A look back on 2008
It’s now been 2009 for over a week and I’m finally writing my recount of 2008, after a month of “Ooh, must write that blog post” thoughts. Yes, I’m pretty good at putting things off. That will no doubt be reflected in my ramblings below.
Anyways, 2008 was a pretty friggin’ awesome year for me. Some exciting things happened in my personal life (exciting to me anyway…) and in my professional life. Live is looking good right about now! Details for why to be found after the jump…
I’m finally writing my obligatory look back upon 2008, weeks later than I really should have. On looking back I’ve realised that 2008 was a damn good year for me both professionally and personally.I’ll save the rambling and just get straight into it!
1. My Promotion
December 2007 marked my 1 year anniversary at ProWeb, and the main thing to come out of my review was my promotion to Lead Web Designer. I’d be responsible for making sure that all of our front end work… worked! A pretty daunting task, and one that I only really got to get into properly once a colleague left the company resulting in me being the only front end guy at the company with any experience. With no “competition” I could really get into the role and make the department my own. I now have 2 guys who work directly under me, and (in theory) all of our work runs through me first. Things aren’t as perfect as they could be, but we’ve made massive strides towards getting it right.
2. Discovered jQuery
With regards to my career in web development as a whole I think the discovery of jQuery may be the most important thing to have happened to me this year. If you don’t know about jQuery yet… what the hell? Follow that link back there and check it out! My words can’t do it justice so I’ll just let the jQuery guys summarise it for you:
jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
Trust me, it really does.
Using jQuery is so simple and so intuitive, I don’t know how we coped without. We now use jQuery at work on all of our new sites, and some old ones, and the scope of things we can do has really evolved.
3. Started playing World of Warcraft again
Yes, I gave in and started playing World of Warcraft again :( We hired a new guy at work and I quickly found out that he used to play it, and our discussions about it got another guy at work interested in it, and my friend moved in with me who also used to play it… Eventually we all decided, along with some other friends, to start up new characters and level together to 70 before the release of Wrath of the Lich King. The levelling together didn’t really work out as planned, but most of us are still playing it, either on these new character, or old ones, and are enjoying our time in Northrend. I’m playing on my new mage, which is a lot of fun, maybe even more so than my original warlock. I’m level 74 and don’t intend to quit the game this time. I will get to 80, and I will complete a heck load of achievements! Even if the game is a massive time sink and gives me a perfect excuse to put off doing EVERYTHING.
4. I got old!
This September marked my 25th birthday. This now makes me old. I can still remember very vividly being 19 and enjoying my first year at uni. 19 was the best year of my life, and everything from that point on has been gradually working its way downhill. And now 6 years have passed! What the heck guys? Stuff is picking up now and I’m getting various areas of my life sorted, but it still seems like it wasn’t that long ago I was chillin’ at uni. But it was very long ago and that makes me sad. I will never relive those times. If that 6 years can go by so quickly then the next 5 years will go by even quicker and before I know it I’ll be 30. This is not a good thing! I’m already over a quarter of the way to 26! Sheeet!
5. Viva La Revolution!
The last quarter of this year has been amazing for my life at work. Another new guy at work came in and shared a lot of my views about how things were being run and how they should be being run, and was actually vocal about it. Before then no one else seemed to be too concerned about the fact that some of our organisation and methodology was total balls. I’ve now learned that other people were concerned, they were just very quiet about it. But at the time there were only the 2 of us, and we decided to enforce changes! Emails and management meetings between various people outlined what everyone wanted changed, what the management agreed with and didn’t agree with, and how we should progress. We’re still very much in the beginning stages of sorting everything out, but steps have been made and responsibilities and organisation are sitting with the correct people now. The future of the company is looking very sweet.
6. Upgraded the blog and started using it again!
Yey! I got around to upgrading this blog to use b2evolution 2.4.5 rather than 1.10, which was waaaaaaay old. It wasn’t a simple upgrade, as the whole structure of the system had changed. I had to rewrite large sections of my custom skin, and it took a long while to get various plugins to work, but after a solid weekend of work it was finished, and I started blogging more frequently. This only lasted for a couple of months, and things have been quiet recently, but I’m intending for this post to be the catalyst for more things in future. I’ve got a lot of things floating around in my head that I intend to work on and write about, so here’s hoping I get it did!
7. Made a todo list, and kept making it longer
Earlier in the year I made a todo list – A list of things I need to and want to do, related to web work. Throughout the year the list has got longer and longer, with very little being taken off. This seems to be a common theme in my life. Plan to do things and then keep putting them off. And then put them off some more. and hells why not let’s leave it a bit longer! As I mentioned in the point above, it took me ages to get around to upgrading the blog system. Procrastination is not a new thing for me. And I’ve got to kick that habit and get shit done.
I’ve currently got 1 site I need to finish building, 4 sites I need to build from scratch, 1 white paper I want to finish writing, and 1 major web application I want to write. And then there’s the small matters of wanting to get into authoring jQuery plugins, learning the more complicated aspects of PHP, trying to build up a personal client base, and moving house. That’s by no means the end of the list, but it’s enough for here.
8. The Dark Knight
My favourite film of all time. That is all.
9. Brotherhood 2.0
In 2007 two brothers from America, Hank and John Green, abandoned any kind of textual communication and instead made a video blog every week day for a year. I only discovered this toward the end of this year, and I’m disappointed that it took me so long to find out about it. These guys have ended up being pretty big in the world of YouTube and most things internetty find their way onto my screen pretty quick. I spent a good week or so watching every single video from Brotherhood 2.0, and I loved it. This is the kind of thing the Internet was made for. It’s something that I wanted to have been a part of. I want to have shared the journey with this community, and looking back on it a year later makes me sad to have missed out.
This is the kind of thing I want to do. Make something interesting, open up a conversation, get people talking. The problem is, in my mind everything has already been done. And then I find something new and think “Why the hell didn’t I think of that!?”
John and Hank Green, I am a little bit in love with both of you.
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That’s it for my personal round up of 2008. I hope to write another entry in the next few days looking forward to everything to come in 2009 and discuss some of my plans. Hopefully this will be the beginning of my blog resurrection!
John Robinson - designer, developer, coder... John’s not quite sure exactly how he should be labelled. Why not check out his blog and make a decision for yourself. He mostly talks about CSS, jQuery and the crazy world of the Interwebs, with a little bit of personal life thrown in for good measure.
