What a year. I honestly can’t believe this year has already come and gone. Yesterday also marked the first full year of blogging, although not a full year of BrokenKode.

I’ve been writing this entry for a few days now, and it keeps growing and growing, and to be honest the more I write the more I feel what a great busy year this has been, through it’s bad times and it’s good times. It’s been a full year in every meaning of the world, and in many ways has also been one of the most saticfying ever. I guess there are several reasons for that.

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for and one of the things I’m very happy I did was this here blog. It’s original ideas was to have a news section of my website I could update in an easy fashion evolved into soo much more.

It started life as part of blogger. A bit of searching around and I thought Moveable Type was the way to go. When they decided to change their policy on payment, that was it game over for me, I started searching around the net for a suitable alternative.

<ul>
<li><strong>Open Source Code</strong> - Franchesco starting work in the office, and I was introduced to the wonderful world of Open Source code, and what it means to be a part of an online  community. 

From these conversations I downloaded Firefox 0.7, Wordpress 1.2, Blender 2.34 and Xammp 2.0. From then it was a mission to find the next great piece of software that I didn’t know about.

I was introduced to RSS and while I've got loads of aggregators on my machine somewhere, it's Sage that I use and continue to use every single day without fail.

Manji was released, and I've got my next Open Source project underway as well, in Shuttle.

I was able to draw 15 illustrations in my new vector graphic style.

Completed the Broken Kode mascott. CoCo will be making his appearance soon.

Went to the Olympics Games.

Got a piece of my artwork in a gallery.

Got my heart broken.

Won a design competition as judged by Jason Arber.

Got active in two online communities (Wordpress forum and DesignateOnline. Something I'd not actually done in 4 years.

Completed the initial plot for my never-ending story.

Read the most graphic novels ever in all my years of sequential reading.

Made several new friends, lost a friend forever.

Took over as project manager for a small school.

Got involved with one of Arup's Halley V submissions, internal politics forbid us to actually submit it in the end. Live and learn I guess.

Went up to Newcastle for the Corporate Games Basketball tournament, where we came fifth.

Actually designed a version of my handwriting as a font.

Was introduced to the wonderful world of PHP.

Learnt some software (Indesign, Rhino, Blender and Expression).

Read several books, The Alchemist, Dune, The Corporation, Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass under his Pillow, Comic Book Writers on Scriptwriting, (I know there's more but I'm in Greece right now and my books are in England).

Read and bought more magazines than I've ever bought in my life. Computer Arts, Computer Arts Projects, F1 Racing, Web Designer and Designer Weekly were the main culprits.

Watched for the first time a complete season of Formula 1 ever, and saw the worst season for Williams BMW ever at the same time.

Went to Milan.

3 of my friends got married. Went to my first wedding ever. Another one of my best friends got engaged.

Best Movies. Not a great year for movies IMHO, however those that are worth mentioning and remembering are gems.

1. The Incredibles.
2. Big Fish.
3. Kill Bill Volume 2.
4. Return of the King.
5. Shrek 2.

Best Graphic Novels. Fantastic year for the graphic novel. Such a diverse range of books to choose from. However it was the year of Manga for me, with some brilliant books on offer, that remind me why reading comics is this much fun, and why I don’t watch TV.

1. Fables Vol 2 & 3
2. Sleeper Vol 1 & 2
3. 100 Bullets
4. Naruto
5. Vagabond
6. League of Extraordinary Gentlement Vol 2. (simply great)
7. Point Blank (great twist)
8. Red Son (great ending)
9. Transmetropolitan

Best Music. A pretty decent year for music I must say. It could be better, but the new REM album wasn’t to my liking, and neither was the new U2 album, but I was introduced to several great bands, most of all however The Killers, for actually producing an album that I can enjoy fully.

1. Hot Fuss ( The Killers)
2. Prodigy (Always outnumbered never outgunned)
3. Vertical Horizon
4. Lost Prophets
5. Zero 7
6. Staind

Best Websites.

1. Planet F1
2. PixelSurgeon so many great links from this site.
3. Photomatt always informative
4. Chromasia The bloody best photoblog out there. The man is brilliant, NOBODY comes close to this guy's talent.
5. Pixelog addictive reading, Chris really does find some brilliant things off the net to the forefront.
6. Bryan Bell Internet/icon designer of the year for me. I really like his site, and his stuff is generally fun to look at, even if he is an apple nut, I won't hold it against him.