opinios

The Year That Was...

2005 has probably been the biggest year of my life.

I know that is a big call, and last year was a tough one to top considering I got married (the most awesome day of my life!) and moved country (never want to do it again in my life!) but let me break it down for you. This sounds all so terribly self-indulgent, but stuff it -- it's more for me to look back on in 10 years rather than to entertain you lowly readers, sorry to break it to ya.

What, you're still here? Ok then, read on for a look back at 2005. And don't say I didn't warn you!

I wrote a list of goals at the end of last year. It was fairly optimistic but reflects what was going on in my life back then and where I was headed. I did achieve some of them, didn't come close on others, and I also chalked up a few milestones that weren't on the list.

In December 2004 I announced my intent to:

1. redesign opinios and post more often - well, the redesign hasn't happened yet. Ho hum. But posts have been much more regular of late, I hope you have appreciated that, dear reader!


2. buy a house - TICK! It needs a bit of work but basically we love our house, it is very cute and comfortable and really feels like home.


3. organise my contacts list - err, TICK in pencil that's then been rubbed out. I sort of did this but then didn't really keep it up to date. I'm going to try out HipCal to see if that helps me with this dillemma.


4. take more pictures - nope, haven't done this, but haven't really needed to considering my wife is so snap-happy and captures our lives in digital colour anyway.


5. revive the Kanji web site - half a tick. This hasn't happened, but in the last week I have actually revisited it and made some progress. With such ready access to excellent PHP books at my new job, this is something I plan to deliver on. Eventually. The SQL bug I mentioned turned out to be a bug in the database itself, not in my code, and it has since been fixed. So my recent dabblings have this site back up and running on my local machine, and now I have to think about how the site will look and operate. But the basic functionality is there which is promising.


6. learn Macromedia Flash - haven't touched it. But to be fair, work consumed much of my waking hours for the better part of the year. More on that below.


7. do some more drawing - TICK! Through my design course, the thumbnails required for many of the briefs and the visual diary we had to keep, I have definitely allowed my visual creativity some attention to flourish.

I also had a few things at the back of my mind when I wrote that list that I didn't want to announce publicly, but that I consider milestones of note. Oh, and a couple that I didn't really plan on achieving but did anyway. Bonus! These include:

• becoming a father - TICK! Well, this hasn't happened yet, but it sure aint far to go now. Less than a month, in fact. Stay up to date on the little tacker's own web site.


• finding a job that I was more passionate about - I didn't list this last year for a couple of reasons. It obviously would have been fairly career-limiting to announce to the world that I wanted to leave my job, and I didn't plan on getting dooced. Plus back then I didn't actually plan on leaving. But throughout the course of the year it definitely wore me down.

  
  However I also didn't actually expect to find a job that really captivated my interest in such a short time after returning to Australia. Being an IBM consultant paid well and was still interesting and challenging, but I wanted to be more involved with web standards and web accessibility. The job required long hours but was basically a good gig, and while it wasn't 100% aligned with my core interests I was pretty much resigned to the fact that, for now, I wouldn't have a job that I actually really cared about. Not that I would ever give less than 100%, as that is not in my work ethic (in fact at IBM I definitely gave way more than the client could have expected in the face of some serious adversity). But I had reconciled that my interests outside of work and family would be my focus, and that would be enough to get me through the day. I wasn't sure how I was going to juggle the long hours with being a dad, or what I would do if I was asked (again) to travel interstate (I had declined a couple of times already). I just figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

  That is, until I got chatting to the guys from SitePoint.

  About the time I was mulling over the offer, I read some thought-provoking words that in hindsight makes that kind of attitude towards work seem a bit sad. Yes, time will tell once the honeymoon period is over, but at the moment I'm rapt with the new job and enjoy waking up in the morning and actually looking forward to going to work. What a novel concept!

And so for next year, I hope I can do some or all of the following:

1. be a good dad - we are about to have our world turned completely upside down. Life will never be the same, and it is all very exciting. At some stage this year I can remember feeling a bit scared, uncertain, bewildered and probably a bit panicky, but right now with this major event just around the corner I actually can't wait to guide this little person who we are soon about to meet into the world, and to be as positive influence on their life as my father was on mine


2. learn a bit about Ruby on Rails - it seems a tad ridiculous to be mixing somewhat profound thoughts on fatherhood with aspirations to teach myself programming languages, but it's late at night and I just wanna wrap this up and get it posted, so that's what you get. It's new, it's hip, it's a bit of a head spin and requires some new ways of thinking about things. But I'll have a crack at it.


3. get the kanji web site project thingo live - again. You know, if I get round to it. See above.


4. design some t-shirts for threadless - this is a very cool concept where t-shirt designs are submitted by anyone, they are voted on and then the best designs get printed. I have a few ideas and some thumbnail sketches, and plan to put a few up for the vote.


5. be a damn good technical editor - this sounds a bit obligatory in case any of my work colleagues happen to read this, but it's true that I haven't had a chance to really prove myself at work yet. It's a fairly close-knit family and while I fit in well on a social level, the jury is probably still out on my technical writing abilities as it's only been a few weeks. I know I still have a bit to learn and I work with some very smart people so the bar is pretty high which seems to inspire everyone to achieve, but I hope to prove to them beyond any doubt that I was worth hiring.

