# 2014 Year in Reverse Author: Zack M. Davis Originally published: 2015-01-04 Category: meta Tags: new year Canonical URL: https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2015/Jan/2014-year-in-reverse/ [(Previously.)](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/Dec/2013-year-in-reverse/) If I had any readers who still believe in the [A-theory of time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-series_and_B-series), I might say: 2014 is dead! Gone! Over! But since I probably don't have any readers like that (since I probably don't have any readers, full stop?), it's better to face the truth: 2014 is an immutable part of our universe; just because _we_ don't—get to?—have to?—experience it "now", doesn't mean it has "stopped" existing, any more than 2016 doesn't exist "yet" just because _we_ don't remember it. Anyway. In that two-thousand-and-fourteenth year of our Common Era, the first year of my life (that I feel comfortable admitting to), and (unfortunately) [not actually the Year of the Em Dash](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Dec/the-year-of-the-em-dash-not/), this blog saw _45_ posts and _40_ comments. Among these— The [weariness of being monolingual was confessed to](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/native-tongue/). We saw how to [convert Markdown to HTML within Emacs](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/convert-markdown-to-html-within-emacs-using-pandoc/) (a technique which is proving itself to be of some convenience to your author in preparing blog posts for publication). We considered one weird trick for [what to write when you can't infer the correct spelling of someone's name from what you heard](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/coffee-names/). It turned out that [the word _apology_ can mean different things](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/missing-words-vi/), and that [characters in popular 1990s science-fiction television programs aren't always completely honest in interpreting the moral law](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/yet-another-idle-wish-for-a-future-star-trek-series/). We were prompted to [prove why we will never write anything](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/an-exercise-for-the-writer-pretendant/). We had [a wild Halloween party](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Nov/last-friday-night/), noted [a baffling error message from Git](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Oct/my-favorite-error-message-this-year/) (_hint_: commit hooks and virtualenv), and [drowned our sorrows in tower defense](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Oct/friday-night-lies/). [The American coffee hegemon started serving pumpkin spice again](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Sep/pumpkin-spice/). There were [feelings](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Sep/worth/) of [inadequacy](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Aug/preemptive-low-status-behavior-is-not-always-a-good-idea/), at least one contrived [distraction from writing that ineffectually pretended](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jul/growl/) to not be a distraction, and the occasional [obscure pun](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jul/a-line-of-code-i-havent-found-an-excuse-to-use-yet/). We examined [where I stand](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jun/where-i-stand/) and were enlightened by some [standard advice](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jun/standard-advice/). There were more [feelings of inadequacy](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jun/lower-decks/). Even [conditional on the hypothesis that](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/May/a-short-story/) [all's well that ends well](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/May/sub-specie-aeternitatis/), I think it's important to [consider the condition](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Apr/reasons-for-seasons/) of people for which all is not looking to end well. We heard [a poem for OpenStack object storage](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Apr/ode-to-swift/), and [a lament against `git push --force`](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Mar/lethal-force/). I argued that [Twilight Sparkle is a disaster waiting to happen](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Mar/twilight-sparkle-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen/) and [confessed that perhaps too many of my life decisions are determined by what things GitHub happens to provide graphs for](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Feb/motivation/). [I ate too much ice-cream once](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jan/the-chocolate-caramel-sea-salt-betrayal/) and [explained how consistent hashing works](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2014/Jan/consistent-hashing/). And as for that _other_ nearby immutable span of reality, the one called 2015? Well, _that_ would be telling (and [I can't know that from here](https://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/Dec/thinking-about-writing/)).