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June 2024 Retrospective

The Good

Started watching Delicious in Dungeon

Delicious in Dungeon is a very charming anime based on a manga of the same name. It is effectively a Dungeons & Dragons campaign but the most important aspect of their adventure is how they party manages to feed themselves. I know that last sentence sounds insane but after four episodes I am completely infatuated with Delicious in Dungeon and cannot wait to see what they cook up next.

Watched season 3 of Welcome to Wrexham

Last month I wrote about how much I adored Welcome to Wrexham and after watching season 3 those feelings have not changed. I would still recommend it to every single person on this planet, regardless of how much you're interested in soccer (aka football).

Honourable Mentions

WWDC 2024

Even though I wasn't too keen on the WWDC 2024 Keynote, Apple continues to do a fantastic job with their prerecorded WWDC sessions. They've put a lot more effort into their official documentation but sometimes you're only going to truly understand how something works by hearing one of the programmers talk about it firsthand.

Below are the sessions that I managed to watch this month.

  1. What's new in Swift
  2. SwiftUI essentials
  3. Meet Swift Testing
  4. Go further with Swift Testing
  5. What's new in SwiftUI
  6. Bring expression to your app with Genmoji
  7. Migrate your app to Swift 6
  8. Bring your app's core features to users with App Intents
  9. Enhance your UI animations and transitions
  10. What's new is Xcode 16
  11. Demystify SwiftUI containers
  12. Go small with Embedded Swift
  13. Consume noncopyable types in Swift
  14. Create custom visual effects with SwiftUI
  15. Work with windows in SwiftUI
  16. A Swift Tour: Explore Swift's features and design
  17. Explore the Swift on Server ecosystem
  18. Explore Swift performance
  19. Meet TabletopKit for visionOS

Started reading Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

I am about halfway through Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It is proving to be a more difficult read than anticipated because the story is told in a very disjointed manner. Chapters don't just jump between characters but sometimes even years or decades. There have been numerous occasions where I'm looking to forward to the next part of a particular tale and we suddenly shift elsewhere for several chapters. Heck the title of the book is the most egregious example of this. I thought I was reading a novel about the murder of a woman which was true for the first two chapters. But since then that murder has effectively been ignored and replaced with an incredibly detailed account of The Troubles. As interesting is that is proving to be (most of the time) four or five hours in I'm still on pins and needles as to who murdered Jean McConville.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

It has been over two years since I last played Elden Ring. With the release of Shadow of the Erdtree this month I made the decision to start a new character to help refresh my memory before jumping into the DLC. I went with the very standard strength based, two-handed melee build this time around thinking that it would allow me to blast through the base game and get to Shadow of the Erdtree.

As of this writing I have played 44 hours and just unlocked the ability to play the DLC. I naively thought my second playthrough would be faster than my first but this is proving to be hilariously incorrect. I think I'm still six "main" bosses away from beating the base game and based on what I have read I'm still underleveled for Shadow of the Erdtree. But come hell or high water I am going to beat it in July!

Back on the bouldering bandwagon

For the first time since before the pandemic I am a member of a rock climbing gym. I haven't gotten back to the same routine of going three times a week but I plan to rectify that in July.

The Bad

In a surprising turn of events, I actually don't have anything to complain about this month. But I promise I'll do my best and find things to whine about in July.

Review June Goals

July Goals

#MonthlyRetrospective