally inlined like image captions.\n  * **Experimental image description generator** – using GPT-4 with Vision to generate description for images when posting images.\n  * And… a whole bunch of small UI tweaks and bug fixes.\n\n\n\nI'm quite proud of this. It's pretty hard to explain or describe in words, thus I feel that folks should really try the web app to \"get it\".\n\nI find myself surprised that I'm able to focus on _one_ project as I usually get distracted easily to start another new project or shift focus to one of my existing projects.\n\nIt feels good to focus on building a product, _not_ during your \"free time\" or after-work hours, and really just laser-focus on delivering the best user experience without tight deadlines, the need to chase numbers, or reach certain KPI's.\n\nThanks to Phanpy, my sponsorship grew quite significantly on Buy Me a Coffee and GitHub Sponsors. I really appreciate all the donations! 🙇‍♂️.\n\n## Looking back\n\nDespite having more than a year to think about my next steps, I didn't really put much thought in the end. After 1.5 years of unemployment, I started to get used to this, which is something that I never thought that I could. Time passed by so fast while everyone else continue working, meeting friends, and travelling.\n\nI'm grateful that I have the luxury to be jobless for this long. I'm still able to spend on things that I want. I could go to places like art museums during weekdays while everyone else is working.\n\nThere's still a lot of things in my mind. A lot of to-dos and future planning.\n\nBut, I'm just too lazy to think.\n\nAnd I want to convince myself that it's fine to be lazy.",
  "title": "2023 in review",
  "updatedAt": "2023-12-31T00:00:00.000Z"
}