Archive: Month: December 2017

I love adventofcode. It’s definitely something I look forward to (with some apprehension!) each December. Last year I was playing around with Elixir and did the solutions in that. This year I was (am) trying to get a little bit better at JavaScript, so, that was the language I chose.

What is Advent of code? Well, it’s a series of smallish programming puzzles. There are 25 released during advent (one each day). Each day has 2 parts, an easier and then harder. The second part is always related to the first, but, just with a twist: you might have to scale it up, rework it etc. Also, they have fun little stories around them. This year Santa’s microprocessor had stalled trying to create the huge naughty & nice list.. so, we were beamed into the computer and had to try fix it. Fun times.

I’m not sure my JavaScript actaully improved all that much, a bit I’m sure. I did get somewhat lazy towards the end and was just trying to get the (damn things!) completed rather than do them properly. Still, I got there in the end. I did look for hints on, I think, 2 occasions. I probably would have got there in the end, but, some of these problems are way outside any kind of “normal” programming I do.

I will go back and look at other peoples’ nicer solutions and learn a bit there. If you’re interested, my solutions are on GitHub.

Anyway, thanks heaps to Eric Wastl for running it again this year, it was lots of fun.

via GIPHY

A few years ago, a creative kiwi – @websam came up with the idea of running a secret-santa (kriskindl) on a country-wide scale. Basically you sign up on Twitter and you are allocated a random person to send a gift too (it’s all quite anonymous). It has now been taken over and run by the new zealand post secretsanta elves. My friend @alison encouraged me to do it, and I’m super glad I did – it was great fun. There’s a TedX talk of him explaining about it too.

It is random who you get, I was allocated a young lady from Auckland. I was completely terrified. I had nothing in common really. Still, I could see she was into dance & theatre and colour and unicorns & the TV show stranger things. So, I got her some awesome socks and a stranger things figurine. It seemed to go down well enough :)

My own secretsanta was….. ridiculously generous. I think the budget was supposed to be about $30-40 or something, and mine went way over the top! Super generous, very kind, I was really very touched by the lovely letter too. I really need to up my game for next year – that’s for sure! Awesome to finally have a whiskey flask!