At the end of every year, I find myself looking back going “wow that was over fast, what on earth did I do with all that time, aargh!”
Thus in the spirit of one of my favourite articles, Always Improve, Never Stop, Never Pause, Never Appreciate, here’s some of what I did in 2016. Not necessarily “achievements”, not necessarily endorsements, but things I did that made me happy.
So, in no particular order:
I proposed. She said yes. We bought a house.
I shipped 28 blog posts. Still not as many as I’d like, but I’ve always struggled with over-editing to the point where I never finish, so this marks progress.
I helped run a conference, as treasurer of PyCon UK 2016.
I contributed to the BeeWare project and received a challenge coin.
My first ever Debian contribution,
an apt-get
UX “bug” (improvement? patch?)
#709092,
was resolved.
Massive thanks to David Kalnischkies
and Chris Lamb.
I baked my first pie, I captained a starship (seriously, this was so much fun), and I cracked The Crystal Maze (thanks Giles!)
I made it to a bunch of excellent events:
- PipelineConf
- Monkigras
- Django Under The Hood
- ScaleSummit
- NHS Hack Day London 2016
- EMFCamp - because if I’m going camping, I want gigabit connectivity from my tent…
I don’t have a complete list of books I read, as my GoodReads account was mostly untouched for 2016 (though I plan to use it more in 2017) but my Kindle/Amazon data let me reconstruct a partial list (at least of the fiction; I generally prefer physical books for non-fiction). I read some great books though:
- The Liveship Traders trilogy
- The Bobby Dollar series
- The Nightmare Stacks - the latest in Stross’s Laundry Files series
- Turn The Ship Around - possibly my favourite leadership book
- Start With Why
- The Merchant Princes series
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
- American Gods
- Ready Player One - they’re making a film of this and I can’t wait!
- The Rapture Of The Nerds
- Wireless: The Essential Charles Stross
- Dune - I’d seen the film years ago, was good to finally read the book
- Axiomatic - thanks to Curtis Maloney for the recommendation
- Permutation City
I saw some fantastic theatre:
- Peter Pan Goes Wrong - panto comedy disaster
- Guys and Dolls
- The Phantom of the Opera - we’re John Owen Jones fans and couldn’t miss the opportunity to see him back as the Phantom (he was the longest-running Phantom, with over 2000 performances)
- Phantom again, this time with Ben Forster
- Miss Saigon’s closing night
- Adam Kay’s The Remains of Tom Lehrer
- The Comedy About A Bank Robbery
- The Truth
- The Bodyguard - I hadn’t realised just how much of Whitney Houston’s music I knew and enjoyed
- Groundhog Day
- Jesus Christ Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre
- Les Misérables - John Owen Jones closing it on Broadway
- The Hired Man - John Owen Jones at Cadogan Hall
- Stomp - absolutely amazing performance
- Travesties - I love Stoppard and I love Travesties, one of the first shows I saw as an undergrad
- The Play That Goes Wrong - I laughed so hard I thought I might rupture something
- The Phantom of the Opera 30th Anniversary
- Murder Ballad
- Half a Sixpence
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - I read the script; seeing it on stage was fantastic - some incredibly impressive special effects!
So?
Putting this list together has helped me remember and appreciate bits of 2016 that were good for me. I recommend giving it a try yourself.