2021

First things first: after 668 days of dating my girlfriend, we got our marriage certificate on October 31.

I once thought I wouldn’t consider marriage before 30, but when you meet a sensible and understanding partner, you have to act decisively. It’s all about letting things take their natural course…

Worth mentioning is that we were both quite calm about getting married. There was no overwhelming excitement, nor any indescribable emotion of “I can’t believe this day has come.” We saw it more as a small milestone in our journey, with plenty more exciting things to look forward to…

After leaving the civil affairs bureau, we found a nearby hotpot place for a small celebration, called “Happy Hotpot.” (The pandemic turned all honeymoon plans into empty talk, much to my chagrin…)

Also, our family gained two new members: Nikki and Cola, a pair of British Shorthair sisters. Their parents are a Silver Shaded British Shorthair and an American Shorthair Tabby.

Nikki is the younger one, with a lighter coat of mixed grey and white, maxing out the Silver Shaded traits. Cola is the older sister, with a darker grey and white coat, her face leaning more towards the tabby side.

They were just over a month old when we brought them home and hadn’t yet learned the burying-poop skill from their mother. I had to teach them by demonstration. Fortunately, the older sister was smart and picked it up quickly, while the younger one just clumsily pawed at the litter box. Even now, at six months old, she still hasn’t learned…

Nikki and Cola’s arrival has brought immense joy to our household. Even when doing nothing else, just watching them play fills us with happiness and a sense of bliss.

My partner was initially indifferent to cats, even slightly averse, but as it turns out, no one can escape the law of “true fragrance”…

In the picture below, Nikki is on the left and Cola is on the right. ღ( ´･ᴗ･` ) Sending love.

At work, dealing with various commercial secrets, classified projects, business architecture reviews, and solution designs, along with endless meetings and solution reviews, has been quite draining.

Complaints aside, the work still needs to be done. Cryptographic module development, security solution design, penetration testing, vulnerability analysis: these all fall under information security, yet they are quite scattered. It’s easy to get lost in the details and drift from the core focus. It’s still necessary to be business-oriented and focus on key breakthroughs.

Also, while researching solutions, I happened upon some excellent articles on cryptography that were very beneficial. I’d like to recommend one here:TLS Protocol Analysis and Modern Encrypted Communication Protocol Design.

The article clearly introduces the structure and design philosophy of the TLS protocol, making it great for organizing scattered cryptographic knowledge. Some of the linked resources are also very helpful for improving cryptographic applications.

Ps: Information security is a very broad topic. Setting aside major areas like operations management, the technical side alone includes penetration testing, Web, Android, iOS, reverse engineering, encryption/decryption, and many other sub-fields. It’s really difficult to master multiple areas, as each direction requires significant effort to study deeply.

Oh right, I also honed my C++ skills a bit and built some wheels. In my spare time going forward, I plan to learn some front-end and back-end technologies, mainly considering starting with Python and Go. My primary job will remain focused on cryptographic applications. I’ll keep an eye on security branches like penetration testing and vulnerabilities, but don’t plan to invest too much energy there.

My reading time was limited this year. Counting it up, I finished 7 books, though I did read quite a few blog posts.

The most interesting was”The World Gets Better Day by Day”. The book covers an astonishing range of topics: investment, psychology, society, humanities, art, politics, and more. It captures the wisdom that Xueqiu founder Fang Sanwen “talked out” with smart investors. Written as dialogue, it is easy to read and highly immersive, full of viewpoints where consensus and conflict coexist. Quite interesting.

The hardest read was”Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective”. It is a big, comprehensive tome, so it is tough to get through. More often I turned to blogs for targeted reading, and my top recommendations areCoolShellanddraveness. The articles by these two experts are nothing short of a pleasure to read. Every piece is polished and substantial. Even reading articles unrelated to the technologies I use at work brings something valuable.

My strongest recommendation is”Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World”, which completely removed the vague “guilt” I used to feel after playing games. I hope every parent gets a chance to read it.

I also re-read”The Three-Body Problem”. Eliminate human tyranny; the world belongs to Trisolaris.

In my free time I played quite a few games across mobile, PC, and console.

For mobile, I recommend a tower defense game, Kingdom Rush. The quality is high and the level difficulty is tuned just right. From the moment I started until I finished it, I had no desire to play anything else…

I played Honor of Kings on and off with my partner. I have to say the game tests your mentality and is easy to get worked up over. It is best enjoyed in small doses.

I picked up JX3 again, this time with two close real-life friends. We do dailies and play arena together. Our contact had dropped off sharply after graduation, so it is nice that the game lets us get together regularly again.

On weekends and holidays, when we have more free time, we try out different games together: Don’t Starve, Left 4 Dead, Genshin Impact, Horizon…

Recently I added another form of entertainment: grabbing free games from Epic : D

I also bought Ring Fit Adventure, mainly so my partner can exercise at home. I tried it a few times after work these past few days, and the intensity is decent. It feels like it could replace running outdoors and going to the gym.

Worth mentioning: my badminton skills have improved noticeably. Watching videos and one-on-one training helped a lot. I also bought an Astrox 77. When skill falls short, gear makes up for it…

Oh right, I bought some Chinese concept stocks : D

Looking back, I found that the things I can clearly remember are few and far between. A year just slipped by like that. But after listing out these events one by one and thinking them over, it seems I did quite a lot. At least it wasn’t time wasted.

(ps: After writing the above, I didn’t publish it right away. I browsed some annual summaries from people I follow on Twitter and checked updates from a few bloggers I’ve long followed. I couldn’t help but feel that compared with excellent people, I still need to push myself harder.)

The motivation for writing this summary came from yesterday, when I was browsingdraveness’sblog and re-read his2020 Summary: Getting Better. I was deeply impressed.

I have never planned or even thought about what kind of impact I could have on others, the tech community, or, more broadly, the world. I rarely make long-term or short-term life plans for myself. My mindset has always been to take things as they come and let things be. At best, I make a schedule when studying. I guess “lacking ambition” describes my mentality perfectly…

After reading draveness’s article, I felt I should make some changes: become more proactive, more organized, and love the world a bit more.

Setting overly ambitious goals right away makes it easy to give up, so I plan to start with writing and personal management. First, I’ll keep maintaining my long-neglected blog. Whether to write purely technical articles or also record life’s trivialities, I’ll figure it out as I go. For personal management, I plan to learn about OKRs and try to make a reasonable plan for my energy, with regular reviews, so I don’t live my days in a muddle.

And so, this article came to be. I wonder what mindset I’ll have when I look back at these rough words in the future. Here’s hoping I’ll have made further progress by then.