Getting Back into the Swing

This post is actually a few minutes into the next day.  But I’m still trying to get into the swing of things.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to put parts of my life that aren’t on track, back on track.  Of course this is easier said than done.  But like Matthew Kelly–an amazing Catholic inspirational speaker and evangelist–says: “Our life changes when our habits change.”  Changing habits is a long and difficult process, and honestly I’ll be happy if I can get everything in place by the end of THIS year.

In totally unrelated things, I found out that the original Starcraft runs beautifully under Wine.  I’m going to try some of my other Windows games in the future, and see if I can realistic ignore using my Windows partition.

On the First Day of 2011…

…I’m recuperating from the awesome party that the Huddarts (and Sharon) threw.  Lots of fun, met new folks and partied well into the morning with everyone especially the Nasons and the Nolans. 🙂  Thanks guys.  And the weather cooperated as well.

Anyways, I’m still pretty tired out.  And tomorrow will really feel like the first day of the new year.

Happy New Years! Goodbye 2010.

I’m on my way to the New Year’s party that my friends the Huddarts are throwing. So I’ll keep this blog entry short.

I meant to blog about a few things. But these last two weeks, have left me with a lot of work and not much time. As part of my resolution for next year, I’ll try to blog on a daily basis. And so I’ll get to all the content I meant to blog about soon.

I want to wish everyone a happy, prosperous, blessed and cheerful New Year! I hope that 2011 will be a year just as great or even better than 2010. For myself, it has been a year of ups and downs, blessings, challenges, and opportunities. New experiences many of which I ever imagined all happened in 2010. Many questions answered themselves and many things make more sense now. I also saw many promising developments for the future. I hope 2011 will be a continuation of this.

So Happy New Year to all of you! Don’t party too hard tonight and see you in the new year.

Welcome to 2010. Where the Hell is My Robotic Servant?

Happy New Year to all my readers!  2009 was quite an emotional year: the first batch of my close friends got married, a death in the family, the ups and downs of dating, professional life and all that jazz.  Last year I’ve felt I’ve grown like no other year.  I started work in 2008.  But 2009 was the year that I feel I kicked off the sneakers, t-shirt and shorts laid-back attitude of  a university undergrad, and donned the look and feel of a professional.  I definitely feel the change was for the better.  Also last year I rolled up my sleeves and told myself to do the things I wanted to do, but kept on putting off.  True, I came up with some grandiose plans that I couldn’t of finished realistically.  Still I  managed to tie up most of the loose ends of previous years.  My projects moved forward by a bit.  My organizational skills improved, and I no longer procrastinate on tasks for months.  I still leave things off, but only for a few days.  At most a month, if something is a bit more complicated or delicate.  Come to think of it, most of the tasks that hang around are ones that will take hours to do.

Now the new year, nah new decade begins.  I feel I’m a better professional, writer, programmer, businessman, outdoorsmans and well… man than a year ago.  Ditto for 10 years ago.  So whats next for 2010?  Lets hope no massive shift in society occurs (and that I fear more and more is a possibility to no-one can simply ignore) and God willing that nothing crazy happens in this upcoming decade.  I’d hate to live the life of a Snake Plissken, Mad Max or an Afghani.  Assuming that nothing happens, my new years resolutions come from a modified version of last year’s:  (Which yes stems from goals of 2007…)

  • Become a Senior Software Developer/Consultant
    • 2009:  Learnt the Spring MVC framework, EJBs, AJAX, ExtJS and other Web 2.0 technologies.
    • 2009: Advanced in my skills in databases and Python scripting.
    • Learn and become a Qt/C++ developer.
    • Learn to manage risks, estimates, costs and client expectations as a consultant.
    • Advance my knowledge of Python, PHP and Javascript web frameworks.
  • Become a Published Writer
    • 2009: Started work on a number of novel ideas.  In total wrote about seven or eight separate chapters.
    • Finish and publish at least one novel.
    • Read a finished piece at The Totally Unknown Writers Festival 2010.
    • Publish my university articles in novel or series form.
  • Start a Masters in HCI Design
    • This is a blue skies idea.  But I do plan to go back to university and start working on a Masters degree on HCI (Human -Computer Interface) Design.
  • Become a Libre Software contributer
    • Continue work on justCheckers.  Possibly create and release the mythical version 1.0.
    • Get involved with the KDE or Maemo projects.
  • Build out my stealth mode start-up
    • 2009: Created a business plan and strategy.  Now I just need to execute on it.
    • Build an initial product offering, that will fund future development.
    • Add finances into the mix.
  • Personal
    • Get a full driving license.
    • Date that awesome girl. (Ladies a bit of help with that one? You know who you are.)
    • Get more involved with outdoor sports.
    • Deepen my faith and my knowledge of the world around me.
    • Learn to use a “freaking” calendar, rather than ignoring it.
    • Clean up the mess that is my home computing system.
    • Regular exercise and fitness.

And thats about it… Time to take on 2010.  I’m disappointed by the general lack of robotic servants, flying cars, jetpacks and moon bases.  Still I’m thankful for no nuclear war, giant mutant predatory creatures wandering the streets,  grey goo accidents or human-unfriendly singularity AIs too.  So 2010 probably won’t mean a radically different future for humanity.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t all have something look forward to this year. 🙂

The Forecast for 2009

First of all: Happy New Year everyone!  I hope everyone had a great time celebrating Christmas and ringing in the new year.

So it looks like the second day of the new year is slowly coming to a close.  This year promises to be as exciting and interesting as last year.  Maybe even more so.

This year I plan on finally achieving the goals I sat out last year.  I have a lot of writing and coding ahead of me.  Hopefully I will get involved with the KDE and Maemo projects early this year.  Also the transition from student life to corporate IT worker should sink in soon.  I am optimistic I will grow drastically in all aspects of my life this year: academic, professional, artistic and personal.

However some doubt, and grey clouds lie on the horizon this year.  The situation on the economic front looks dire.  I worry since the parallels of the great depression and hell that followed afterwards are there.  Except that this time around ideals seem more distant, nations seem more violent and the machines of war are far more lethal and potent.  And I don’t think literature or computing will cut it to get us out of the mess, we set upon ourselves so long ago.

Hopefully, my darkest nightmares will not realize themselves.  They did not solidify last year.  Instead many a happy accident happened.  And this year looks like many more happy accidents will occur.  But this I wouldn’t put up a todo list.  It doesn’t seem practical, and doesn’t account for the unexpected.

Kontacts, Palms & Course Juggling

Greetings again!

6 days into a brand new year 2007, and I am starting to feel the ominous feeling of stress. Without getting into details, things are not working out as planned, backup plans seem to backfire and a tense atmosphere has enveloped my personal life. Fortunately I have 359 days left to make up.

School started again on Friday. The last semester started and I am not sure which courses I want to undertake. I do have a less then promising backup plan. I hoped on continuing my journalism training, but getting into the course proves problematic. Oh well.

Today, unproductive in the realm of homework and past work, I dedicated to integrating my Palm into my lifestyle. First I migrated to using the Kontact groupware, as KMail and family works better with KPilot better than Mozilla Thunderbird. The migration proved not too difficult. The problem I keep running into is syncing the desktop to PDA correctly. The PDA keeps on loosing contacts, and not updating the desktop’s todo list. Not to mention that the Palm’s VersaMail client refuses to talk to anyone except itself. My goal for the ending minutes of day is to force both Kontact and the Palm to talk to each other.

Confusion (and angst) are the order of the day.