If you’ve been following my YouTube channel for a while now, you’ll remember that I used to make yearly personal rewind videos in the past, but I’ve stopped doing that lately. Instead, starting this year, I’m planning on posting such rewinds here on my blog. So here’s the first one. Since It’s the last day of 2023, and it’s time to look back on how this past year has been for me.
This was overall a wonderful year for me, and I’m really pleased with all the progress I’ve made this year. I have been able to tick most of my 2023 goals and catch up on a lot of stuff I’ve been wanting to do for a while.
Statistics
Let’s start off with Analytics across various platforms. On YouTube, I was able to reach my goal of 2,500 Subscribers, and my channel is currently sitting at about 2,600 Subscribers. However, I only posted four videos this year, which is the least number of videos I have put out in one year, since I first joined YouTube, eight years ago. I’m definitely planning to be more consistent and to put out some amazing new videos for next year, and I really hope you are just as excited as I am about the videos that are in the making right now.
Things have been much brighter in terms of my website though, 2023 had a great start with the first few months having more traffic on my website than the last two years combined. I’m ending 2023 with over 200,000 new visitors having visited my site in addition to which I have also gained over 140,000 new Siri Shortcut installs this year. These are things I am really proud of, and I’m really happy so many people were able to use my shortcuts and enhance their workflows. I would also like to thank everyone who bought me a coffee this year, I really do appreciate it!
Starlight Apps LLP
I finally got around to forming my very own LLP in June, allowing me to publish my apps to the app store. I was able to launch two amazing apps for everyone to use for free; Linkeeper and snApp. Together, both apps have accumulated over 5,000 users, which has been a great start to my iOS development journey. I’ve received incredible feedback from a lot of users, about how they enjoy using these apps, and what they’d like to see added to these apps, and I’ve been working hard on fulfilling a lot of these user demands. I have also continued to work with clients to deliver amazing apps for them as well. I am so incredibly excited for what is to come next year, especially with visionOS and the apps I have in store for this new platform. I hope to be able to publish even more apps, and make my current apps even better than they already are in this coming year.
Academics
This was a great year for me at school. I was able to score 97.2% in my Grade 10 board examinations, meeting my goal of at least 95%. I also moved to a new and better school for my IB Diploma, and I’m loving the course so far. The IB is a course I’ve always wanted to join, and I’m so glad I’m finally pursuing it. I have also gotten a chance to be a part of the student council for this academic year as a house prefect, and I’ve already been doing a bunch of wonderful things there. Lastly, earlier in December, I gave the Digital SAT for the first time, and was able to score 1540, which I’m really happy about. Overall, it’s been a great year for me in terms of academics, and I’m hoping that next year is just as good, if not better.
Personal Projects
Every year, I love taking up a big new project to build. This year’s project was a little more special for me, and I had been planning this out for a long time now (since 2020!!). I finally got the time this year, and was able to work on it. I completely renovated and designed my room from the ground up, building my dream desk setup with a large standing desk and shelves on the walls. I am so pleased with how this turned out, and I’ve been using it for months and it has been a wonderful experience. This was a fun and slightly challenging project to work on, since I also had to make sure I can accommodate a large table and a full sized bed in my room, and I came up with a solution I’m happy with. I still have a few more projects to be worked on, and I’m hoping I’ll finish working on them in 2024.
Miscellaneous
I also got to do a lot of other things this year, which don’t really fall into any of the categories above. So I’ll list them out here
I started learning Spanish in July, and I’m nearly done with A1.
I went on my first international trip in nearly a decade, to Switzerland and Austria, and also went on a trip to Madhya Pradesh and Goa. This was refreshing since I haven’t really been to such trips with my family in quite a few years.
I also upgraded to the M2 MacBook Air and iPhone 15 this year, two devices I’m really loving so far, and I’ll be reviewing them shortly.
I have explored tons of new Swift frameworks this year, one of the major ones being iCloud sharing and adding iCloud collaboration to an app for a client project. I also learnt how to use a lot of other third party APIs including ones for analytics, purchases and also APIs for LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini.
I also added a lot of updates to my Siri Shortcuts, with a major update to the iFrames shortcut, featuring the iFrames API, something that a lot of power users have come to appreciate.
Started learning Python basics
I participated in two hackathons for the first time, and ranked 10th and 2nd respectively.
I’ve also been into community service lately, things like helping local social organisations, beach cleanups, fundraising, and more.
I also attended the Apple BKC Store Opening, and saw Tim Cook for the first time.
I am so incredibly excited for what’s in store for 2024, and I’ve made a list of goals for me to achieve this year, and here it is:
More videos on YouTube
Ship apps and updates more often
Win Swift Student Challenge
45 Predicted Grade in IBDP
Get into a top university
I’ll be here at the end of next year once again, and we’ll go over whether I was able to achieve all these goals or not, until then, this blog post shall hold me accountable.
I hope you enjoyed 2023 just as much as I did. Wishing you a great start to a wonderful new year!