This post is all about the numbers. It’s about being the 1600th post on Broken Kode, the 51st post for the month of December 2010 (which also equals the largest number of posts ever in a single month) and the year of end review for 2010.

Come the 4th of January the site will have been online for 7 whole years! As 7 is also my lucky number (don’t actually know why I think it is, as I’m sure billions of other people feel the same way, but the number 7 makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), hopefully it will be a banner year for me.

Having said that 2010 has been an exceptional year for me so far. So before 2010 leaves us forever I thought I’d drop a quick salute and reflect on the year that was before I jump into the year that will be (it’s also been a few years since I did one of these, because frankly this shit takes AGES to compile and is a proper time suck).

On Blogging

This is an interesting one. Blogging is dead as I know it. I'm not saying that blogging is dead, but the way that I liked to interact with people via their blogs and their long form words is completely gone. That's really sad for me to see and actually feel, because I really enjoyed that aspect of things.

Twitter has come to replace that. Honestly my main issue with Twitter is that I’m not feeling much in the way of interaction, at least so far. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. I don’t reply and respond to every single tweek and when I do it generally goes unanswered (typically).

So what’s a guy to do? I like the fact that everyone and their dog is on twitter. I hate the fact that I can’t write the length that I want. I can tweet from work, but only via my iPhone (which isn’t a big deal). The thing is the form of communication doesn’t rightly appeal to me.

I guess that’s not completely true, it does on some level, but it’s not my preferred method of online communication. Maybe I just need to embrace things, or maybe I just need to keep building this site up, such that it also becomes a destination of sorts.

Maybe branch out into Twitter a bit more. I tried to do it these last few weeks. It was mildly successful, if you consider getting more people following you as being successful.

The ‘Kode doesn’t have a specific focus. People might come here to get a few interesting links, a few snarky comments, maybe look at some pretty pictures, and maybe download a bit of code or whatever.

For the past few years I’ve really been link blogging with some comments, as that was all that I could bring myself to do. In depth commentary takes time, time away from other things, things which I’m enjoying just as much.

So the task for the 7th year of Broken Kode is maybe to refine the commentary slightly - I still like the haphazard linking. The thing is, can I refine how I present things? What good will that achieve? I guess it ultimately depends on what I am trying to achieve with the blogging. It’s an outlet. By now it’s habit. Blogging is about presenting your ideas and I guess I’m trying not to loose site of that, since it honestly seems everyone else around me has.

There are those people that have not. People like Gruber, Swiss Miss, Kottke, Joen and a few others, but by and large the art of personal blogging isn’t as vibrant as it once was…or is there too much noise out there that I can’t really distinguish between the good, the bad and the ugly?

Personal blogs that are updated with any regularity are a rarity. Don’t worry about me I’ll keep the lights turned on.

Website

Regarding this website, very little was done in 2010. I tweaked the design ever so slightly and updated the engine to the latest version of Habari, but apart from that I honestly haven't done that much. That's not true, I added some @media queries and did a bit of updating when it comes to trying to give the site some responsive design. Sadly it's not really there yet, or at least it doesn't render the way I imagine it to render on my iPhone, but that's only because I've not done enough testing and reading around the subject.

I keep wanting to update with a lighter version, but I keep coming back to the darker colours and staying put. I know I will probably go for a slightly lighter motif pretty soon. Also I’d like to clean up the code finally as it’s a bit of a mess really. That’ll be the first thing I do in January 2011. The design will pretty much remain the same, the underpinning will get lighter, the colours will change and I’ll probably add more doodles and images to places.

Creatively

Creatively this year has had some immense highs and some very long creative-less months. The main peak of creative activity as you can imagine all happened during my sabbatical months. Sadly that wasn't meant to last as shortly within those months I had to start planning my change of life and country. Having said that I still managed to do a few things. First of which was this drawing for my cousin, using my lettering style which I developed a few months earlier for another little pet project.

Then there was this little drawing, which then got made into a glass painting which I get to look at every day.

I managed to make a few logos, some of which were actually used in the physical world, which again I thought was fantastic to see.

As if all of that wasn’t enough I got to complete my first draft and having been slowly hacking away at the second draft. It’s not as far along as I want it to be, but then again when was it ever going to be? Being this far along is reward enough. At least I’ve not given up on the dream. Given up on the dream, I’ve not worked this much on it ever. I’m waking up every morning and actually moving the process along.

