Reflections: The year that was

I'm a bit late to the table with this one given that we're almost a full month into 2011, but it's always good to take stock of what you've achieved in a year. And: better late than never, eh?

I was prompted to perform this exercise by a few other people's similar posts; perhaps you'd like to do the same thing?

I'll admit that I actually began writing this list at the end of last year, but have only just got around to finishing off my notes. Enough with the procrastination. I seem to suffer from a bad case of everything-is-more-important-than-everything-else-itis recently.

Amongst other things, in 2010:

• I continued writing my regular software development column for ACCU's CVu magazine. This year I renamed the column, from the slightly stuffy and ambiguous "Professionalism in Programming" to the more lucid "Becoming a Better Programmer".
• Speaking at developer of conferences. I gave two talks at ACCU 2010 in Oxford, and one in the Software Craftsmanship track of QCon London 2010. I also gave a presentation on iPhone development for Software East in Cambridge. It was refreshing to attend other techie conferences as a "mere" attendee.
• Book contributions. I contributed three entries to O'Reily's 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know book, edited by Kevlin Henney.
• Kept on developing... Produced a number of iOS apps for my company (DJ apps, Synths, and a hardware MIDI SDK). And worked on Mac apps, getting them available in the Mac App Store when it launched.
• Kept on developing more... It's been gratifying that a lot of my publicly available code components have been very popular in 2010. Especially the iOS MIDI I/O library I wrote which has found its way into many iOS apps, and my work getting the Boost libraries easily available on iOS.
• Continued graphic design and layout work, overseeing the layout and design of CVu and Overload magazines, as well as producing the covers for both publications.
• Performed a number of techie book reviews. Mostly this year, I have been reviewing iPhone/iOS development books for ACCU.
• Learnt new technologies: this year was definitely the year of git, which I now use for everything, including accessing Subversion repositories.
• Preached on a Sunday morning at Old Windsor Parish Church.
• Spoke at the wedding of two great friends, Steve and Frances.
• Playing keyboards at three conferences in Cambridge (as well as regular stints in the Sunday morning band at C3).
• Leading a smallgroup at C3.
• Moved house (I now have a studio, wooo!)

Phew! That list's not exhaustive (I wonder what I've forgotten about), but its enough for now. It's been a busy year. And not a dull one.

2010 albums of the year: Bonobo's Black Sands, Brandon Flower's Flamingo, Foal's Total Life Forever, Seasick Steve's Songs for Elisabeth, Vampire Weekend's Contra, 65daysofstatic's We Were Exploding Anyway, St. Lola In The Fields' High Atop The Houses And The Towns, Lou Rhode's One Good Thing, Jonsi's Go, Goldfrapp's Head First, and Klaxon's Surfing the Void.