Year in review 2022

19 minute read

It’s been another unusual year with the continued global COVID pandemic, more eventful than 2021 with more things opening up and allowing us to travel more.

Housing

April 2022 was a big month for me as my partner, Lori, moved in with me to the townhouse. This was a big change for Lori, as she had been living in her previous place for ~18 years. Adjusting to life in Burnaby has been a bit of a challenge, as she went from being surrounded by 30 independent coffee shops within 20 blocks in Mount Pleasant to just 7 coffee shops, 5 of which are Starbucks.

Additionally moving into a neighborhood with mostly families as a working professional has been challenging. We are finding it difficult to relate to our neighbors that chase after their kids all day and their greatest goal is to have a couple extra hours of sleep each night. It’s been a bit of an adjustment trying to find common ground with our neighbors and build relationships in this new community.

To make our townhouse feel more like home, we decided to give it a fresh coat of paint. We went with a light blue for the majority of the interior, with a bold red kitchen. We also added some colorful wallpaper to the bathrooms to give them some personality. We started hanging art on the walls covering 60% of the wallspace.

While our townhouse suits our needs for now, I don’t expect it to be our forever home. For now, we’re happy to be making this space our own.

Cherry blossoms

Right outside of our front door, there is a beautiful cherry blossom garden that exploded with pretty blossoms at the end of February. We were able to get some great photos of the blossoms and it seemed like hundreds of other people were doing the same, taking photos and doing photo shoots. We saw all sorts of interesting sights, like a pug picnic with party hats, snowboarders in full gear doing action shots with the petals, full wedding parties, a gender reveal party, and even people with oversized anime heads in kimonos. It was a wild few weeks of people-watching and I was thoroughly entertained by all the creative ways that people were using the cherry blossoms as a backdrop.

CBC interview and Bird playing card project

This year, we had the opportunity to be interviewed by Gloria Macarenko on CBC for our Vancouver Bird playing card project (2021). It was a great experience, but watching the video back is a bit cringeworthy for me, as I’m much quieter and more reserved than I normally am and I never once look at the camera. Lori, on the other hand, did an amazing job and really saved the interview.

Overall, it was a good experience, but it’s definitely intimidating to be on camera. It’s not something I’m used to, but it’s always good to push yourself out of your comfort zone and try new things.

You can watch our interview on CBC website here: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2011632707940

Birding

After birding for most of 2021 and the first half of 2022, we finally had the chance to see our first owl this year while hiking in Burnaby Mountain. It stuck around for about 15 minutes, which gave us plenty of time to photograph it before it flew off. While the lighting wasn’t great, I was able to get some decent shots.

A fledgling crow landed on our back patio for three days until it was strong enough to fly away. It was cute to see the baby crow but it made such a ruckus and a giant mess.

While we enjoyed birding this year, we didn’t do it as much as we did in 2021. We only went bird watching about a dozen times this year, as we were busy with other projects and didn’t make as much time for it. I think having a project centered around this hobby really helped push us to get outdoors and do more birding in 2021. Don’t get me wrong, I still love birding, but it wasn’t our default activity for every spare moment like it was in 2021.

Travel

As things began to open up more this year, I was able to travel a bit more, which was a welcome change. My first trip was a combination of business and pleasure, as I was sent to Florida for the BACnet Plugfest by my company, and then traveled to Mexico for a vacation. In preparation for that trip I worked too hard to get everything ready. By the time the conference came around I was exhausted and wasn’t thinking clearly.

While the conference in Florida went well, I made a few trip planning mistakes and ended up spending a few extra days in Florida before heading to Mexico. The first few days in Mexico were a bit of a blur as I started to unwind and relax, spending most of my time watching the waves and enjoying a few cervezas. I met up with a co-worker in his home town of Holbox and he showed me around. Lori joined me after a week and we had a fantastic time exploring the city of Playa Del Carmen, going diving in Isla Mujeres, experiencing the bioluminescence on Holbox, bird watching and snorkeling in Yalahau, and visiting Isla de la Pasión. Overall, it was a great trip and I’m grateful for the opportunity to have traveled a bit more this year.

Our next big adventure was a wonderful road trip through the Okanagan and interior of British Columbia. We visited wineries in Kelowna, went floating down the river in Penticton, experienced a murder mystery on the Kettle Valley Steam Railway, visited more wineries in Osoyoos, attended the Greenwood Founders Day, relaxed at the Ainsworth Hot Springs, and made our way all the way up to Kaslo, BC and back through Manning Park.

One highlight of the trip was being able to stop by my mother’s home in Anaconda and visit with her during the Greenwood Founders Day. The mayor even gave us a tour of the old prison courthouse.

British Columbia is really beautiful during the summer, and I always forget how much beauty there is in my own backyard when I’m traveling all around the world. It was great to be able to explore more of my own province and appreciate all it has to offer.

In November, I had the opportunity to travel to Del Mar, California for work to see one of our customers and meet the people I’ve been working with remotely throughout the year. After that, I traveled to Pasadena for the HackADay Superconference, which was a fantastic three-day event filled with interesting talks about hardware and software, as well as some amazing after-hour parties and hardware hacking. One of the highlights of the conference was the Super Conference conference badge, which was a retro 4-bit computer that you could hand program in binary using buttons on the front of the badge.