Then finally, out of nowhere, I’ve even started off and created a little new robot character. I know I have a love for these things. It was completely by accident and it was inspired by me wanting to use my iPhone for something other than just consumption. I wanted to use it for creating. I am in the process of drawing a small backlog of pages so that I can start soliciting it on a weekly basis, which should be a nice distraction from all the other stuff that I’ve got going on at the moment.

When put like that, the output doesn’t seem too bad. There are a ton of projects I didn’t get to start, which I put the idea down on paper but never got around to. Ultimately however things actually were completed.

One of the things that I’m going to try and do next year is put rough deadlines. Even if I don’t meet these deadlines, at least I’ll push myself in the general direction of actually doing the work. Yes I might get a bit stressed while I do it, but that’s ok, it means I can look back on the year and be happy for what I completed. Actually completing projects is what keeps me happy. I’m also definitely going to buy this book.

Life

Even with all of that, the biggest thing to happen to me in 2010 was that I rediscovered my life, and by that I mean I finally found the person I want to share my life with. It wasn't easy getting here, I'll tell you that much, and I honestly wasn't even actively looking for it and it landed in my lap, with a little help from me.

My moving over to Lebanon and taking a job at PDP from Arup was a major one. So far it’s given me exactly what I expected, although the size of the project and time frame that I was given to complete a project I have been working on, for 4 months of my time here, was certainly unexpected. It’s not been fun and it’s stressed me out in a way I didn’t expect. It wasn’t an issue of getting everything correct or forgetting something, it was an issue of maintaining a good level of work in a very tight timeframe, with junior engineers, while I tried to learn the way in which things were done in this office.

I love the fact that I don’t really have to cook, unless I really want to. I like the fact that I am generally taken care of in that department completely and totally. Be it my future mother in law, Yasmine, my aunts, whatever. I like the fact that I don’t have to iron, except in the rare occasions.

I don’t like the banking sector in the country, nor do I like the stupid traffic in Beirut. I don’t like the insane drivers, nor how they force me to act while I drive on the road either. I do like the weather generally, although I do actually wish it would act like the seasons. We really honestly didn’t feel any autumn, nor are we honestly feeling the winter either. I guess this is all part of the global warming effect which I should discuss in more detail in the future.

There are a ton of things that I want to institute in the office. Something will take a good long while to get them going, while others will be more immediate to implement. The best thing I learnt while working for any company is the following:

Don't ask for permission...rather ask for forgiveness

Do it first and then claim ignorance later. It’s not like you’re trying to upset anyone, rather trying to push any company forward is a tough thing that takes persistence and time and effort to change something that many people don’t want to change.

Consumerism

iPhone Car Audiobooks

Comics and Graphic Novels When it came to comics and graphic novels, this year was a bit mixed. Before I left England, I honestly packed a ton of books with me. This was in addition to the ton of books that I actually still have with me as well.

Reading

On account of the audiobooks the actual reading of books has somewhat been lackluster. The last book I think I actually read was Amin Maalouf's Origins. Prior to that I finished of Malcom Gladwell's 'What the Dog Saw'. Interspersed I tried getting into 'Black Swan' and the Osamu Tezuka art and biography book with different levels of success. Pretty poor showing. It's not that I don't have a ton of books that I really want to read, it's just that finding the descipline to actually do the reading is a bit difficult.

The countless articles I’ve read online and in the various magazines I’ve bought over the year don’t get counted. The tweets I’ve read and wasted more time on, don’t get counted. That said, I am a bit embarressed to confess that on more than one occasion I would by the Economist (which I honestly believe is one of the best magazines for getting information on what’s going on in the world) and not actually read much of it, past the cover story. I think what I’ll try and do is, once a month try and actually get through an issue of the economist. Every week is a tall order, but once a month should be ok.

I also bought a few issues of Wired. The typical price in Lebanon is 19,000LL, which is approximately $12.5, around 8.5 quid, which is nearly double the cover price. Which is probably why I’m going to try and limit myself to reading this magazine once every couple of months.

I didn’t get into any new magazines over this last year, which is strange. I keep wanting to buy a Computer Arts, or a Mac World or something like that, but always end up putting it back on the shelf, as it just feels like a lot more disposable than the price tag requires. The one nice thing that gets imported however is ‘The Guardian’ weekly. This is a digest of all the top stories in the Guardian provided in this A4 stapled format, which is easy to digest on a Saturday morning. It’s definitely something I’m considering buying more often in the future.

This has easily been the longest post I’ve ever written, clocking out at over 1500 words and it’s taken me the better part of 3 days to write. It’s been nice to finally get my thoughts in one place again, so take that Twitter and your silly 140 character word limit bullshit.