I'd like to revive this "series"^[1] but have been unsure how for some time. In the spirit of digital gardening, I think I'm going to just release what I have, and try to revisit things later. In the long term, I'd like to turn this into some kind of annual stats page, rather than a blog post; a proper summary of the whole year. But for now, this will have to do.

Music

2023 was a good year for listening habits, but not so great for live experiences. Spotify's stats this year were awful, providing very little useful information, instead focusing on "vibes"^[2]. Thankfully, Last.fm really stepped up their game to fill the void, with a completely refactored "year report" that gets top marks for both substance and presentation 👏

• I listened to 8,896 songs in total; up 59% from 2022, setting a new all-time record for a full year 🎉
• I spent 21 days & 22 hours of my year listening to recorded music (16 days and 8 hours oh which were via Spotify, putting me in the top 16% of their users). Apparently this is equivalent to 350 cassette tapes, or enough music to last the trip to the moon and back three full times 🤯
• That time was filled by 3,202 individual songs (many clearly on repeat), an increase of 69%^[3] compared to 2022.
• These tracks spanned 1,110 albums and 762 different artists, 52% of whom I'd never listened to before.
• My most music-filled day was the 20^th December, when I listened to 132 tracks in a single sitting – as per usual, this coincided with Christmas decorating 😉 – though Spotify claims the 19th February was the day I spent the most time listening to music overall, clocking in 483 minutes or over eight hours! I think that was the day we were sorting out wedding playlists 😂
• Away from the computer, I attended seven gigs (and missed seeing Goldfish twice 😅):
  • Philharmonia Orchestra (16/02)
  • Sam Sweeney (08/02)
  • Belfast Tradfest Vocal Session (26/02)
  • Belfast Tradfest After Party (25/02)
  • Puuluup (20/05)
  • Diode (24/11)
  • Young'uns (23/12)
• My record collection gained 16 additions (15 LPs and 1 EP; no CDs), including three purchased from gigs directly. I was unfortunate enough to end up with the censored version of The Offspring's Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace and am still waiting on the replacement^[4]. I have also technically bought Marvel Years' Nowhere But Up, but haven't managed to work out how to pick it up from the US just yet 😉

Top 10 Albums (2023)

Numbers in brackets show the total number of times I listened to any track from that album.

1. Hope, NF (354)
2. Cracker Island, Gorillaz (309)
3. Escape That, Sam Sweeney (230)
4. Viimane suusataja, Puuluup (219)
5. Clouds (The Mixtape), NF (216)
6. If Summer Was A Sound, Goldfish (205)
7. Hymns, MC Xander (192)
8. Canaries in a Coal Mine, Bukahara (170)
9. Tales of the Tides, Bukahara (157)
10. Hybrid, Swingrowers (150)

A prediction for next year: Never Going Under by Circa Waves to be in the top ten. It's a late entry in 2023 and yet already sitting inside my top 15 for the whole damn year, so I think it might do numbers in the spring.

I also ranked #3 globally for listening to Sam Sweeney's Escape That on Last.fm, an accolade I'm more than happy to hold 😁

Top 10 Artists (2023)

Numbers in brackets show the total number of times I listened to any track by that artist.

1. NF (577)
2. Goldfish (468)
3. Gorillaz (396)
4. Bukahara (335)
5. Sam Sweeney (247)
6. Tom Cardy (237)
7. Puuluup (223)
8. MC Xander (198)
9. Swingrowers (195)
10. Connor Price (181)

Tom Cardy and Connor Price hitting top ten artists was not too surprising, but very unusual for bands to get this high up without also charting in either the album or (for Cardy) track lists; just shows how much both output singles and EPs over albums. (Though, to be fair, Tom Cardy's Big Dumb Idiot was sitting at #12 in my album chart, and Connor Price's Spin the Globe was #23, so it's not like they're completely absent.)

Tom Cardy was also my highest ranked "new" artist (I guess I must have heard a track or two from NF in the past, though I couldn't tell you where/when).

Top 10 Tracks (2023)

Numbers in brackets show the total number of times I listened to a song.

1. Hope, NF (57)
2. Cracker Island, Gorillaz (56)
3. Motto, NF (54)
4. New Gold, Gorillaz (42)
5. Chasing Tomorrow, Goldfish (40)
6. Clouds, NF (39)
7. Baby Queen, Gorillaz (36)
8. Spinnin, Connor Price (33)
9. Happy, NF (33)
10. Silent Running, Gorillaz (33)

With two albums in the top five and a clean sweep of #1 spots across all three categories, I think it's fair to say that NF was my artist of the year. Spotify has me ranked in the top 1% of fans for him as well, which is saying something for an artist of that size 😲

Top Artists (All Time)

This year, I also wanted to take a look at how 2023 has affected my all time stats. The arrows indicate the change in rank within my top 25 artists, with the superscript numbers highlighting the previous placement. A sparkles emojiy (✨) indicates a brand new entry to the top 25, whilst bands that have dropped out of the list are shown beneath.

