[/caption]It's happened again, Jeremiah Peschka has called me out to write a blog post, well you smarmy bastard, here it is. The topic of this post is goals for 2010. Its the end of 2009 and so we have time to look back and reflect, we can also look forward and plan out the next 365 days.
Personal
These are the boring goals that don't have any computers or lasers in them, they are just things I want to accomplish for me.
- New House - In March I will be moving into my first house with my wonderful girlfriend, Heather. I want to make this house a great place to unwind after a long day, a home filled with love, and, of course, include a badass office where I can program to my heart's content. This last part has been made much more of a reality by the recent gift from my awesome coworker, Carrie Frazier, of two giant whiteboards.
- Health - I've been focusing a lot on interpersonal relationships and side projects in the last year which has left my once not too fat body in a condition Wii Fit calls Obese. It's been far too easy to pick up a pizza or take Heather out to eat and I have paid for it by becoming a much jigglier Matt. I plan on getting back to the healthy lifestyle I once had, and dropping some of this pizza weight.
- Ink - Jeremiah mentioned this and so should I, it's been a few years since my last tattoo and I've had an idea for a good one for a while, I plan on getting it done at some point this year, sooner rather than later.
Coding
It's been a busy year and most of my life centers around putting fingers to keyboards trying to make something worthwhile.
- Prosper - This is my baby that I've painstakingly carved out of php for the last few months. I think it is actually getting to the point where people could use it and not have their entire project fail, it's that good. I want to focus on improving the core of prosper, building the community, and promoting the crap out of it. The ball is rolling on having my awesome friend and fantastic designer Ashley Kruso make a new logo for prosper and at some point in the next year it will move to its own domain. I already have an upcoming event to talk about it (more details in a bit).
- Blog - This blog started out as a free blogger account, then I moved it to my own domain (which you are currently at) and it runs off of WordPress. The design started off with the zDark WordPress theme which is now heavily modified. There are some things that I've just been too lazy about to change.
- Better dark-on-light theme - I introduced the dark-on-light theme for people that had trouble reading the light-on-dark theme. It is very much a dirty hack, it does not retheme all the elements, and it is fairly ugly. I've had a better version cooking for some time but haven't had the drive to finish it up, I will strive to do so for the coming year.
- Wider Columns - It's no longer 1994, we can make a fluid layout with bigger wider columns. The content column is less than 600 pixels, which is pretty absurd. I plan on reworking the layout to take advantage of larger screens while still supporting people living in 800x600 town.
- Disqus - If you read yesterday's article you may have noticed that I ragged on Disqus as being bloated and ugly. Daniel Ha from Disqus was nice enough to drop a comment on that post and we had a very pleasant email conversation. Since this is still a feature people are asking for I will look into implementing it again, I also plan on producing a how-to for WordPress integration to document it and a review of the service.
- Ruby - I've fallen in love a lot this year, lisp, smalltalk, and ruby have been my new technology sweethearts. I've been reading and finding ruby to be an acceptable lisp and actually a a not too bad smalltalk. Ruby, especially when coupled with rails, is something I plan on learning intimately and I hope to be able to provide some cool tools for that community.
- Git - I've been an svn man for a long time now, but I have moved on to GitHub and have been learning the ins-and-outs of git. I am going to strive to really learn git and to work in it enough over the next year to feel as comfortable with it as I do with svn.
Business
As much fun as coding is, unless someone is paying for it you are going to get awfully hungry.
- Black Projects - I have a few black projects that I'm working on on the side. One of which has, IMHO, great potential. Within the next year I hope to have one of these live in production and at least breaking even cash-flow wise.
- Professional presence - See what I'm doing here typing at you, making an ass out of myself, this is called blogging. Blogging is a great way to increase your visibility and presence in the world. Now I'm not just, "That guy with the glasses who says weird things," I'm "That guy with the glasses who says weird things... on the internet." Big difference. I love blogging and I want to start giving talks in real life and become more active in user groups in the next year.
- Relationships - This blog has already connected me to some of the nicest and smartest people I've ever met. I've been building some strong relationships and friendships, this isn't just good for business its good for one's spirit. I hope to continue this trend into the coming year.
Conclusion
This has been a fantastic year for me, first one in a while I won't be sending off with a "Goodbye Stink Town!" I'm looking forward to what 2010 will bring, if the movies of the 80's are right our jetpacks and hooker-bots aren't too far off.
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