Retrospectively prospective (phew - try saying that quickly!)

Well it’s that time of the year again, isn’t it? The time of year when everyone looks back over what they’ve done and what’s yet to come in the new year. So here comes, in no particular order, my lists of the things that meant a lot to me webwise in 2005 and what I think’s going to be big in 2006.

Important to me in 2005

RSS

Would you believe me if I told you that before 2005 I’d not used RSS (and here I’m refering to all feed technologies) at all? Well you shouldn’t - because I’d be lying. Although I’d previously used RSS a bit though, I’d never really got the wowness of it. That all changed when I started to use Thunderbird to read the feeds that I did follow, rather than using LiveJournal’s web based interface. I’m not entirely sure why, but pretty much immediately I started collecting a lot more feeds, and devoting a lot more of my spare time to reading them. Maybe it was Thunderbird’s interface that I liked, maybe I just suddenly found a lot of good sites to read, but I haven’t looked back since then.

The only problem with Thunderbird was that once I’d got it checking on a lot of different feeds it started to feel a bit unwieldy. Reluctantly, I decided that it would be a good idea to look at other feed reading possibilities. I tried a couple of the online offerings, and found that they weren’t for me. I had a look at various applications for windows, and wasn’t overly impressed. In the end, a friend recommended FeedDemon to me. I tried it, I liked it, and I paid my money. I haven’t looked back, and I’m really looking forward to 2.0

456 Berea Street

I can’t remember when I discovered 456 Berea Street, but I’m sure glad that I did! Roger Johansson is, by my standards at least, a prolific blogger who writes about web standards - a topic close to my heart. Well worth reading.

del.icio.us

It’s been a busy year for del.icio.us - acquiring funding early in the year, recently being bought up by Yahoo, and over the months being plagued with power failures. With all the good and the bad del.icio.us has grown and improved, but it still doesn’t have any way of making bookmarks private!

Big for me in 2006

Writing Articles

I know I’ve promised this before, and I’m sure I will again, but this year will be a big one for me for writing. I’ve got an article in the pipeline, and I’m aiming to be posting once a day every day in january with good, quality, entries. Of course, if you believe that you’ll believe anything. I will try though.

JavaScript

Before I started my current job, the amount of JavaScript that I’d coded could probably have been neatly written on the back of my left hand. Partly this was because I didn’t want to use a technology on the web that not everyone had access to (so why am I serving XHTML with the correct mime type on this site? Certainly not everyone has access to that), partly it was because I didn’t have anything that I wanted to do that needed it in order to be able to be used. In my new job though, the web application that I have been put in charge of using already extensively used JavaScript. So, I extended my arms out and embraced it.

I can see me doing a lot of stuff with JavaScript in the coming year, and you know what - I’m looking forward to it!

My Stomach

Well, obviously I’m hoping that my stomach won’t be big. My girlfriend and I have decided that it would be a good idea to get a bit more healthy (he says, nibbling down on a box of Toblerone One by Ones), so we’ve decided to start on the Low GI Diet. I really do need to lose a bit of the extra weight I’m carrying, and this does seem to be a pretty healthy lifestyle change with lots of healthy veggies and lean meat and snacks and not being left hungry. If all goes to plan this really will be a lifestyle change rather than a short term faddy thing, and I’ll get to bore you all senseless with periodic updates on how I’m doing.

I hope 2005 hasn’t been too traumatic for any of you out there, and that 2006 will be everything you want it to be. Good luck to everyone with the new year!

comments (3) | write a comment | permalink | 30 December 2005