This year was also a busy one. There were fewer travels compared to last year. I went to Africa for the first time (Kenya) and twice to the US. 14 flights in total.
This year, I wrote an academic paper. From the research papers I have written so far, I received a total of 187 citations this year. Attended and spoke at three conferences. Gave three public lectures.
The most proud moment was presenting a paper at a conference attended by the giant in computer science, Dr. Donald Knuth. The conference was held in Venice, Italy on October 24, where I presented a paper on the modernization of parametric type designing introduced by Knuth in the 1970s.
This year, I made 687 source code commits. I am proud to be actively programming in my nineteenth year in the software engineering profession. Wrote eight articles on the blog.
Advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence have made significant impacts on the profession. Regularly used tools include Copilot and Claude. AI is not about taking away jobs but helping to dream and strive for more complex and challenging tasks. The time saved by AI was used to write and respond against its unconscious use. I studied and wrote articles on how to teach AI, what to consider when AI enters schools, etc. There are numerous thoughtless projects emerging to replace essential services in government systems and the education sector with chatbots.
In the field of free software, I worked on a few new projects and maintained previous ones. Introduced the Malini typeface for use. Released new versions of previous projects. It was exciting to see the fonts I designed being used in various films, from Manjummal Boys to Rifle Club.
It brings joy to see the fonts we created being used everywhere, from grocery packaging to newspapers, books, advertisements, offices, and government orders.
Learned another programming language: Go. And achieved above medium proficiency in it.
I took a two months sabatical in April and May. A very ambitious project idea was born during this time. I started working on it and it is still in progress. I hope to complete it very soon and write more about it.