My Year In Lists
Jan 1, 2014 · 3 minute readlists
The last moments of 2013 are ticking away. It’s been an eventful year. I changed jobs (twice), bought a house (just the once, thankfully), wrote a book, made new friends and sadly said goodbye to a friend that left us. And here I am, back at the beginning, back in Bicester, sitting at the table and typing away.
Moving house was a little stressful, as the house that we were renting was becoming more and more dangerous to inhabit due to the black mold spreading like wildfire in the basement. I lost a lot of CDs, my birthday present from my family, suitcases, and even a Christmas tree to that basement. That and unacceptable behaviour from our landlord meant we really had to find somewhere else. And while we could have probably found a rental, I thought it was time to start looking for a place where we could change things, where we wouldn’t have to worry about what the landlord thinks about pets, and where I could wire up so many things to a twitter account. Thanks to the eagle eyes of my Mum, we found our house pretty quickly, and despite some last minute jitters over the roof and a few other bits and pieces, we’ve now been in there for almost half-a-year. We may have changed all the lights by the end of next year. Or figured out how to fix the shower head on the bath…
(and a big thank you to Tammy, who despite being in the process of moving from two homes (long story), still helped immensely during and after we moved from Trinity. And Luke for painting the door back to a non-dog scratched state!)
Work was busy. I started out quite happy at Rho, found myself at ReverbNation, where the Diet Cokes ran freely, and everything was Rails-y, and yet when I came back from the UK in May, I was contacted by OSI, and I was back there by mid-August. So two years in, and three jobs later, I’ve come full circle. And I haven’t been sent to California yet! Somewhere during this transitional period, I was emailed by Packt asking if I would like to write Instant Zepto.js. So I’m now listed on Amazon. Somewhat surprising, but hurrah!
2013 was supposed to be a year of making things. And I guess I did do some things - there was the SMS / Arduino game that I made back in February, chocolate molds I had laser-cut by Ponoko, and various sensors that I cobbled together to start the HouseOfPi twitter feed. I also explored the limits of Lulu and delved into the internals of iOS for a James Bridle-esque adventure of bringing the virtual world into the physical one (it ended up looking a bit like this). But still, I hope to do more next year.
Finally, we said goodbye to Melanie Cuplin this year. I think we probably talked more over email than we ever saw each other face-to-face (due to being in California and other events that occurred over the last couple of years), but she was a good friend with a lot of weird and wonderful stories. A life compressed, but very well lived.