Coffee Space 
Merry Christmas and a happy new year! This is a continuation from the first Christmas I did this in 2020 and continued in 2021. I’ve somewhat changed up the format slightly, but the idea of reviewing the year and looking forward to the future year is the same.
Generally, the year started chaotically, with me coming back from New Zealand to the UK. It then went frustratingly slow as I looked for work for several months, and it then went insanely busy after finding full-time work. And my-oh-my has it been busy.
The following is a review of the previous goals and predictions made.
The following is a review of the previous goals…
Fitness - The intention this year is to increase exercise dramatically, now that I have transitioned into a ‘normal’ and sustainable diet. I will post more about this at a later date.
This got sidelined by an injury, then the COVID-19 vaccine gave me inflammation issues that stopped be from running. This was outside of my control, but I did also then relax my diet significantly, which was inside my control. I have since spent the last 4 months (at the time of writing) re-working my diet and in the new year I will significantly step up exercise again.
Travel - At some point it would be nice to actually be able to go home to the UK!
Success - I finally managed to spend a Christmas in the UK.
RoboCup World Cup - I appear to have a viable path to be able to go to Thailand, Bangkok in July of 2022… I’m not holding my breath, but it would be very good to be able to make some more progress in the robotics space again!
Success - I was able to attend the World Cup. The team did not perform as well as we would hope, but it was the first major event since the COVID-19 pandemic and it was super cool to see everybody again.
Balance Engine - A long-standing project of mine has been to work on humanoid motion, and towards this end I finally made some time to begin working on a balance engine. I’m making some nice progress in this space and hope to be able to publish some results in the coming months.
I’ve made some limited progress with this, but it has been mostly paused. It’s actually quite important now that this work makes some more progress as we really need something to fill this space.
PhD - This needs to essentially be done by July - I run out of time and money, and to be quite frank, patience. I have other parts of my life that I really need to be getting on with!
I unfortunately ran out of time and money a lot sooner than expected, I need to take a large re-think of where to take this next. I still do not have a solid plan as what to do regarding this.
Linux PDA - This is something I’ve wanted to build for years now. I finally have a viable path forwards to build this device and will hopefully find time to start making progress on it!
I have not yet had time to work on this project. Things have simply been too chaotic.
I now have two paths towards creating this device, the 0x64 Linux SBC and another commercial product. The marrying of these two boards provides the basis for a Linux PDA.
The following is a review of the previous predictions… I’ve grouped them together into categories.
COVID-19 restrictions - I believe these will mostly be lifted in the next 6 months. I believe that Omicron is essentially nature’s vaccination, it spreads fast and kills less. Speaking to experts in the field, they essentially believe that all successful variations from now will be less deadly. Given that Omicron appears to have an exceptionally low hospitalisation rate, I think we are well on our way towards being in the recovery now.
This was a very good prediction, I’m quite happy with this. There is still some resistance to coming out of COVID-19 restrictions, for example during travel, but otherwise things are mostly normal.
COVID-19 vaccinations - They arrived too late. Since the Delta variant the vaccine companies were trying to create a Delta-specific version and were not able to create one in time. Now we have the Omicron variant and they need to reset their efforts. I really suspect this will also not happen in time, but also that demand for vaccines will decrease as the death rate massively decreases. Because governments are slow, it will likely take them a while to figure out that this is what the general population believe.
I think this was again a very good prediction. People keep saying “getting a vaccine makes it less bad when you get it” - tell that to China’s CCP who have a high vaccination rate and their hospitals are now overrun. It is extremely well documented that the alpha variant based vaccine was less and less effective against newer variants. The very fact that it did nothing to prevent spread or infection rates means that people’s immune systems are not prepared, and therefore its doing little to nothing.
I really wish we would all just stop lying about this - we completely messed up our response to the pandemic.
China tensions - These will continue to get worse. The CCP’s economy will continue to not meet growth expectations, their property market bubble will continue to worsen and they will look weaker and weaker. To re-direct attention they will look to externalise their problems, i.e. with Taiwan and the US.
China’s economy is definitely in trouble, but they have not yet made a move on Taiwan. It feels as though if China is going to make their move, it will be very soon.
Russia tensions - The EU and Russia have been in tensions recently, but I believe this is just Putin positioning and taking advantage (which from his perspective, he should do). In this case I believe that it makes sense tensions will decrease as Russia’s bargaining position decreases. The only future issues I see is a Russia and China collaboration.
Yeah… I was a little wrong on this prediction. Putin invaded Ukraine and there is zero indication that it may slow down just yet. I think if the recession had hit as early as I had thought, he wouldn’t have had the cash to carry out his war. It may be the economy as yet that kills Putin’s invasion.
Global recession - You can’t tell an entire economy to not work for a year, print tonnes of money and not expect a recession, these debts need to be paid. A lot of people will lose money and in response people will rush to pull their money out at the wrong possible time.
I was slightly off on my timing for this, it is now believed that the recession will kick off first quarter 2023. It’s difficult to say exactly why it was so delayed, it may be more complex than I could possibly write about here.
Some advice for the new year - prepare for hard times. Have cash on hand, reduce your bills, have spare food for a really rough week.
Merry Christmas, and hopefully a happy new year!