2010 – My Year in a blog post

2009 was a year of 2 halves. The first half of the year was hectic, disorganised and I would very much like those 6 months back. The second half of the year was brilliant. I am determined to ensure that 2010 follows on from how 2009 finished off. This post covers some of my goals for 2010. As with last year these goals are all achievable and are all on-going throughout the year.

Before setting goals I think it is important to ask why I am doing it. The new year is a great marker, its an opportunity to draw a line in the sand, reflect on the previous year and give your life a kick in a slightly different direction. Time flies and it is easy to get consumed by the small day to day emergencies and lose sight of the big picture. Each new year I zoom out slightly, survey the landscape ahead and think about the following 3 questions.

1. Am I happy where I am now or is there somewhere I would rather be?
2. Is there anything that I should be doing but am not?
3. Is there anything that I would like to achieve this year which I need to plan for.

The answers to these questions usually define my goals. These goals then become things that I try to tackle throughout the year. These are the things I have come up with. (All goals are techie based, I have separate personal goals such as go to a music festival, sky dive and perhaps finally propose to my girlfriend on a separate list.)

Release Software:

In Q1 of this year I would like to release some software. I have been working on a framework for a little while now and I would like to make this freely available. It is easy to extend and a great starting point for small projects or for people looking to build their own. It is reaching the point where I am building a website with it, locating niggles, adding missing functionality and rewriting core code every other day.

I simply feel it is time that my name went on something open source and freely available. I feel that late Q1 / early Q2 is a realistic and achievable release date.

Publish Blog Posts on other websites:

This was a goal in the final part of 2009 but I didn’t get round to it. In 2010 I am setting the rather lofty goal of writing 12 posts. That is one a month. I do not expect this to be difficult, it simply requires a small amount of organisation to find time to work on these posts. These posts should be a step toward defining myself as knowledgeable in certain web related fields.

Redo Stanley Web Design

Stanley Web Design is nice but it is a year old and has a few small things which are bugging me. I will be creating something simple which better carries the brand message and is easier to extend than my current website. I hope to have this launched in the first half of the year. I plan to build the website with the framework mentioned above. With these working in tandem I expect them both to be completed around the same time.

Improve my blog

I do not mind if someone reads what I write or not. I blog so I can keep a written record of what I was doing or thinking about at a specific time. In a few years time I can then look back and see what I was up to work wise at the time.

This said I want to improve the design, coding standards and javascript magic on the website. I feel that I can still improve the readability and aesthetic look of the website and this is what I hope to do. I also plan to post more.

Learning

The world of technology moves forward so quickly. It is important to keep up and this year I have set 3 goals to stay on top of things.

Goal 1 is to take my PHP skills up a notch. I am very good with PHP but there are still things that I am not great on. Things like SOAP, working with images and getting to grips with some of the PHP5 features are all things I could  and will work on.

Goal 2 is to further my JavaScript and Ajax skills. I know enough to use JQuery well and can edit almost any level of JS. However, I would like to write better JS and better understand AJAX. This will be the year it happens.

Goal 3 is to do with PDO, Doctrine and Security. I will be covering these in later blog posts.

Photography / Art

I have a £700 camera which is gathering dust. I have a numerous ‘unsketched’ sketch pads. 2010 will be the year I finally learn what the buttons do on my camera and take some pictures. I am looking to take a picture a day and sketch something once a week. To ensure this is achieved, an event will be added to iCal. This I hope will help fuel my creativity and pull me away from my TV and xbox in my free time.

That is about it. These goals will punt my life a few degrees to the left and push me more towards being an expert than a jack of all trades. If you would like to comment on my goals or add your own, as always, feel free.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 10:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.