Tag Archives: new year’s resolution

New Year’s resolutions 2025: end of year review

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2025 is over, and another round of New Year’s resolutions are due for review.

1. Read 30 books, including the complete works of John Wyndham

Status: complete

I finished the remaining John Wyndhams (see 2024 resolutions) and did manage to read 30 books – but only just. I didn’t read The Mirror & The Light.

2. Get into Talking Heads

Status: complete

I finished the target list of media which was my plan to “get into” Talking Heads. That was: Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues, Little Creatures, Stop Making Sense, David Byrne’s American Utopia and the This Must Be Talking Heads podcast (the episodes relevant to the albums I was listening to).

I struggled with Remain in Light, and I think that was the reason that my progress stalled in 2024. However, this year I cracked it. Stop Making Sense and American Utopia were both delightful. I also completed a stretch goal of watching the music videos for all of Talking Heads’ singles up to Little Creatures.

3. Watch 12 specific films

Status: almost complete

This was the list:

Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind (2004)
Beware of Mr. Baker (2012)
The Stone Roses: Made of Stone (2013)
Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (2019)
Zappa (2020)
The Sparks Brothers (2021)
The Velvet Underground (2021)
Moonage Daydream (2022)
In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 (2022)

Son of Frankenstein (1939)
Apocalypto (2006)
Lancaster (2022)

I watched all of these except the King Crimson documentary.

The problem is, because we don’t watch a lot of TV or films, it’s not worth subscribing to any streaming services. I’ve found it’s far more cost effective, if I want to watch specific films, to buy cheap second hand copies on physical media. DVDs are considered obsolete by most people now, so there are tonnes of them floating around: you can get almost any film on DVD for £2-3 online or even less in a charity shop.

However, this only applies to films released up to about the year 2020. That was when covid lockdowns accelerated the adoption of streaming services and crashed the demand for DVDs. After that, I suspect that DVDs were produced in much smaller quantities, and are therefore not as readily and cheaply available.

Moonage Daydream was on Channel 4 earlier in the year, and we found The Velvet Underground on a streaming service in a rented cottage we stayed in for a weekend. Zappa and The Sparks Brothers cost me around £11 each on Ebay, but I couldn’t find In the Court of the Crimson King for anything less than £20, and I didn’t want to watch it that desperately.

4. Complete Pokémon Blue

Status: incomplete

Despite being about halfway through the game at the start of the year, I still failed to achieve this one. I played a couple of sessions and made a bit of progress, but gaming still feels too frivolous and time-wasting for me to prioritise it over other tasks. This is despite the recognition – manifested in these repeated resolutions! – that it’s something I’d like to do more of, as a means of ring-fencing time for myself to relax and enjoy without feeling guilt for not doing something else.

5. Run a 10+ km distance once a month, get a parkrun PB, and volunteer at parkruns

Status: complete

OK, technically only partially complete, as I didn’t run a 10k distance in April due to illness. However, I did at least one (and sometimes more) every other month. I also built my distance up to 16k by the end of the year.

As for parkruns, I got a PB early, then improved on it further, getting a sub 22 minute run. I also reached my 100 milestone. But more importantly, I got into a regular routine of exercising three times a week, something I’ve not done since about 2005.

I volunteered at parkrun 10 times and ran 30 times, hitting my 1 in 4 target exactly. However, with hindsight, this target was way too high. Volunteering is quite disruptive, especially when successfully maintaining an exercise regime depends on fitting it into established routines. So I will continue volunteering, but at a much lower 1 in 10 ratio (which is the ratio that parkrun organisers ask parkrunners to do, and is still significantly above average).

6. Give blood 4 times

Status: 50% complete

I only managed twice, due to a combination of lack of available slots and poor personal admin.

7. Publish 3 blog posts

Status: 67% complete.

I published Population peaks, random walks and Catalan numbers and Goodbye, Xitter!, but the third one is still sitting in my drafts.

8. Learn how to pronounce Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch

Status: complete but unverified

I think I’ve got it, but I need to try it on my Welsh-speaking relatives to confirm.

New Year’s resolutions 2020: end of year review

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2018 was such a wash-out for New Year’s resolutions, I chose not to set any in 2019. In 2020, I set only one:

1. Don’t buy any more books.

In 2019, my book hoarding habit and unread book pile had reached problematic proportions. Therefore, I resolved not to add to it for at least a year. I was helped somewhat by the pandemic, which meant I wasn’t pottering around and popping into bookshops and charity shops anyway. I failed on two specific occasions:

a) A copy of The Spheres by Iain M Banks came up for sale on Ebay. This was a booklet published in a limited edition of 500 for a science fiction convention, and is very difficult to get hold of. I’ve had a search alert on it for a long time, and one finally appeared this year. I couldn’t miss the opportunity, and bought it.

b) In July, the brilliant Tom the Dancing Bug comic was published in book form by Clover Press, and again, I couldn’t miss out. Both books are now sold out.

