I’d like to wish all family, friends, regular readers, commenters and all other visitors Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year or any other Holiday Greetings you prefer! As usual, I prefer Happy Newtonmas because Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, but I’m very democratic in that respect and let everyone celebrate the the holiday they like.

2024 was not as terrible for our family as the previous year was, but a relative still passed away and several people got sick for a while. Including myself, not just the usual colds and not even Covid – but a high blood pressure problem appeared and now I have to take medication for the first time in my life. I’m fine now, but it feels a little bit like age is creeping up on me. But everyone is doing okay considering the circumstances and as I wrote last year, just having a roof over your head and not being broke or hungry is maybe something we all can be thankful for.

In 2024, I once again concentrated on doing the things I love and staying healthy… which was, as mentioned above, not entirely successful. The only thing I’ve been really consistently doing is photography and I still post daily on my Photo Blog. I even got a new digital camera body this year, which I have actually barely mentioned – but it made me take more photos again and I got some very nice series which I’m still posting right now. I also did a lot more analog photography and film developing has become a routine by now. I also acquired two new smaller analog cameras as lighter alternatives for my Canon A-1, one of which I already wrote about. Film photography is something I’ll definitively continue in the future!

The only major other thing I did with my websites this year was to rename DVDLog to Cinetales! I actually wrote a whole series of short reviews about this year’s Futurama season and also posted a few new disc-based reviews. I haven’t really had time to continue after October but there are still a lot of unfinished articles and translations, so I will not run out of material. I’ve also occasionally bought some new Blu-Rays this year and there are also some streaming things I really want to write about.

This Blog is very difficult to maintain because I have a lot of ideas and drafts in the making but never time to complete them. There is a long, half-ready article about the changing social media landscape in the works but things keep changing even more sometimes for the worse, but also for the better and I can’t bring myself to actually post it because it might be too political for my taste. What I really want to write about is more fun things like games and I actually want to write some game reviews after I got my writing drive back this year with Cinetales.

I’m also still very busy working in the Camera Store which is still doing well, but politics really hurt our Christmas sales this year. There was still a lot of work and we still have a lot of great stuff in our eBay store – that what has not already sold before the Christmas holidays! To tell the truth, due to the political situation the sales in December have gone noticeably down, but we are still getting by.  If anyone wants to support me by giving me job security, please consider buy something from us – this would help a lot and do something good for a shop that has become an institution in our region.

Music is sadly one of the things that completely fell behind this year. I haven’t stopped playing piano, guitar, bass and keyboards, but due to all the circumstances I really had no energy to do something meaningful. I haven’t even bought one new instrument this year! But I’m working on relocating my big keyboard into the living room to complete my recording studio, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It might be a while but once I have everything in place and got the studio spaghetti sorted out, my musical energy will come back.

CosmoQuest is still going strong with Escape Velocity Space News and while there development of citizen science projects has been slow due to funding problems, a new volunteer program is in the works and should go public soon. Once again there was a Hangout-A-Thon this year that was a lot of fun (you can even spot me in a couple of panels!) and brought in some much needed donations. Astronomy Cast is now 18 years old and Pamela Gay and Fraser Cain still broadcast the live recording of the podcast almost every week except for a summer hiatus. Fraser Cain is also still running Universe Today and while the Weekly Space Hangout was sadly retired last year, he is still producing lots of videos and the live broadcast Open Space on his Youtube Channel.  And there’s also 365 Days of Astronomy which was supposed to last for one year in the International Year of Astronomy in 2009 but is now still running as a community-driven project collecting the best astronomy and science related podcasts. And encompassing everything is a big community

The utter and complete demolition of the social media landscape that haunted the internet in the previous years actually turned into a great rebuilding this year. After Elon Musk went into politics and bought himself a government, people fled the Ex-Twitter in masses and especially BlueSky got popular very fast. I still like the quieter Mastodon but I only started with BlueSky a year ago and it works as good for me, if not better, as the Fediverse. The “new” social networks have a really good atmosphere full of hope and opportunity

Once again, I’m in Berlin right now over the holidays and this year the train was actually perfectly on time – a welcome change after the almost seven hour ride last year. A lot has changed here since my Aunt passed away last year, but it’s all for the better and my Uncle and my Cousin have kept our home base in Kreuzberg alive in the best way possible. There will be good food, good company, a lot of relaxing and if the weather permits even some more photography.

Will I ever get around to post more on this blog next year? I really don’t know, but I do have a few articles in the draft folder and of course my daily photos over on my Photography Blog will go on even over the holidays. As usual, you can also also follow me over on all the social media outlets – Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook and even Threads are all getting the photo crossposts from the blog to cover all of the outlets. The “master” version of most everything I post and write will still be on my own websites, just in case a whole social network goes down or is somehow compromised.

Have a nice end-of-year holiday, everyone – and again thank you especially everyone again who helped me to get through this difficult year! You know who you are and it would have been much more difficult without all of you!

MERRY NEWTONMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!