After the conference, a friend and I spent a few days exploring Los Angeles, hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, visiting the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center, The Getty, The Broad, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Apex Electronics, and spending time at Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier.

While hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, we were surprised to see a mansion with a giant anti-robot on the side of the hill. We both instantly recognized it as EatArt’s Prosthesis, which we had both seen being built in Vancouver over the past 10 years. It was a strange coincidence to see it in the mountains of Santa Monica.

We also went to Shuswap for Canada day, Point Roberts for the first time, Bowen Island - Kitoki Inn, Camp Fircom for a wedding, and Lake Cheakamus.

Fostering Noodles the Puppy

In September, Lori and I decided to foster a puppy for a few weeks. We have always wanted a pet, but our previous houses were not suitable to have one. We were hesitant to get a pet for the long term as we aren’t sure how long we’ll be at our current place and the next place might not allow pets. Additionally, we like to travel a lot and having a puppy would complicate things. However, we still wanted to experience the joy of having a pet, so we decided to foster instead.

Our first foster puppy was Noodles, and he couldn’t have come at a better time. We both ended up getting COVID and all Noodles wanted to do was snuggle with us on the hammock for the first two weeks. When you’re sick and the world feels like a stupid horrible place, a cute snuggle puppy can make everything seem a little more bearable and help time pass more quickly.

To our surprise, I really enjoyed the responsibility of caring for something beyond myself. I enjoyed getting up 2-3 times a night to let Noodles out to pee, taking him for walks and getting to know our neighbors (or at least their kids), and having a reason to go for a walk each day. It was a very hard and emotional time when Noodles got adopted and we had to give him up. We had all the logical reasons for why we couldn’t keep him, but that didn’t make it any easier to say goodbye. I don’t know if we’ll have the emotional strength to foster again.

Projects

Flocking AI / Ai Art

Flocking AI is a project where I am using Artificial intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) to generate a “Field guide of imaginary birds”.

The short version of how it works is: I created a chatbot using Open IA GPT-3 and filled it with as much bird information as I can, bird ID books, bird encyclopedias, and bird joke books. Then I have a conversation with this ‘bird nerd chat bot’ to generate a bio for an imaginary bird. I take this bio and use it as the seed text for a text-to-image generator called Mid Journey. Then I post a new imaginary bird to social media each day. Each bird has its own unique bio and image all created by AI.

I had the opportunity to show off the first four months of images from this project at the Vancouver Cultural Crawl at Maker Labs, and it was a great experience to be able to share it with the public and get some feedback on the direction I should take the project next.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel ethically about this project, but the work is done, the project is pretty much automated at this point. I’m planning on continuing it for a full year and see how I feel afterwards.

You can read more about this project on the Flocking AI project page. I also wrote a post mortem from the Cultural Crawl event

Habit tracker

This year, I had the opportunity to learn how to design PCB boards with KiCad, thanks to a friend who gave me a tutorial on how to get the parts placed and manufactured. This is a skill that I’ve been wanting to learn for a few years now, as it opens up a lot of new opportunities to build specific electronics for projects.

As a first learning project, I created a single month habit tracker inspired by Simone Giertz’s “The Every Day Calendar”. This habit tracker allows me to track multiple activities each day, and when I complete a habit that I want to track, I simply press a button and the light illuminates to show that I’ve completed the task.

What’s next for 2023?

One of my goals for 2023 is to make six more electronics projects, and now that I’ve learned how to design PCB boards with KiCad, I’m excited to see what I can create. This skill will definitely come in handy as I work on new projects and try to push my limits as a maker.

I have a few trips planned at the beginning of the year, and I would like to do a big trip outside of North America for my 40th birthday.

Stats

Miscellaneous

BCHydro: 6771 kWh (+230% increase over 2021)
Instagram: 56 (-19% decrease from 2021)
iNaturalist: +210 observations, +15 new species

Work

I worked 2118 hours (-3% less then 2021) in 195 days, an average 10 hours a day and 40 hours a week (Woot a normal work week). Top week was 79 hours.

I spent 695 hours (-8% less then 2021) in voice/video calls this year. That’s approximately 32% of my working hours or 3.5 hours each working day.

Sent 1164 emails approximately 5.6 emails a day. Received 8,012 emails approximately 41 emails a day

I made 1652 code commits (+60% increase over 2022). Biggest single day commits count: 54. I was complain about not going much in 2021 and made a conscious effort to spend more time programing. It paided off and I am happier for it.

Music 🎶

Listened to 13,504 songs in 2022 (increase of 10.7% from 2022) across 3,860 Artists. An average of 37 songs per day. That’s approximately 33 days, 20 hours of music. The longest streek of listening to music was 32 days.

These stats come from Last.fm

Top Artist

NNAMDÏ - 430 plays
ZHU - 219 plays
Atmosphere - 191 plays
The Weeknd - 168 plays

Top Albums

BRAT -NNAMDÏ
GenerationWHY - ZHU
Puls - Meute

Top Tracks

Music Music

Movies and TV reviews

This is a list of the movies and tv shows that I watched in 2022. Netflix and Amazon Prime video allows you to download your viewing history that helped me with creating this list, then I used the new releases in 2022 from Rotten tomatoes to jog my memory for everything else.

I watched 64 movies and at least 1 season of 26 tv series. That’s approximately 290 hours of screen time or an average of 48 mins a day.

Ranking:

(Great) - I would recommend,
(Okay) - Its okay it has issues,
(Meh) - Forgettable
(Bad) - Horrible don’t watch

Timeline

On average we do something every three days with January being our lest active month.

January 1 - Starting the year in Palm Springs with our friends Chris and Marjorie
January 14-20 - Painting of the Townhouse
January 15 - Eagle nesting at North 40 Park Reserve
January 21-23 - Bowen Island - Kitoki Inn
Febuary 5 - Buntzen Lake Hike
Febuary 9 - CBC interview for the Vancouver Bird playing cards project
Febuary 11 - Cherry blossoms starting
Febuary 12 - Mangia Date night
Febuary 19 - Magnet fishing with Tyson
Febuary 21 - Sooda Korean BBQ with Teresa, Jayden, Mom
Febuary 24 - Lori’s foot tattoo touchup
March 11 - Paul’s in town. Party at Steven’s house
March 19 - Pitt–Addington Marsh hike with Lori’s Grandmother
March 22 - Cherry blossoms full bloom
April 1 - Lori moves into the townhouse
April 2 - Poco Trail
April 15 - Steven’s 39th birthday at Calabash Bistro
April 16 - Photographed first owl on Burnaby Mountain
April 17 - Hike though port moody
April 19 - May 9th - Work trip to Florida for BACnet Plugfest
April 26 - Cancun, Mexico
April 27 - Holbox, Mexico
April 30 - Paradisus, playa del carmen, Mexico. Lori arrives in Mexico
May 3 - Diving in isla Mujeres, Mexico.
May 5 - Playa del carmen
May 6 - Holbox, Mexico
May 9 - Flying home from Mexico to Vancouver
May 22 - Hiking at Iona Jetty with Dallas
May 23 - Spot Prawn Festival
June 6 - Fledgling crow
June 12 - Bird watching at Tsawwassen, with Tyson
June 13 - Hiking at Sapperton Landing
June 18 - Hats off day in burnaby
June 30 - July 5th - Shuswap Lake Canada day trip
July 3 - Kayak trip to shark barge
July 5 - Wineries in Kelowna
July 9 - Wedding (lori’s friend)
July 10 - Kettle Valley Steam Railway murder mystery tour
July 11 - Penticton lazy river ride
July 12 - Wineries in Osoyoos
July 13 - Anaconda, BC visiting Steven’s mother
July 14 - Ainsworth hot springs
July 15 - Kaslo, Kootenay Lake, Anaconda BC
July 16 - Greenwood founders days
July 19 - Beaver at Burnaby lake
July 23 - Sports day with the Kensington group
July 30 - Powell street festival
Aug 1 - Boating with Tyson, Lori, Steven, Luke
Aug 5 - Vancouver Mural festival
Aug 7 - Bard on the beach
Aug 8 - Wallpapering the bathrooms, hanging art
Aug 12 - Chipkin work party
Aug 13 - Dumpling festival
Aug 20 - Wizard Den date night
Aug 21 - Hiking at burnaby mountain
Aug 27 - Burnaby Central Railway with Andrew
Aug 28 - Italian days
September 2-4 - ShBang
September 5 - Barnet Marine Park
September 8 - Baseball game
September 9-11 - Camp Fircom on Gambier Island for Ben coopers wedding
September 14 - Noodles arrived (Puppy)
September 15 - We got COVID
September 25 - Puppy day at Daggrat
Oct 1 - Michael Buble concert
Oct 2 - Noodles (Puppy) got adopted
Oct 4 - Florence and the machine concert
Oct 8 - Paul’s in town, party at Steven’s house
Oct 9 - Cheakamus Lake hike with Yuta and helen, good mushroom photo day
Oct 15 - Noodles puppy visit
Oct 17 - Point Roberts trip, Speedway go kart racing, escape room
Oct 21 - GRETA Bar YVR, with Paul, Arthur
Nov 2-10 - Trip to LA, Customer Hunter site visit, [Hackaday supercon]
Nov 8-10 - Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center, The Getty, The Broad, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Apex Electronics, and spending time at Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier
Nov 14 - Gallery install at Maker Labs for Cultural crawl
Nov 15-21 - Cultural crawl, at Maker Labs
Nov 26 - Digital stained glass workshop at Maker Labs
Dec 8 - Lori’s birthday at Stanley park brewing
Dec 9 - Drag Show, party for Lori’s birthday
Dec 10 - Clown parade, Ben cooper’s birthday
Dec 20 - First big snowfall of the year
Dec 24 - Dinner at Atkinsons house
Dec 25 - XMas at Teresa’s house

Steven Smethurst