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Hello 2018

Posted Updated
By Chase Ling
3 min read
Hello 2018

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Image by Cara Shen

Year after year, whenever the end of the year comes around, I am reminded of how quickly time passes. Throughout this year, I kept reminding myself to keep learning and to stay in touch with new things. Now it is time to look back on my 2017.

WeChat Mini Program

At the beginning of the year, I started developing a WeChat Mini Program version of the company project. Although the design and interactions were simplified, it still counted as my first formal front-end project. Unfortunately, for various reasons, it never made it to launch.

Trip to Japan

Before setting off, I was full of anticipation for the trip. More than cherry blossoms, what I wanted to understand was Japanese culture and society, because I had once seriously considered living and working in Japan.

A 7-day trip to Japan was busy and fulfilling. Starting from Hangzhou, I visited Osaka Shinsaibashi, Nara Kasuga Taisha, Kyoto Kinkaku-ji, Mount Fuji, Oshino Hakkai in Yamanashi, Ueno Park in Tokyo, Ginza in Tokyo, Kamakura in Kanagawa, Enoshima in Kanagawa, and Peace Park in Kanagawa.

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Movies

This year I watched 22 newly released movies.

  • Logan: a great way to sell nostalgia (Douban 8.3)
  • Ghost in the Shell: even Scarlett could not save this movie (Douban 6.5)
  • Get Out: the director turned out to be Jordan Peele from The Brothers (Douban 7.5)
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: the same popcorn-standard sequel as the first one (Douban 8.1)
  • Alien: Covenant: Fassbender, please begin your performance (Douban 7.3)
  • The Unity of Heroes: Lu Zhengyu clearly put a lot of effort into it, looking forward to his next work (Douban 6.1)
  • Wolf Warrior 2: to be honest, I had no intention of watching it (Douban 7.2)
  • Gintama: if you are not an anime fan, skip it (Douban 7.1)
  • Kingsman: The Golden Circle: did Matthew Vaughn secretly rewrite the script? (Douban 7.0)
  • Blade Runner 2049: nearly three hours of artistic enjoyment (Douban 8.5)
  • The Bad Genius: do we really have to be politically correct? (Douban 8.2)
  • Thor: Ragnarok: the hammer guy actually looks pretty handsome with short hair (Douban 7.5)
  • Justice League: DC had a strong hand but wasted it (Douban 6.6)
  • Coco: family, dreams, and growth (Douban 9.1)
  • Legend of the Demon Cat: maybe the novel is even better (Douban 6.9)

Swift

At the end of May, Swift was finally introduced into the project. Before that, I had been cautious about Swift, mainly because of the instability of its syntax. Overall, bringing Swift into the project was more beneficial than harmful.

React Native

This year I continued learning React Native and open-sourced the noder-react-native project, a cnodejs forum client built with React Native. I handled the entire project myself, from design to product to development, and Sketch helped a lot on the design side.

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Ukulele

I am glad that near the end of the year I managed to rediscover my interest in learning the ukulele. Relearning “Castle in the Sky” was much easier than I expected, and I may soon be able to play the accompaniment to “Loveing” fluently. The Dm chord is no longer hard to press either.

Tutoring

Throughout the year, I intermittently guided my cousin in learning iOS development. Unlike a blog, which expresses ideas in writing, face-to-face guidance requires explaining knowledge in a clear and easy-to-understand way. Clearly, I am not very good at that, but in the end my clumsy guidance still helped him improve quite a bit.

A Fresh Start

There are still many unknown things waiting for me to explore in 2018. Hello, 2018.

This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.