Happy New Year everybody!

I'll be honest I didn't know what to say other than thank you really. So thank you to everyone who supported my work at Kanji Koohii throughout the last year. You know who you are :)

Things are going relatively well over here. I thought I should clarify why I didn't go ahead with a server move yet, and not for the foreseeable future.

The main reason is that I think the most reliable way to keep providing this service, is a "fully managed" solution. I have a decent amount of free time right now, but it's just difficult to spend this time at the computer, trying to solve all kind of hosting & Linux related questions. I'd much rather fix a bug on the site than spend tens of hours figuring out why package xyz is broken, why the SQL server didn't restart, and so on. And even on a "fully managed" server, I expect to be many new gotchas that I've never had to think about.

Last October as well I had an exchange with the hosting company. They weren't happy that I was storing backups on the shared server (to be fair I was using a LOT of space...). This was against their TOS. But it's also a good thing, it let me know that they are looking at these servers. And this applies also to other websites on the server. Long story short I expect there will be some hiccups here and there this year, due to sharing a server with other websites. But overall, we've seen these server issues go away within a few hours to a few days. I think this is acceptable. I see it as a trade-off for having not to worry too much about the site being online.

In regard to the development of the website there are likely to be no major new features coming this year. I expect to have to catch up still a lot in my employment as a Front End Engineer. Unfortunately while I learn many new tricks in front end (TypeScript, Nuxt, etc.) ... the website would need a full rewrite in order to really take advantage of them. So if any new developments happen this year it will be incremental, utility kind of things.

Again I want to thank everyone for your support. I'm still here,and still looking after the site. I don't see a reason for interrupting this service anytime soon.

On this line of thought, I am reminded about the forum. Looking back, I can honestly say that closing the forum was a good decision for me. Managing a community was stressful, no matter if I tried to take distance with the help of moderators. And if I took more distance, then it was less meaningful for me. It was simply time to move on.

I am happy in retrospect to see that the site is doing just fine. The support on Patreon and via JapanesePod101 is about the same really. So my hunch was correct, in that I believed the forum was serving a different audience. There was nothing wrong with the forum per se, it just wasn't what I originally created since the forum was initially meant to let the Kanji Koohii community talk together. Anyways, I've turned the page now, but I am glad that it worked out just fine. Likely, that many readers right now don't even know what I am talking about. And many of you already have communities you're used to I'm sure, such as reddit, and big language forums out there.

I currently have a fun, admittedly geeky little project of updating my PC. I've been running an i5 3570K since 2012 and it's still running pretty good :) Honestly I wish I'd just keep using it. I thought I spent a little much back then but looking back this build lasted me almost 7 years (to be fair I replaced a GTX 960 with a GTX 1080 a cpl years ago). Lately I've been discovering VR with the Oculus Quest and a "link" cable ... and that's where the CPU is starting to show its age. This is still pretty new territory so I find it really exciting to see the applications, and where this technology is going. I'll be honest for me it's really funny, I typically go from "wooOOOow" when I put the headset on, to "meh" when I take it off. Obviously the technology is still early days, but sometimes VR just really works and when it does it's really cool.

Anyway not too sure where I'm going with this.

I wish everyone the best with your goals in 2020, whichever they are. Remember to enjoy the journey :)