The end of 2008 is approaching. It’s been a good year for this site. I’ve learned a bunch of new things, and the site grew significantly in its content and daily traffic.
Right now I’m enjoying the holiday, so I don’t have any new content to add, however, I figured I’d post up my patorjk.com-Related Goals for 2009:
- Get good at JavaScript. It’s been a while since I’ve felt like I was really good at a particular language. At work, I was referred to as a “language person” by my boss several times since I seemed to be able to dive into any language they threw at me. Versatility is good, but sometimes I feel like I spread myself too thin. I could possibly get really good at Tcl, since I do a decent amount of Tcl programming at work, however, Tcl isn’t that fun of a language and it doesn’t easily do the things I would want to do (I could rant on and on about the pros and cons of Tcl, but I’ll spare you all).
- Learn jQuery. Right now I’m learning Dojo, but I’d also like to learn jQuery, since I know my company uses and it appears to be the most popular JavaScript framework. Being familar with a couple of these frameworks is probably a good thing too.
- Develop More Web Apps. I only released 4 total this year (not including ones that were re-done). This is well under the number I wanted to release. In the future I hope to release one a month, however, I don’t want to set myself up with an impossible goal, so I’ll just say I want to make more.
- Read At Least 4 Programming Books. I’m going to leave 2008 having read 2 completely and 4 part way through. Books can be a great motivator and a good source of learning.
- Join A Programming Community. I wasn’t able to relaunch the patorjk.com forums this year, however, I do still miss the community of the old forums.
- Write A WordPress Plug-In. WordPress is the name of the blogging software I use. I’ve played around with it a bit, but I haven’t really tried writing my own plug-in.
- Release Some Programming Examples. It’s been too long since I released one.
It’s 3:30AM right now, so there may be a few I’m missing, but I think those sum up my mind set right now. Professionally I think I’d like to get back into .NET programming (I miss VB, but for a hobby, I want to stay focused on something, and right now I’m more into web programming than I am into Desktop apps). However, I have no idea what I’ll be doing this next year or even how much I’ll be able to say about it.
2009 year should also be a big year for me personally. Right now I’m looking for a house with my girl friend, so I’m really excited about that. Also, my awful case of tinnitus (constant ringing in the ears) has gone down by about 75%-90% thanks to my switching toothpastes from one that contained Potassium Nitrate to one that didn’t (sensitive toothpastes typically have Potassium Nitrate), and I think it may go completely away. If you know anyone with tinnitus, be sure to pass on this bit of info.
Anyway, I hope you all are having a happy and safe holiday and I hope you keep checking back in!
Hey Patrick,
I left you a comment *way* back on patrickgillespie.com. If you’re blog is like mine, you were probably notified.
Happy New Year!
(Just found your blog in a moment of vanity – looking up my own name.)
Merry Christmas to all… Better late than never.
Brian
New layout. Nice.
Happy holidays.
Sorry about not approving these. I must have messed up my blog settings.
Thank you all for holiday greetings, and happy belated holidays to you all too!
Just got your comment at my site. Glad to hear from you.
When my comments didn’t show up… well… who wouldn’t delete a comment from somebody with a name like ours? Perfectly understandable.
I’m going to add you to my blogroll.
Also, if you need any advice about houses, let me know. I’m a builder.
I like the look of your website. Nice.
When I was in high school (early 80s), I learned to program on TRS-80’s. I still have my TRS-80 pocket computer and I still occasionally write little programs for it (Basic). It comes with a whopping 6k of memory. Then there was Dartmouth. All they had were TRS-80s. A couple years later, we all adopted the Apple II’s and IIe’s. Most of us were still programming in Basic, but some of us tried our hand at Pascal and Machine Language. I don’t remember any of the Machine Language. The proto-nerds among us could actually program in Machine Language – and fluently. Jesus. That’s when I decided I wasn’t cut out for coding.
Thanks for the add, I’ll add you to my Exits section.
My old high school had iMac G3 computers, however, because the lady who ran the computer lab was super paranoid, we weren’t allowed to use them to develop on. Instead we had to use some really old PC’s with what I think was Windows 3.1 on them. We ended up learning QBasic and Pascal.
The only thing I remember about the Apple II is the old game “The Oregon Trail”. I used to love playing that game, though I was unfortunately never really good at it.