1. Lazy Habits (1,882)
2. Goldfish (1,160) ⬆³
3. MC Xander (1,010) 
4. Watsky (967) ⬇²
5. The Offspring (731) ⬆¹
6. Bonobo (726) ⬇²
7. Jeremy Loops (682) ⬆²
8. The Cat Empire (655) ⬇¹
9. Gorillaz (644) ⬆³¹
10. Howard Shore (631) ⬇²
11. Jamie T (611) ⬇¹
12. NF (578) ⬆✨
13. Emancipator (558) ⬆¹
14. Smokey Joe & The Kid (554) ⬇²
15. alt-J (549)
16. Childish Gambino (549) ⬇⁵
17. Cee-Roo (530) ⬇⁴
18. Pretty Lights (520)
19. Big Gigantic (497) ⬆⁴
20. The Glitch Mob (493) ⬇⁴
21. Billie Eilish (490) ⬇¹
22. twenty one pilots (481) ⬇³
23. Rare Americans (462) ⬇²
24. Sam Sweeney (454) ⬆²³
25. Miike Snow (437) ⬇⁸

Dropping out of the top 25: Alex Clare (⬇⁴); Hilltop Hoods (⬇⁸); Blazin' Fiddles (⬇⁴); Fall Out Boy (⬇⁵). I find it completely bizarre that Miike Snow has outlasted all four of those bands, to be honest 😂 Also, if I was in any doubt about the meteoric rise of NF, almost breaking the all time top ten in a single year is ridiculous!

Top Albums (All Time)

1. Lazy Habits, Lazy Habits (835)
2. Eyeopeness, MC Xander (590)
3. Vermillion Sands, Lazy Habits (585) ⬆¹
4. Into The Spider-Verse, Various Artists (583) ⬇¹
5. River, Cee-Roo (525)
6. An Awesome Wave, alt-J (488) ⬆¹
7. x Infinity, Watsky (471) ⬇¹
8. Escape That, Sam Sweeney (434) ⬆²⁹
9. WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO, Billie Eilish (406) ⬆⁶
10. Drink the Sea, The Glitch Mob (396) ⬇²

Both The Atrocity Exhibition (Lazy Habits, ⬇³) and The Lateness of the Hour (Alex Clare, ⬇⁵) drop out of the top 10, which is the first year since 2012 that The Lateness of the Hour has not been on this chart, peaking at #4 that year.

Media

A generally decent year; I'm very happy to see that (despite what I would have guessed) we watched more films than TV shows once again, though obviously by sheer hours TV will always win by a landslide.

Television

• We watched 27 shows, with 17 recorded as "new" (though that includes Black Books, which I've definitely watched end-to-end at least a half dozen times before 😉).
• 39 total seasons, with the most episodes going to Star Trek: The Next Generation with a solid six full seasons, followed up by three seasons each of Black Books, Only Murders in the Building, and The Boys.
• The dubious honour of largest rating swing within a given show goes to Jack Ryan, which had a solid 4* first season and scraped a meagre 2* rating for the second – this may be the largest gulf between seasons of a show I've ever recorded!
• Surprisingly, I didn't rewatch any TV shows this year^[5] 😲
• It was a varied year for streaming services. We watched 12 seasons of 7 shows on Netflix and 9 seasons of 7 shows on Disney+; 9 seasons of 6 shows on Prime; 4 seasons of 4 shows on Apple TV+; 3 seasons of one show on DVD; and a single season of one show entirely on planes (Call Me Kat).
   

Top 10 TV Seasons Watched

1. Ted Lasso (season three): 5*
2. Andor: 5*
3. One Piece: 5*
4. Silo: 5*
5. Loki (season two): 5*
6. The Next Generation (season five): 5*
7. The Next Generation (season six): 5*
8. Prehistoric Planet (season two): 4.5*
9. Ahsoka: 4.5*
10. Big Mouth (season six): 4.5*

Dishonourable mentions go to Jack Ryan (season two) for scoring the lowest rating of the year at 2*, as well as Disenchantment (season five) and Call Me Kat (season one) for being bang-average at 2.5* each, the three lowest rated series I watched in 2023.

