Archive for December, 2009

I’m not a great one for New Years Resolutions. The reason is simple, I don’t like failure and when most people make a resolution this is exactly what they are doing. However, exactly one year ago, I decided to break my tradition. The reason was simple, I knew that if I published my aims and goals for the forthcoming year I would be more likely to see them through as people had been able to see what I had laid down for myself.

My goals were; start writing, speak at an event, attend a web conference, stay in a job, buy an Apple notebook, continue reading, learn jQuery and take a holiday.

Goals achieved

Start writing
Seeing as this was my very first attempt at blogging, I like to think that I got on quite well with it, writing twenty six posts during the year.

I also had the pleasure of writing an article for .net magazine which if you missed can be downloaded here.

Attend a web conference
In the end I actually ended up attending three. In May I attended Future of Web Design in London with my good friend Mike Robinson. This was the first time I had the pleasure of hearing Mark Boulton, who now holds the position of my favourite web designer.

Next up was Future of Web Design Tour, Glasgow leg. This was right on my doorstep and seemed like an oppertunity that I couldn’t afford to pass up but in the end I probably could have saved myself a few quid as sadly it wasn’t all that great. However, I did get to meet some great people.

The first Build conference was held during November and it was easily the best conference of the three, I will definately be back next year. I would throughly recommend it to anyone who didn’t have the chance to attend. Big props to Andy McMillan for organising something spectacular.

Stay in a job
Check.

Buy a notebook
I bought my first ever Mac setup in January. Buying a 15″ MacBook Pro and the lovely 24″ Cinema display, since then I think Apple has taken a fair chunk of my wages away with all their lovely peripherals. Does an iPhone count as a peripheral?

Continue reading
This year I’ve bought far too many books, in fact it’s starting to border on an unhealthy obsession. Not just any books, books that only focused on web, colour and typography. Send for help.

Holiday
My first holiday in three years. My girlfriend and I travelled a mere twelve hours away to take in the sights of Koh Samui, Hong Kong and Macau. If you fancy seeing some of the worst photography in your life then head over here.

Unplanned Goals

HTML5 Doctor
One of the plus points of the year was getting the HTML5 Doctor site up and running. In my opinion this has been a run away success and I’d like to thank Rich, Bruce, Tom, Mike and Remy.

Goals to be carried over

Speak at an event
Unfortunately this is something that fell through towards the end of the year. I did have a small talk lined up for a class of 20-30 students but perhaps this is something that will be achieved in the new year.

Learn jQuery
I didn’t get very far with this resolution, I have learned a few bits and pieces but nothing great. 2010 will be the year that I finally get to grips with jQuery.

New goals

Project 52
I actually covered this in my last blog post and it’s one that I’m definitely looking forward to. I still haven’t got any posts lined up for this, baring in mind that it starts in less than two days but it’s the challenge that I like the most about it.

Personal Projects
This coming year I’d like to spend some time on my own projects, I have a few in the pipeline right now, which should take me up to April/May time. So keep popping back and find out exactly what I’m on about.

Move Out
A scary thought is the fact that in two months I will be twenty three and I’m still living at home. I hope 2010 will be the year that I can make the jump and find somewhere.

Meet more great people
This year I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some great people; Aaron Bassett, Ashley Baxter, Sam Brown, Jason Cale, Rich Clark , Dennis Coughlin, Dan Donald, Paddy Donnelly, Gary Ennis, Piotr Fedorczyk, Andrea Gandino, Molly E. Holzschlag, Si Jobling, Patrick H. Lauke, Roan Lavery, Bruce Lawson, Tom Leadbetter, Inayaili de León, Drew McLellan, Rick Nunn, Adam Oliver, Graeme Pirie, Alan Wallace. Sorry if I missed anyone out, it’s been a long year.

Let me know what you’ve been up to.

Project 52

Last week I signed up to this new idea called project 52. For those of you who do not know what this is about

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

Writing is something that I wish I could do a lot more of but for some reason or another it just always seems to go on the back burner. If I’m being honest, I think the reason that I don’t publish regular content on this site is because my grasp of the English language is poor. I’m still not really sure how I managed to write my fourth year University dissertation.

Another reason that I don’t publish content to this blog as often as I would like is because I try to make this blog tailored more towards what I do, instead of just talking about myself and what I’ve been up to. I just don’t think that anyone would be particularly interested in reading about what I have been up to. However of late I’ve started to change my thinking. It’s 2010 next year (which is a pretty cool number) and next year is already shaping up to be quite an important year for myself. Therefore why shouldn’t I write about what I’ve been getting up to?

So how will I tackle project 52? I think it’s probably going to be easier to do if I use a structure for each month, although this may change by the time 1st January rolls around. My structure might follow something like this

A tutorial post
A discussion post about the web
A guest blogger
A monthly round-up with next months goals

If you’re interested to see how I fair, why don’t you follow my RSS feed and see if I’ve been able to tackle this task I’ve set myself. If this sounds like your cup of tea and fancy giving it a go then sign up to the site and get the ball rolling so that you have a few ideas by the time that the New Year comes around.