ryelle codes

Last post of 2022

I’m having trouble writing a recap this year. A lot of small things happened, and I worked a lot, but overall the year has felt very nebulous — long and short at once.

Work-wise, my focus this past year has been all-in on the WordPress.org redesign. The News redesign was mostly finished in 2021 but launched in 2022, and that was kind of a proof of concept – could the design be implemented in a block-based way? Our team learned from that, and then came the wordpress.org homepage & download section. Other sites are in progress — Showcase just launched, Documentation will launch soon, and there’s a new developer blog in beta.

In-person events started up again, so I was able to attend some conferences this past year. In April, I went to StaffPlus in NYC, a tech conference for senior devs who aren’t people-managers. It was a great conference, and probably nice that it was just one day since it was my first covid-era event. Later, in the summer, I also attended & spoke at WordCamp Montclair. It was really great to give a talk again, though I felt pretty rusty. I had to miss WordCamp US, since a college friend’s wedding was the same weekend — we had a nice trip up to western MA though.

I gardened again this year, after fixing up the raised bed (last year I mentioned lining it with burlap, I dug out all the dirt and stapled in a real lining this time). I also bought a greenhouse frame and some mesh fabric to use as a screen so that birds and small animals wouldn’t get in and eat all the baby plants. It worked out well, but I didn’t realize how tall my tomatoes and tomatillos would get 😐 by mid-July they were both taller than the structure, so I had to pull the fabric off… so then all the bok choy got eaten 🤦🏼‍♀️

A 12-cell seed starter with 3 tiny arugula sprouts.
Tomato plants in my raised bed with twine running between stakes for vertical support.
The raised bed a week or so later, the plants have grown and now have another line of support.
The raised bed again after more growth, the plants are now taller than the greenhouse cover structure.
View from the second story down into the raised bed. It’s fall so things have started to dry and yellow, and there had been a wind storm. The tomato plants are collapsed over the patio wall into the neighbor’s yard, and the tomatillos are collapsed forward onto the laundry line.

Lesson learned this year? Keep tomatoes & tomatillos in pots, and stick to leafy things & herbs in the bed. Also, prune both way more.

We celebrated a year with Lemon, and in November we got a second dog, Noodle. Noodle came from Korean K9 Rescue; he was evacuated from a shelter in Uljin before a wildfire destroyed it, and eventually brought to the US. Like Lemon, he’s a Korean mix, though he looks less jindo-y. He’s also very lanky, he’s only half Lemon’s weight but they’re shoulder-to-shoulder the same height. He’s just under a year old, and still has his puppy excitement, and it’s been bringing Lemon out of her shell a bit more.

Two medium-sized brindle dogs, one darker (Lemon) and one lighter (Noodle), laying on a couch, looking towards the camera.
Noodle, a light brindle dog, sleeping on the floor, surrounded by torn tissue paper.
Noodle in an orange hoodie, laying down with his front legs around a toy fox, and its nose in his mouth.
Noodle and Lemon sleeping on the couch together.

And these are a few of my favorite Lemon photos from the year.

Lemon and Voxel, a black cat, laying on the couch together with their paws almost touching.
Lemon outside, laying down on a cushioned chair.
Lemon laying on her side on the floor behind my desk, with her nose pressed against the desk drawers.
A straight-on portrait of Lemon with her mouth slightly open, green grass and a clear blue sky in the background.

Like I said I would last year, I stopped using Duolingo for Korean when I hit the 365 streak. Unfortunately, while LingoDeer is much better for learning, it did not have the same gamification & easy drop-in that Duolingo does, and I fell completely out of learning during the summer. I picked Duolingo up again in the fall, figuring that something is better than nothing. I’m going to try to do better with supplemental learning via TalkToMeInKorean, and actually journaling.

I also want to try using this site as a semi-personal blog again, maybe more in a microblog style, but I ran into an issue when trying to update my site design… so more thought will need to go here. (also, I’m on mastodon now, @ryelle@front-end.social)

I’m going to repeat what I ended with last year, since covid is still here and is still a concern. Events are coming back, but if they’re not done safely, it’s just going to exclude more people.

I don’t really have much to say about [next year] without going into covid, and I wanted to keep this post light. All I can say is that I hope if you’re reading this, you’re doing your part to keep your community safe.

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