post: 2025 retrospective

Author: foosel

content/blog/2025-12-30-2025-retrospective/brickheads.jpg

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+---
+title: "What cool stuff did I do in 2025?"
+description: Highlighting some of my personal achievements of the past year to combat the negative vibes of this year
+date: 2025-12-30
+cover:
+  image: cover.jpg
+  alt: View of blue mountains in the fog
+  relative: true
+tags: 
+- projects
+- events
+- retrospective
+draft: true
+---
+
+Just like [last year](https://foosel.net/blog/2024-12-30-2024-retrospective/) I've decided to sit down today and write my very own retrospective. The year has been difficult in several ways, but whenever I took another look at last year's post it put a smile on my face, remembering the good things about life in general.
+
+In the hope that this will continue to work, here we go with the same look at cool stuff that I did or experienced in 2025...
+
+1. I started the year with my by now traditional deep clean project, this time taking care of my hallway and the built-in closet. That also included recycling my first ever 3d printer with which everything OctoPrint started - a step I had to do for space reasons, but which still felt weird.
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113760557884199400" >}}
+
+2. I painted all of the (core) miniatures of my copy of ["Sub Terra"](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204472/sub-terra), making sure to also use a bit of UV colors for some special effects under black light.
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113776631910946170" >}}
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113776640997773679" >}}
+
+3. That also prompted me to finally kit up my painting stuff on a small cart that fits into the freshly cleaned up built-in closet.
+
+   ![](painting-cart.jpg)
+
+4. As it is also becoming traditional by now, I spent some wonderfully calm days with my partner in the southern Black Forest again. We spent the days taking long walks/hikes through the snowy landscape, and the evenings playing through ["Rise of the Golden Idol"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2716400/The_Rise_of_the_Golden_Idol/) - quality time! 😊
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113856741272685499" >}}
+
+5. Back from that, I finally found the time to frame the bits of my first 3d printer that I kept and hung them in my office - that way it's not fully gone but taking up way less space than it did before.
+
+   ![](ultimaker-framed.jpg)
+
+6. At the end of January, I gave my first talk in front of a live audience since the start of the pandemic, at a local Women in Tech meetup. To say that I was incredibly nervous about this would be an understatement, but everything went smoothly once I got started 😊
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113916461942021342" >}}
+
+7. Using my vinyl cutter I created some custom Mass Effect merch! Happy to say that the design indeed held up through several washes now - this thing has become my favourite hoodie and I'm actually wearing it as I'm typing these lines.
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/113934395775722840" >}}
+
+   I also created two more shirts, and another hoodie for my partner:
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114060040625283604" >}}
+
+8. I finally played through ["Dredge"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1562430/DREDGE/) and had a blast doing so!
+
+9. I bought a new vacuum and immediately fell into love with it, so much so that I printed a whole bunch of holders for its adapters 😂 Peak adulting ^^
+
+   {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114054064123727495" >}}
+
+10. I started on my journey to reduce my footprint on US clouds:
+
+    - I switched from Google Drive to a NextCloud instance hosted at Hetzner in a german data center
+    - After adding some more storage to my NAS I migrated all my pictures from Google Photos to a self-hosted [immich](https://immich.app/) server
+    - I switched my homelab's backup approach from Synology's proprietary stuff to [Borg](https://www.borgbackup.org/)/[borgmatic](https://torsion.org/borgmatic/)
+
+11. I started playing ["Starforged"](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn-starforged) and for journaling my adventures built myself a traveler's notebook.
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114191126595846444" >}}
+
+    This in turn led to me starting a Bullet Journal in an A6 sized self crafted traveler's notebook, and that's been used daily since. I've been meaning to write a post about that, I really need to do this asap...
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114241410760797146" >}}
+
+12. On Easter my partner surprised me with a self-designed Lego Brickheads kit of us, which I had a blast building together with him.
+
+    ![Custom Brickheads of "Gina" and "Dennis" built and standing in front of the custom made box](brickheads.jpg)
+
+13. I finally bound a book again, creating my first ever paperback!
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114405026360844463" >}}
+
+14. I upgraded my Framework 13 Intel 11th gen to a new AMD Ryzen AI 300 mainboard. It's my daily driver that I use for basically everything, and so I also put all the RAM in there that it supported: 96GB, which back then cost me 180€. Given the RAM prices now (the same kit now is getting sold for 900€), I am incredibly happy about this foresight 😬