And that's pretty much it. You know, apart from calling my parents regularly, eating healthy food, doing a bit of exercise, buying my lovely wife some flowers now and then. That sort of thing. Oh, and helping her through what will probably be the most difficult, painful (and rewarding) experience in her entire life, ever. I'm at her beck and call there.

What are your goals for 2006? Any new year resolutions or aspirations? Any goals you set yourself last year that you did or didn't meet? I'd love to hear them!

Happy new year!

Tags: 2006resolutions, retrospective, 2005, goals

Will The Real Matty McG Please Stand Up?

Just got back from visiting the Bethlehem Walkthrough at St Mary's primary school and this message lobbed into my inbox which made me laugh.

Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 01:13:44 -0500
Subject: "Matty McG"? You stole my name.

Everyone (sic) single one of my friends calls me "Matty McG". It is a nickname of mine and I love it.

Now, I see someone else shares the same name (I'm not sure if your (sic) is a nickname or not). This is a little upsetting.

What right do you have? What right?

-The Real Matty McG

Ha ha, I can't work out whether the tone of the email is tongue-in-cheek or whether poor Matty here truly is distressed. If so, then all I can say is this:

Tough. Get over it. You sound reasonably young so I'm betting that my friends have been calling me Matty McG for a lot longer than yours have mate.

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Tags: mattymcg, identity

Meet the SitePoint team

The arrival of SitePoint t-shirts at the office yesterday was a good excuse for a team photo. Yes, you're right, it is just a little geeky to be all dressed up in company colours, but the t-shirt is definitely the least corporate company merchandise I've ever been given. We look more like a footy team than a publishing/web development company.

Not quite sure what those clients who walked in and saw us all decked out in orange and blue thought though...

Tags: SitePoint

Wriggle Pot

My child is trying to show me up. He or she has gone and started his or her own blog -- wrigglepot.com -- and is writing all sorts of nonsense on there. It's really rather disrespectful...

What kind of attitude will this child have once they are born? What have I gotten myself into? Introducing the youngest blogger in the world.

Tags: baby, youngest blogger in the world

Windows Automatic Update

Does anyone else think that, from a usability perspective, this popup dialog box needs an extra button?

That's right -- it's missing a button that says "Restart when I'm f*cking ready!!"

Tags: Windows, Windows Update, annoying

Results Are In...

...and I passed the first year of my graphic design course! By all accounts, the markers were pretty harsh -- apparently everyone except myself and another class member had to resubmit pages of their folio -- so I think a Credit average is something to be proud of (a Credit at this school is between 81 and 90%).

Grades aside, my goals for this course were to increase my knowledge about design, increase my ability to use the various software applications and to come out of it all with an impressive looking folio. I think I have convincingly achieved all of these objectives, so am rather chuffed.

I'll be deferring second year until 2007, so that I have more time to spend with the baby when it arrives on the scene early next year. We're going to make sure there is plenty of petrol in the car so that we avoid a scenario like this.

Tags: graphic design, study

It's A Club, Brendan, Not A Union!

Warning: political rant ahead

This angers me. Australia's Federal Minister for Education, Senator Brendan Nelson, wants to get rid of compulsory student union membership, and my theory is because it has the word 'union' in it.

The thing is, the student union at universities has absolutely nothing to do with trade unions. The word "union" in Australia has traditionally been associated with organizations created to protect workers' rights in manufacturing plants and shipping docks, and these groups have always had strong ties to the Labour Party (currently in opposition). It's my belief that it's this community-minded ideology, and its association with the politics of the left, that offends Senator Nelson.

You see, student unions are similar in a sense, in that they exist to protect the rights of university students. But that's where the similarity stops - there is no political alignment at all! Individuals involved in student politics may well have their own political values, but this has nothing to do with the function of a union.

Apart from paying a (nominal) salary to those students brave enough to represent their peers on academic boards and fight for student rights when they are being withered away, student union fees also go towards subsidizing student clubs, precious elements of university culture, and of which there are many: basketball, gliding, culture, art... the variety is diverse and being involved in a club is a key aspect of university life.

It's all very well to suggest that university should be only about education, but the introduction of VSU would spell the death of student clubs, and university would become purely about getting that degree and nothing more.

And if it's come to that, you might as well enrol in a distance education course and study your degree from home.

We now return you to our regular programming...

Open Source Developer's Conference

I'll be waving the SitePoint flag at the OSDC next week. If you are going, make sure you come up and say hi!

Also, fellow SitePointer Kevin Yank will be giving a talk on XForms on Wednesday morning which should be interesting.

It pays to be nice

I got a pleasant surprise in the post yesterday - a massive box containing some chocolates and a couple of bottles of wine in a very funky portably refrigerating bag. I was racking my brain trying to think who it could be from, until I found the attached gift card:

Matt, Thankyou for your hard work on the project, it was really appreciated. Every best wish for your future, I hope that you achieve great success.

It was signed by the senior executive at the (very large) client I finished up at a couple of weeks ago, after 15 months of weekend work, late nights and several all-nighters to get the project across the line.

The thing is, I only saw this person probably 4 or 5 times in that period. She wasn't based in the same building and didn't have much to do with the project from a hands-on point of view, as she was dealing with other management staff and arguing for funding at various stages. However I do remember the first time we met, I made an effort to be friendly, as I always do when I meet new people. I didn't know who she was at the time but obviously her first impressions of me were positive.

So remember: first impressions stick! Never underestimate the power of a friendly smile when dealing with a client.