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 may be quite important to you, but since I'm more of a homebody, it's fine if I don't focus on those areas.
The aspects included in interests, according to an old post I wrote, include audio, painting, graphics, animation, literature, games, computers, and natural history. Next year, the emphasis may 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 persistent 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 tends to be heavier in flavor (although Wuhan's cuisine is also heavy, I usually prefer lighter dishes, but here in Xi'an, the options are limited).
The current issues I've encountered (prioritized by severity):
- Indigestion
- Gingivitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome (mouse hand)
- Otitis media
- Cervical spondylosis
- Severe myopia
- Noticeably high blood pressure (>140/90mmHg)
The most direct impacts are from indigestion, otitis media, cervical spondylosis, and high blood pressure. Once I truly have some free time or a break, I need to see a doctor. Also, 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, ultimately hoping 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 switched to Java after being brushed off, then in college, I couldn’t take 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 concepts. I have this strange feeling of knowing a little about everything but not being able to write anything complex.
Regarding work, I feel half anxious and half not anxious. 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 have internships, and I have to sneak in to participate, or else I might have to extend my graduation). I’m anxious because I’ve never worked in a computer-related job (I have no internship experience and my undergraduate degree is in civil engineering). I’ve heard that my group might be sent out for business trips later, so I can only wait and see how things unfold.
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 top choice is still 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 (although it can be frustrating when bugs take a long time to fix, most of the time it’s due to insufficient technical accumulation, and I’m not at the level where fixing a bug could lead to a 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 graduate workstation, I’ll 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 back in 2016, but by 2018, I had slowed down and stagnated. I hope to pick it back up in 2025.
The main focus is on arrangement. Although I’m already proficient in FL Studio, I want to learn Cubase now. Thanks to the 🇷🇺Friends Team R2R for the Cubase Crack (site:rutracker.org). I’ve never seriously written any melodies, and my DAW is limited to the sounds that come with FL, which often gets criticized for poor sound quality. It’s time to change things up—this might also lead to issues with insufficient hard drive space, so I’m planning to get a larger drive.
For listening, I’ll check out a few “pain-free jazz” albums I recommended before (which are relatively easy to listen to) and explore Hitech genres. 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 painting style you want.
I don’t seem to have a strong desire for painting, considering how busy I am right now. Expecting to become a painting novice 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 by the way, I still haven't finished writing "The World Machine."
In the second half of 2024, I was awakened to the desire to write by the legal-themed "REWRITE" by Yao, but unfortunately, it was extinguished by stronger academic pressures. Fortunately, I still managed 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.
For next year, I want to revisecompletely rewritethe previously written "The 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 "The World Machine" with some drawings.
Games#
Are you concerned about life topics?
I guess it’s that age.
I should play "VA-11 HALL-A" and "eden" in my library.
Writing games is quite difficult without friends inviting me; it’s hard to start without motivation, and inviting others myself feels risky if they back out. In 2025, I’ll focus on playing games.
I’m particularly interested in VA-11 HALL-A and eden, as well as the upcoming S4U early next year and Cosmic Ultramarine in the middle of next year. I’ve seen some game reviews recently and heard it’s a big year for games, but I’m not interested in those AAA titles and new releases from old IPs; I can’t afford the energy for that. I’ll focus on understanding these games and see if I have the interest to explore some new fun ones afterward.
Computers#
Hmm, rather than Annoti, let’s finish magpie first.
Here are the things I want to work on:
- Annoti: A reading tool focused on annotations for txt/md/pdf files, currently still in the design stage, 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’ve never used a Mac and rarely 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, then deploy it to CF Pages.
- kirakira: Currently, there’s still a lot of testing work, with fewer commits on the front end. I want to learn more and strive to contribute to both front-end and back-end, as well as projects like Lycoris.
In short, I need to learn more programming and make more commits (although most of the commits I make are for my own pages and are not standardized, lol).
In 2024, I had about three to four hundred commits combined on Gitee and GitHub; 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 that needs to be fed every four days and have its water changed every seven days; I hope I don’t end up neglecting it. Additionally, there’s a pot of green radish given to me in my dorm; I hope it can survive through this winter break and the upcoming summer break.
Oh, and by the way, there was also a question about information theory in my first blog post; let’s not be too greedy and 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, my zodiac year? But I’m not that superstitious; there’s nothing particularly special about turning 24.