Movies

• We watched 42 films, with 40 recorded as new (though, again, some definitely weren't *cough* Lord of the Rings *cough*).
• We saw 7 films at the cinema, notably failing to make it to Antman & The Wasp: Quantumania, which becomes the first MCU film we haven't seen in a cinema since the original Avengers movie 😲
• Otherwise, we watched 8 films on Sky; 7 on DVD and Disney+ respectively; 6 on Netflix; 1 on ITV; and 1 on Prime. Despite quite a few flights, that's still zero in the air for another year (I'm getting old...).

Top 10 Films Watched (All)

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: 6*
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: 5.5*
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: 5*
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: 5*
5. Nimona: 5*
6. The Big Short: 5*
7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl: 5*
8. Strange World: 4.5*
9. The Courier: 4.5*
10. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: 4.5*

Dishonourable mentions go to three films, which all scored an equally poor rating of 2.5*: Operation Fortune, Murder Mystery 2, and The Other Woman. Still, no complete clunkers in 2023 it seems.

And yes, I did take part in a Middle-Earth marathon in 2023, why do you ask 😂 Actually the first proper one since university – and hopefully not the last for another decade!

Top 10 Films Watched (New)

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: 5*
2. Nimona: 5*
3. Strange World: 4.5*
4. The Courier: 4.5*
5. RRR: 4.5*
6. Barbie: 4*
7. Avatar: The Way of Water: 4*
8. The Marvels: 4*
9. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: 4*
10. Antman & The Wasp: Quantumania: 4*

So a year with multiple decent (but not that memorable) MCU films, yet ultimately the crown goes to a different superhero multiverse.

Games

• I played 6 video games in 2023, four of which were completely new (I'm not counting the games that we played on my stag do at the arcade).
• Tried out both VR and proper racing sims for the first time.
• That includes an 8 day streak in Steam playing Counter Strike: Source, of which I racked up another 41 sessions, mainly in the first third of the year.
• I also unlocked 6 new Steam achievements, all in CS:S as well.
• The highest rated game was Bloons TD 6 with 4.5*.

I feel like I need to give an honourable mention to Among Us, which I've never played, but spent well over 100 hours watching other people play on YouTube, making it easily one of my biggest gaming trends of the year.

Next year, I hope to expand this section with board and card games, as well 🤞

Books

I read a grand total of 2 books last year: Saga and Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam. Both scored a respectable 4*, and would have ideally been placed in different categories anyway, so I guess that makes them joint top for 2023 😉 I think I may be able to retroactively add a couple more reviews in, but that'll have to do for now.

Podcasts

Another category with slim pickings. I listened to 2 tracked podcasts in total: Cortex and Dear Hank & John. I only listened to three episodes of the latter all year, so Cortex was definitely top ranked. I'm not sure how many episodes I listened to (Spotify doesn't track that information, it seems) but I'd guess it was in double-digits. I do know that I spent 1,865 minutes (about 31 hours) lisening to Cortex, and with episodes ranging between 1-2 hours in length, that probably means about 20 episodes total. Either way, Spotify reckons I'm in the top 6% of Cortex listeners on their platform 🤷‍♀️ I know I also listend to a few episodes of Ologies and What Now? with Trevor Noah, mainly in the car with Alison.

Adventure

2023 was a big year for travel in many ways, with lots of trips, events, and eating out.

Travel & Events

• We visited 5 countries – two (Rwanda and Portugal) for the first time ever – and all four of the member nations of the UK, as well as taking 8 weekend breaks and 1 honeymoon to Islay 🎉
• That included 160 cities (124 for the first time), 488 "places of interest" (as defined by Google), and a further 98 eateries – pubs, restaurants, cafés etc. (which feels low, to be honest).
• To do all of that, we effectively circumnavigated the globe once, travelling 23,151 miles, including: 364 miles walking (154 hours); 7,464 miles driving (343 hours); 1,658 miles on public transport (87 hours); and 13,027 miles on planes (39 hours).
• I attended 3 stag dos and 5 weddings (including my own of each); 8 games nights (of varying formats, and with at least 15 different friends); 5 Christmas get togethers (including one work event and not including celebrations with respective parents); 5 museum exhibitions; 1 Pokémon Go event (likely our last ever); 1 beer tasting, and 1 wine tour.
• We played in 3 drumming gigs; watched the Canoe Slalom World Championships; went to Thorpe Park (twice, technically); and saw 5 plays, plus one performance of Cirque du Soleil!
• I also managed to get to 2 National Trust houses and 5 independent heritage houses; visited nature reserves 21 times (including 2 WWT locations, 1 National Trust location, and 4 RSPB locations); and spent 7 days in National Parks in Rwanda.

Food & Drink

• We ate out 68 times and ordered take-away 51 times. Not sure those two should be that close...
• Whilst those take-aways came from a wide range of services, Just Eat reckoned that we saved 450 minutes of cooking time; disturbingly, they also let me know that I've been a customer for 4,598 days, which is far too long 😂
• On the drink front, I tried at least 162 new drinks, including 136 new beers, 15 whiskies (thanks mainly to our honeymoon on Islay), 5 cocktails (if you count the Robin Scanlan 😉), 3 soft drinks, 2 gins, and one cider.
• At least 52 of those beers were tried at home; we've now cancelled our pandemic-era beer subscription service, but the backlog is immense. Still, I'd predict that number declines next year.

Top 10 Beers

1. Honey Ale, Chatsworth: 5*
2. Black Rock, Islay Ales: 5*
3. Bombay Bicycle, United Breweries: 5*
4. Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Evil Genius: 5*
5. Heart of Darkness, Five Kingdoms: 5*
6. Parumpaplumplum, Lock Lomond Brewery: 4*
7. Murphy's Irish Stout, Murphy's: 4*
8. Cinder Chimp, London Beer Lab: 4*
9. Hamster of Doom, Ridgeway Brewing Co.: 4*
10. Che Guava, William Bros. Brewing: 4*

Dishonourable mentions go to Stona IPA (Stone Brewing), New Laund Dark (Reedley Harrows), and PB&J Sour (London Beer Lab) for all getting a solitary 1* – meaning London Beer Lab manage to rank at both ends of the scale!

Top 10 Non-Beers

1. Guaraná, soft drink: 5*
2. Casado, whisky: 4*
3. Pangalactic Starship Gargle Blaster, cocktail: 4*
4. Port Charlotte 10, whisky: 4*
5. Green Lady, gin: 4*
6. Irn Bru 1901, soft drink: 4*
7. Octomore, whisky: 4*
8. Aerolite, whisky: 4*
9. Pinya, soft drink: 4*
10. Dan Kelly's Whisky Cask, cider: 3*

A special mention for the Aperol Spritz, widely marketed and seemingly popular, yet extremely disappointing: 2* (and won't bother with it again).

Wildlife

• I logged 20 species from 26 observations on iNaturalist and helped identify another 104 sightings.
• We recorded 17 species in the garden – including both sparrowhawk and blackcap – and 27 species seen from my study, with a brilliant sighting of a kingfisher that hung around for a solid ten minutes.
• I managed to capture 445 species of animal on camera (plus 24 plants), with 47 mammals, 11 reptiles, 2 amphibians, 1 fish, 60 insects (including 16 butterflies, 7 dragonflies, and 6 damselflies), and the mildly ridiculous 324 species of bird 🤯
• Interestingly, I have recorded only 264 species to spotlists throughout the year, and as I know I saw several species that I didn't get a photograph of, that means my spotlists are woefully behind the curve. 
• All of those species also means a lot of "lifers" – 7 reptiles, 17 insects, 12 mammals, and at least 142 bird species! A list that includes topi, European spoonbill, African finfoot, great blue turaco, purple gallinule, bar-tailed trogon, olive baboon and several other monkey species, swallowtail butterfly, black redstart, grass snake, and bearded reedling 🎉
   

Health

I've never really tracked health data before, so not much to compare this to. I also managed to lose all data for the first three months of the year somehow when I switched from a FitBit to Garmin, and don't seem to be able to get it back 🤷‍♀️

• Took a beginner's lessen in paddleboarding; competed in an afternoon of tag archery; attended a Roman training camp (where my team won the tug o' war – thanks Tom! – and I lasted over a minute on the hanging challenge); and played at least 12 games of five-aside football.
• Completed 2 Conqueror Challenges: Eye of Sauron (1075km in 178 days, though at least some of that distance was done in 2022) and Walk To Mordor (454km in 74 days).
• Walked 1,684 km in total (since April) by taking 2,028,630 steps, with a daily average of 7,100 steps and a weekly average of 49,527.
• Had an average resting heartrate of 52 bpm, with highs of 116 bpm; a VO2 max of 38 (giving me a fitness age of 53 😬); and a stress average of 32 (not sure what that means, but it's getting worse 😅).
• On a typical week, I spent 38 minutes undergoing "intensity excercise". My top week was between July 31^st and August 6^th, topping out at 908 minutes – 897 of which were on the 6^th – I wonder why 😂💍
• My sleep average is 7 hours and 35 minutes, with a high of 9 hours and a typical bed time of 01:10 in the morning. Honestly, that is much better than I had expected!