So, I acquired three books. But compared to the previous average of over a hundred a year, it’s a vast improvement.

I also completed a previous resolution:

3. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush. (2018)

Finally done, and I even managed a shave with no cuts before the end of the year!

New Year’s resolutions 2018: end of year review

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You can probably guess, from the fact that I’ve only posted one article since the last end of year review, that I haven’t had a lot of free time in 2018. I offer the same reason for my pitiful performance below.

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Status: failed.

2. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

Status: failed.

3. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

Status: failed.

4. Watch 13 specific films (see list).

Status: passed (barely – I finished watching the last one on 5 Jan 2019).

1, 2 and 3 are still ambitions, but I’m not going to make any resolutions to complete them in 2019, as I’d obviously just fail again.

New Year’s resolutions 2018

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2017 was a bit of a wash out on resolutions. Buying a house and starting to renovate it took up too much time. In 2018, the house work continues, plus we’re getting a puppy in a couple of weeks. So I don’t hold out much hope for these:

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

2. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

3. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

4. Watch 13 specific films:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Cleopatra (1963)
Zardoz (1974)
Sholay (1975)
Network (1976)
Logan’s Run (1976)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Tron (1982)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Contact (1997)

New Year’s resolutions 2017: end of year review

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It’s time to see how I did with my 2017 New Year’s resolutions. And the answer is: very poorly.

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Status: failed.

2. Use DuckDuckGo at all times.

Status: largely passed.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine which doesn’t track you. You should use it.

3. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

Status: failed.

4. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

Status: failed.

5. Switch to a better solution than takeaway coffee cups.

Status: mostly passed.

I was gifted a Keep Cup which helped me to achieve this one.

6. Watch 13 specific films.

Status: passed, barely.

I say barely because I watched the last one, Gandahar, on 1st January 2018. But I achieved the higher goal: knocking a good chunk out of the “films I want to watch” list.

What next?

I’m going to carry 1, 3 and 4 forward to 2018. A bit shamefully, this is 1’s fourth year as a resolution. I’ll carry forward 6 as well, with a new list of films.

New Year’s resolutions 2017: Part 2

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I’ve decided to add another New Year’s resolution to the previous set. It’s simply to watch all of the films on the list below. The intention is to knock a number of “must see” films off my own “haven’t seen” list. The films are a mixture of all-time classics that I’ve somehow missed, cult films I’ve been wanting to watch for ages, and unwatched DVDs I have sitting on my shelf.

The original idea was to list 12 films, so that it would be easy to monitor progress: if I watch one a month, I’m on track. But since it’s 2017 and everything’s topsy-turvy, I’ve added a special choice for number 13.

  1. The Third Man
  2. Gone with the Wind
  3. Doctor Zhivago
  4. Where Eagles Dare
  5. North by Northwest
  6. A View to a Kill
  7. Gandahar
  8. Fucking Åmål / Show Me Love
  9. Grave of the Fireflies
  10. Once Upon a Time in America
  11. Mother India
  12. Suspiria
  13. The Manchurian Candidate

New Year’s resolutions 2017

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Here are my resolutions for 2017:

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

God damn it, I’m going to do this.

2. Use DuckDuckGo at all times.

I’ve already switched from using Google search to DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine which doesn’t track your searches. But DuckDuckGo is still developing, and its search results often aren’t as good, so I find myself drifting back to Google.

Everything is a trade-off. If I value privacy, if I don’t want to be monitored, tracked and analysed, then I have to put in the extra effort – which isn’t even very much – to spend more time looking through search results to find what I want.

And perhaps the serendipity of scrolling through more results, and finding things I wasn’t looking for or didn’t expect, will be a reward in itself.

3. Switch to a non-free private email provider.

If I’m avoiding Google for search, why the hell am I still letting them handle – and thereby read, monitor and analyse – all of my most private communications?

2017 is the year in which I put a value on my own privacy, by switching to a non-free email provider. One which, because I’m the paying customer, doesn’t treat me as the product.

4. Switch to safety razors, shaving soap and brush.

This continues the theme of switching to a superior tool despite the initial effort/cost hurdle. I’m going to abandon the ongoing scam of expensive disposable razors with ever more numerous blades, and switch to traditional safety razors. Out too goes the foam in a can, to be replaced by shaving cream, applied with a badger-hair brush.

5. Switch to a better solution than takeaway coffee cups.

Maybe I’ll buy a reusable cup. I’m not committing to the detail of the solution yet.

New Year’s resolutions 2016: end of year review

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Time for my annual review of how well I did with the last year’s resolutions.

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Status: failed.

