As I am writing this, I am looking at a fabulous view from my hotel room in what some of my friends call my second home of Vancouver, Canada. Part of me needed to get away to here do some end-of-the-year evaluation and some focused thinking about 2011. Then again, I allowed myself to relax a bit during these last days of 2010 (and I watched the Canucks beat the Flyers 6-2 Tuesday night at the home area…)
But there are some things that occurred during the year that I need to mention before the final ball drop closes the year 2010:
Fencing
If you had asked me at the start of the year if I was going to start fencing again, it would have been a firm “NO.” There was no motivation to start again and no one was really asking to do so. And all the focus that I had with fencing went into my work, which paid off big. Irony, the only people who ever asked about me starting up again were my co-workers at CDG.
Well, after two years, I decided to try fencing again. It has been the only sport that I have some liking to. Not to mention, the least likely to get bored at.
Another bit of irony is that I restarted with Olde Town Fencing, the club I left almost four years ago. Despite that, the warming response made the comeback easier. Definitely a reminder of why I fence in the first place.
Despite dealing with various injuries the last month, I am determined to continue my progress and actually compete again after a 2+ year absence.
Travel
This year:
- Savannah, Georgia (IxDA Interaction 10)
- NYC for opera (The Nose and Lulu) and design (Cooper-Hewitt)
- Seattle/Canada (Victoria and Vancouver I)
- For my first time, travel outside the Americas with FOWA/London
- Of course, Vancouver for end-of-the-year
For next year:
- Boulder, Colorado for IxDA Interaction 11 (February 9-12, 2011)
- NYC for opera with Nixon in China (Adams) and Wozzeck (Berg)
Project Charles
Basically, stops and starts. At one point, it was dead in the water. At one point, I almost considered ending the project. However, I caught a break (and some motivation from Tame Impala’s InnerSpeaker album) and did the complete site mockups. Started to work on the HTML templates but delayed due to technical review from the last two conferences I went to. Both made me think about what I was doing and in the end, the decision to make some more substantial changes in my work.
Restarting work on templates in early 2011 and hopefully finishing the new site by The Wilson Project’s 10th anniversary in April.
Work
High point was three conferences:
- IxDA Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia
- An Event Apart a few blocks from my office in Washington, DC
- FOWA in London, UK
Lots of work, punctuated with four blog entries and some other minor additions to the blog.
However, lots of reflection on my work process, especially considering many of the changes that affected my position as a UI/Front-end developer.
But more about that in the next entry in this blog…
Epilogue
In the end, I remember about ten years ago that I started what would become a 20-month unemployment period. Now, at the end of 2010, thing have changed so much. A number of things that I first experimented with such as XHTML and building pages without table layouts are now not only accepted; they have become the gold standard.
Now, with Project Charles heading for the finish line (?) in April 2011, more changes are in the pipeline for the next couple of years. Hopefully, 2011 will be a good one, not only for me, but for my family, friends, and especially my co-workers at CDG.
Happy New Year 2011 from Vancouver, Canada!
Tagged as Canada, CDG, Charles/TWP, conference, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, fencing, FOWA, front-end, IxDA, London, NYC, opera, Savannah, Seattle, Vancouver, web development.