Photography

• I took at least 42,314 photographs throughout the year, though the number currently being kept is down to 14,491, a keeper rate of no more than 34% – but also a pretty good indication of having kept on top of plenty of shoots in terms of archiving!
• That does not include the 965 photos from our wedding, nor the 1,418 images that are logged as Alison's captures (though, in reality, some are likely mine too 😉).
• Tagged photos are using 758 unique tags, whilst 6 images have been rated as 5*, 104 as 4*, 1 as 3*, 66 as 2*, and 6 as 1*^[6].
• I shouldn't be too congratulatory about my editing though, as 9,730 photos are not properly tagged – it seems I'm lagging significantly on our honeymoon, Mallorca, and Belfast trips. So the keeper rate is definitely inflated right now, but on the flipside, the total number of species captured is also certainly an underestimate.
• Images were taken with 4 cameras: the Canon M6ii (10,749), Canon G7xii (1,348), LG V20 (724), and Canon R8 (626).
• Most were taken using my Sigma 150-600, which wracked up 7,910 shots between the two full-size Canon bodies – roughly 55% of all the photos I took – and handily beating the second place Canon 10-18, with a respectable (and surprising) 1,354 shots. These were trailled by the Canon 24 prime (959) and Canon 70-200 (894), which I'm very surprised to see coming in dead last.

Prediction: Now that I have two full-time camera bodies, I reckon the 70-200 will see a marked increase in usage. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the R8 take more photos than the M6ii next year 👀

Writing

And finally, what about this site itself? How did theAdhoracy do in 2023?

• I published 11 articles across the year... well, okay, I retroactively published two of those in January; they were sat at over 80% complete and made the most sense to be published within their chronological context, so I did so. I'm still counting them, but 9 would be a more "accurate" summary.
• Unfortunately, my draft folder has swelled, with 6 partially written articles, and another 18 sat in some level of planning stage in WorkFlowy 😬
• I did manage to record 96 notes/bookmarks (with another 7 drafted), as well as 64 reviews, though not some of the latter are little more than a rating and time stamp^[7].
• I also logged 454 journal updates: 165 drinks; 119 meals; 20 thoughts; 116 check-ins; 19 events; and 15 journeys. Not that anyone else can see those 😂
• As I begin experimenting with a more condensed journal format, I also made 12 daily entries – we'll see if they manage to get any further than the updates ever did.

I also want to highlight some of my favourite posts from the year:

• A Twitter Escape Hatch: probably the article that has had the biggest impact on my day-to-day life, and the one I wish more people would read.
• Clickable Confusion with NVDA: I believe this is the article that has had the most commentary about it online (which, admittedly, isn't very much, but still nice to see).
• A Valid HTML Datetime: my favourite (and most returned-to) tip that I wrote about in 2023.

Top Categories

I wanted to review which areas I ended up writing articles and notes for, so went through and tallied them up.

Articles

Category name, followed by number of published articles with category as primary and (secondary) tag.

1. HTML & CSS: 4 (1)
2. Technology: 3
3. JavaScript: 1 (1)
4. Nuts & Bolts: 1
5. Inclusion: 1
6. Animation: 1
7. L-Space: (1)

Though, I'll note that I'm not sure any of the Technology posts should sit in that category – I may need to rethink a few of these!

Notes

Same as above.

1. HTML & CSS: 15 (3)
2. Inclusion: 14 (3)
3. World Wide Web: 9 (1)
4. Frontend: 8 (3)
5. Nuts & Bolts: 8 (1)
6. Technology: 7 (4)
7. JavaScript: 6 (4)
8. Web Design: 6 (2)
9. Graphic Design: 5 (7)
10. Content Design: 5 (1)
11. Natural World: 2 (3)
12. Anthropocenic View: 3 (2)
13. Animation: 1 (1)
14. Photography: 1 (1)
15. World Building, L-Space, To Boldly Go, Typography, Arts & Crafts, and User Experience: 1 each
16. Moving Pictures: (1)

It seems that Arts & Crafts, World Building, and Animation have all been forgotten at various points, because I found notes that should have been placed in each of these categories whilst collating this data, and had to retroactively sort them. That leaves Musical Notes, Notes from the Editor, People & Places, and Projects that weren't used at all in 2023. Two of these were mainly intended for the kind of content that now sits inside the Journal post type, so perhaps these also need a bit of a rethink.

Also worth noting that just over a third of posts had multiple categories, which is much lower than I would have expected, but does validate that multi-categorisation is useful to me.

And so there it is: 2023 through the eyes of the data I collected. I may yet return here and tweak some numbers or add some extra sections, but for now, this seems like a useful post and a fun way to sum up this particulary twelve months of existence. We'll see if the format changes again in 2024!