Tag: Programming

Categories
Business Life Technology

Onward 2012

2011 was a crazy year.

  • Lived with grandparents for one-and-a-half months
  • Bought our first house (and moved into it)
  • Ran three 5Ks (one with Laura, which was amazing)
  • Painted most of the rooms in the house
  • Mowed a lot of lawn (then watched it all die)
  • Birth of our second son, Levi John
  • Jamis’s second birthday
  • Celebrated 5 years of marriage
  • Set up my first real, permanent home office
  • Started up my personal business again
  • Helped with harvest on the farm
  • Pushed out the first major website revision for MLC since 2005
  • A lot of traveling to and from Wisconsin to visit the best in-laws ever
  • Lots of other stuff

That’s just the stuff I can remember.

Laura and I have both said we are looking forward to a 2012 that is a little bit less crazy, and a little more settled than we have ever had. We’ve only lived in one other place for more than 9 months (I think that is the correct amount of time), and we will be celebrating one year in our house on Valentine’s Day. That’s an accomplishment for us. It is also comforting to know that this house is the only one Levi has known, and the one that Jamis has stayed in the longest as well.

Even Molly likes it (I think).

So onward to 2012! Here are some things I’m hoping to accomplish this coming year (the first batch comes from Resolutions over at We Are Martens):

  • Drink less pop (this is a recurring one for me … )
  • Replace all of the water piping in the house
  • Grow my personal business 50%
  • Get better at doing work outside
  • Walk more (and to more places)
  • Replace bulbs in the house when the burn out (right away)
  • Do more little things for my wife
  • Finally incorporate Deck78 (after killing Replosion when we moved to WI)
  • Learn how to program (that’s kind of vague)
  • Speak at two conferences or meetings (did one in 2011)
  • Get a better backup system in place at home
  • Build Laura the photography website she has been asking about
  • Start and finish the website for the MVL Lightning Dance Team
  • Pitch new websites to four new clients
  • Continue helping people learn how to incorporate technology into their lives
  • Lots of other stuff

I’m excited for what 2012 is going to bring. For the first time in a long while I feel like I have a better handle on my state of mind and am more settled and ready/able to take on new things.

Onward 2012!

TextMate 2.0 Alpha Announced

After much speculation and many people giving up, Macromates has announced the TextMate 2.0 Alpha for those who already have a TextMate 1 license key.

I’m excited and I’m using it as my full-time editor until I hit a problem that

  1. isn’t caused by me
  2. hampers my ability to get work done more than switching to something else

I’ll post some thoughts on it in the future.

Categories
Life

Getting a start on New Years

Yeah, it’s December, but I was waxing nostalgic this morning as I rocked my 4 month-old son at 5:15 in the morning. I thought back to what I was hoping to accomplish this year and taking stock in whether I had achieved any of those goals or, more likely, did they change.

From there, I really just stopped thinking for a moment, tried to doze off for a little bit, and then woke up again to a different thought. This time, what do I want to accomplish in the next 90 days, which happens to contain the New Year?

Mainly, it is a similar goal to most years for me: learn how to program. I still haven’t achieved this goal, so I refined it down a little bit more for myself. What do I, SPECIFICALLY, want to accomplish in the next 90 days. After playing around with some lofty goals, I decided to force myself into a reality check … let’s set a really small goal and accomplish that first before we get ahead of ourselves (that was myself talking to … myself).

“Alright, self,” my self said, “so where do we want to go from here?”

That’s when it hit me: I had a goal sitting right there, started but never finished, which would work very nicely to get the ball rolling.

Enter Learn Ruby The Hard Way.

I am a few exercises in, started and then aborted maybe a month back, and the kind of goal I need to achieve to get some momentum going for myself. It is very simple (in concept) and something that I can achieve if I just put myself to it.

So there you have it: in the next 90 days I aim to finish Learn Ruby the Hard Way. After that, my selves shall reconvene to figure out what is next.

Paying for TextMate 2.0

Marco Arment posted this letter over on his blog yesterday.

The basic gist of the letter is that he would like to encourage Allan Odgaard (well, Macromates) to charge for TextMate 2.0, even though he has promised the 2.0 will be a free upgrade for any registered users of the current version.

While I’m not going to comment on whether he should change his stance and charge for version 2.0, I am making a pledge that I will pay for a new license when TextMate 2.0 ships if I deem it my full-time editor for the future.

My text editor is the single most important tool that I use every day, and I will gladly pay to use it. This also goes for any other editor that I choose in the future, whether open source or not. I will pay (in money or time) to use the tools that I enjoy.

TextMate 2.0 alpha coming this year!

TextMate Blog: What’s Next?

If true, this is some of the best news of the year (as far as tech stuff goes).