+
+    ![Screenshot of the System Information of the new laptop. Device name: mariner; OS: Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition); Hardware Model: Framework Laptop 13 AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series; Processor: AMD Ryzen HX370 w/ Radeon 890M x 24; Memory: 96GiB; Disk Capacity: 2.0 TB](framework-upgrade.png)
+
+15. During an evening walk through my partner's home town with him I made an incredible find in a "book closet": A book about home computers from the mid 1980s.
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114507595287597953" >}}
+
+    The rest of the evening was spent reading through it quite excited, and hunting down some other ones from the series on ebay 😂
+
+16. I went to PyCon Italia - my first conference since the start of the pandemic - and not only went climbing with some fellow Pythonistas but also met Jacopo, who's been helping me a lot with OctoPrint's security!
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114602174901579648" >}}
+
+    I've already got my ticket for PyCon Italia 2026 😊
+
+17. The refactoring work on OctoPrint since late 2024 finally paid out and I was able to print from the in progress Moonraker Connector Plugin for the first time.
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/114788854495540415" >}}
+
+18. I went to EuroPython in Prague again, and this time even gave a talk! Of course, support plushy Timothy was there too 😊
+
+    ![Me giving a talk at EuroPython 2025. Support plush donkey Timothy is sitting at the front of the podium.](europython-talk.jpg)
+
+19. In August I went to [WHY2025]() - my first camp in the Netherlands since 2009. We took the [Datenzwerge](https://datagnome.de) with us of course and deployed all 10 of them across the camp grounds. It was some very intense but awesome days!
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115038186227796448" >}}
+
+20. While at WHY I met [Erika Heidi](https://eheidi.dev/) whom I so far only had known virtually through GitHub Stars. We nerded out SO MUCH about tech, bouldering and 3d printing, it was a ton of fun :D
+
+    ![Me and Erika taking a selfie at WHY](why-erika.jpg)
+
+21. For my partner's birthday, I created yet another custom shirt utilizing the vinyl cutter and some HTV, this time with a logo from Dead Space. The design was based on in-game graphics, and weeding it was a bit of a nightmare 😂
+
+    ![Custom logo of the "Ishimura Planetside Team" from Dead Space](vinyl-dead-space.jpg)
+
+22. I also got my partner an OLED Steamdeck for his birthday, and therefore also had to create [new custom buttons](https://foosel.net/blog/2023-01-19-custom-steamdeck-buttons/). While at that, I also finally created some green ones for myself, and also created a whole new mold for the digi pad. Now my Steamdeck is also nicely customized 😊
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115119707999875452" >}}
+
+23. During this time, I also played through my personal Game of the Year, ["The Drifter"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1170570/The_Drifter/). That also spawned a whole Point-and-Click-Adventure phase for me again 😂
+
+24. Over the course of October I took part in another month long daily art challenge, "Cosytober". I once again painted 31 pixelart pictures, this time limiting myself to 64x64px and the ENDESGA77 palette.
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115468514303275578" >}}
+
+    I also started taking part in the [Pixelart Dailies](https://mastodon.art/@pixel_dailies) during October and kept that going well into November, when I ran out of energy.
+
+25. During Cosytober I also got myself a used Surface Go 2 tablet off of ebay and turned it into a pen enabled Linux based tablet, perfect for working on pixelart from the couch 😁
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115379554054628521" >}}
+
+    And yes, I know, I still owe this blog post 🙈
+
+26. In early December this year's hotsauce finally got finished and labeled. The chillies were planted in February and the fruits harvested in early October. As always, it was a project that was in progress throughout most of the year!
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115651620739382562" >}}
+
+27. Also in early December, I fell completely in love with the game ["Mars First Logistics"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1532200/Mars_First_Logistics/), which I can only recommend if you are into Lego Technic.
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115736693422407285" >}}
+
+28. And finally, shortly before Christmas I tried my hand at making Vanillekipferl for the first time, and greatly succeeded!
+
+    {{< toot "https://chaos.social/@foosel/115753009964627497" >}}
+
+And that's a wrap on 2025 I think! I probably once more missed some fun stuff or awesome stuff I did or experienced, but reading through all of that written down here it feels like less of a crappy year already 😬
+
+Like last year, this list was compiled with the help of my [Mastodon account](https://chaos.social/@foosel) and my picture gallery 😄 I'll see that I do one of these again in a year's time. For now I wish you a happy and safe 2026!