Craig Rowe
Techlead / Developer
3rd January 2011
The start of a brand new year (2011)
Year in review and resolution posts may seem a bit passe, cliche and anything else that ends in an 'e' that sounds like an 'a'... but let's get one out of our (my) system anyway.
Rather than an elongated reflection over the year - what I have started, not started, bought, not bought, I'd just like to take the opportunity again to reiterate how amazed I am at the differences in the world in just this decade. This video still sums up the awe that we, for me, still need. Ten years ago we're talking pretty much no google, a pre-gamecube, pre-youtube, pre-firefox, pre-wikipedia era where everyone had a Nokia 3210 (we also had a 9th planet!). Come on... that's awesome and has to bode well for the next ten.
So if that's the review bit what about the resolution bit? Well rather than a set of resolutions here's a bunch of things I did on Jan 1st that you might like to too... in prep for the year and all that...
Small things
- Reset iGoogle to stuff I actually pay attention to
- Clear out my Google Reader (particularly things I follow because I think I should rather than because I am actually interested)
- Review app authorisations (facebook inc privary settings, fireeagle)
- Use lanyrd.com to find a few interesting events to register for
- Create pile of charity shop books/cds/dvds
Changes
- Listen to classical music when wanting to get things done (I had a Vanessa Mae CD that I used when revising for GCSE's - no lyrics - works) - also try Zero 7 or even PPPPPP
Semi-weird things
- I added a bunch of my worst time wasting sites to my hosts file and created a default website that effectively points to a local copy of this /GetBetter. Just as an added kick up the arse when I find myself procrastinating.
I think my overidding resolution then, if that's appropriate, is just to continually keep in mind the idea of being and getting better - plain and simple. The last few comments of Robin Ince here really resonate with that idea.
Other Recent Posts
WP7 vs iPhone(16th February 2012)
Ok so if you follow me on twitter you may know that towards the end of last year I took part in 'Alphalabs'. Organised by onedotzero this was a competition aimed at encouraging developers and artists to work together on the Lumia 800 platform.
Cargowire has a new design(5th February 2012)
Apparently doodling can be good for you. Although when I do it, it's not so good for Ed Merritt.
Why you should try to be a middle class developer(16th August 2011)
You may not know this but this blog has been xml based since its inception (in fact there's a longstanding, not yet achieved, task to 'replace' it with a 'better' persistant storage mechanism -- clearly I must agree then, that the perfect is the enemy of the good). But anyway... don't worry. I'm not about to do anotherblogaboutxml.
Falling out of Kindle love(10th July 2011)
While reading a book the other day (C# in depth if you're interested... I'd recommend it to all you .net lovers out there.. yes you.. both of you) I suddenly realised something. I was holding a book.
Last night I dreamt something existed that didn't..(30th April 2011)
Part of my role at Headscape has included looking at our development processes/practices. There's a blog in this (and it's coming soon), but as a brief teaser to that:
