---
title: Eric in the Past
---

This page is all about what I have done. As things roll off the [now page](/now), they'll show up here. It was last updated on December 25, 2025.

## What I finished building

- **LocallyGrown.net Migration** (2025) — A massive six-month project migrating a farmers market platform from dying Rails 3 infrastructure to modern SvelteKit. 70+ farmers markets, $1.3 million in annual sales, and a complete rewrite that touched every part of the system. [The whole story is in my blog series](/posts/locallygrown-origin-story/).
- **[Random Recipe Project](https://www.youtube.com/@RandomRecipeProject)** — A YouTube cooking series with 50+ episodes exploring recipes from everywhere: video game tie-in cookbooks (Skyrim, Dragon Age, Fallout, Star Trek), vintage classics (Betty Crocker, Julia Child, Galloping Gourmet), modern favorites (Kenji Lopez-Alt, Moosewood), and even 600-year-old medieval recipes.
- **Kestrel's Nest Federation** — Built out my self-hosted social media presence on YunoHost: Mastodon, Pixelfed, BookWyrm, Castopod, Gitea, and this blog. All running on a DigitalOcean droplet I've upgraded twice since 2021.
- **BookWyrm for YunoHost** — Contributed the BookWyrm integration package now used by other YunoHost deployments.

## What I finished reading

Recent reads (see my full [BookWyrm shelf](https://books.kestrelsnest.social/user/eric/books/read) for the complete list):

- *I'm Starting to Worry about This Black Box of Doom* by Jason Pargin (2024)
- *The Armageddon Protocol* by Dan Moren (2024) — completing the Galactic Cold War series
- *All Souls Lost* by Dan Moren (2023)
- *Bookshops & Bonedust* by Travis Baldree (2023)
- *Antimatter Blues* by Edward Ashton (2023)
- *Mickey7* by Edward Ashton (2022)
- *The Kaiju Preservation Society* by John Scalzi (2022)
- *Sea of Tranquility* by Emily St. John Mandel (2022)
- The complete [Galactic Cold War](https://dmoren.com/writing/galactic-cold-war/) series by Dan Moren — spy thrillers across multiple star systems. Each story better than the last.
- [Paper Girls](https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/paper-girls) — time travel adventure with kaiju tardigrades. The artwork will stick with me.
- All of Martha Wells' [Murderbot Diaries](https://www.marthawells.com/murderbot.htm) — a sentient security robot navigating human society. [Deeply relatable](https://www.tor.com/2022/06/21/murderbot-an-autistic-coded-robot-done-right/) as an autistic adult.

## What I finished playing

- [The Outer Worlds][outer worlds] from Obsidian — darkly humorous anti-corporate science fiction. Short but loved every minute. (Now playing the sequel!)
- [The Dragon Age series](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Age_Wiki) from BioWare — replayed the entire series straight through. My favorite game series for world building and storytelling.
- [Elder Scrolls Online](https://www.elderscrollsonline.com) — caught up on all solo content. Found a good guild to socialize with.

## What I finished watching

- All episodes of [Taskmaster][taskmaster] [on YouTube][taskmaster youtube]. Nothing has lifted my spirits quite like this show.

## Events attended

- **Wild Rumpus 2025** — Athens' big outdoor Halloween parade festival
- **Inuhele** and **CONpossible** — annual Atlanta conventions where I'm on staff
- **The B-52's Farewell Concert** (January 2023) — in Athens, where it all started

[taskmaster]: https://taskmaster.fandom.com/wiki/Taskmaster_Wiki
[taskmaster youtube]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5C7yaO3RVuOgwP8JVAujQ
[outer worlds]: https://outerworlds.obsidian.net/en/enter