Carried over from 2015, and I still didn’t manage it. I did have a go one Sunday, but Doomdark remains undefeated.

2.  Play the board games I already own until their purchases become cost-effective.

Status: good progress made.

I set myself the ambitious target of getting all games down to less than £5/play, and I didn’t manage that. But I did make significant headway, reducing the number of uneconomical games (over £5/play) from 24 to 19, and the number of super-uneconomical games (over £10/play) from 11 to 3. Of the 19, about 10 are only just over the target, and will be easy to convert.

More importantly, the resolution helped me to resist the temptation to buy new games, to put more effort into arranging gaming sessions, and to focus on playing the less-played games more. It meant that I finally got around to playing Tammany Hall, a game I’d had for over a year, and hadn’t played because I’d assumed it was too heavy for most of my casual-gaming friends. It turned out to be much simpler, rules-wise, than I’d thought, although tactically still very rewarding, and became one of my favourite games of the year.

In 2017, I’ll continue to chip away at those stats. I may even allow myself the luxury of buying some new games, but the cost/play tracking, which is now an established routine, will ensure that board game purchases are kept under control.

3. Never pay the included service charge on a restaurant bill; always leave the tip, if appropriate, in cash.

Status: mostly passed.

Almost as soon as I started doing this, I realised that the sort of big chain restaurants which tend to abuse the system aren’t the sort of restaurants we ever go to anyway. It turns out, being snobby middle-class metropolitan liberal elites, we only go to independent, family-run type places (the area of north London we lived in was particularly abundant with them), where there wasn’t any tip chicanery to fight against. But I insisted on cash tips anyway, because I feel there isn’t enough awkwardness in my personal interactions already.

4. Make more eye contact.

Status: unknown.

I’ve certainly been more aware of when I have and haven’t been making eye contact, but whether that means I’ve managed to alter the balance towards making it, I can’t tell.

Amazon’s tentacles are spreading

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Two years ago, I made a resolution to boycott Amazon.

Yesterday, I received two parcels from Amazon. But as far as I knew, I hadn’t broken my resolution. I hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon.

What I had ordered was two items from Ebay, from two separate sellers. But both items arrived packaged in Amazon-style cardboard boxes, sealed with Amazon Prime tape and addressed with Amazon postage stickers.

So what’s happened? Are both the sellers actually Amazon in disguise? Is Amazon’s new strategy to set up front operations on Ebay to sell to boycotters like me?

Or is it something less conspiratorial? Large Ebay sellers running their operations through Amazon Web Services? Or is is a feasible business model just to pay for Amazon Prime and trade as a middleman, sending deliveries directly to your Ebay customers?

I contacted both sellers and asked. Apparently, Amazon’s nationwide warehouse operations are so extensive, they have huge unused capacity which they rent out to other businesses. Both of the Ebay sellers were running sizeable businesses on top of the Amazon platform, using it as a managed service providing storage, packaging and distribution for their products.

Through its warehouse network and AWS, Amazon is turning itself into a foundational component of our economic infrastructure.

Boycotting it is becoming harder.

I am undeterred.

New Year’s resolutions 2016

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Here are my resolutions for 2016:

1. Complete The Lords of Midnight.

Carried over from 2015. The ZX Spectrum is in fully working order, so it’s time for Doomdark to meet his fate.

2.  Play the board games I already own until their purchases become cost-effective.

I’m a board game geek. After a few years of collecting games, I’ve ended up with more than I’ve had time to play properly. My aim in 2016 is to rectify that by focusing more on playing the ones I already own.

I’m going to be systematic about it. I’ve created a spreadsheet of the games I own, and a log to track the times I play them. Using this to calculate a cost-per-play (purchase price / number of plays) for each game, my aim is to get all my currently-owned games down to £5/play or less by the end of the year.

3. Never pay the included service charge on a restaurant bill; always leave the tip, if appropriate, in cash.

It’s become apparent over the last year that restaurants, especially the big chains, are grossly exploitative of their staff, and the service charges they add to bills are one example. In many cases, it’s been restaurant policy to keep all or some of the charge, and distribute little or none of it to the actual serving staff. Even when they do give most back to the staff, there’ll usually be an admin fee deducted if it’s been paid by card. So rather than take the lazy option of just paying the charge on the bill and thinking, “well, that’s the tip covered”, I’m always going to ask for it to be taken off, and then leave a suitable tip in cash instead.

4. Make more eye contact.

I’ve realised that I’m pretty bad at making eye contact while talking to people. I’m fine when they’re talking, but as soon as I start talking, I almost always look away. It’s difficult to concentrate on both things at once – thinking about what I’m saying, and watching the other person’s face – so I unconsciously reduce the complication by looking away. But I guess it could be interpreted as rude or cold. So I’m going to make a definite effort to do better.