2013 - What a year!

Being a review of 2013, from my FourSquare check-in and blogging perspective :-)

The year started off cold and snowy in Woking. I was busy teaching a Code Club in the local library.

For our anniversary, Liz and I went on holiday to Las Vegas.

The jetlag was unfortunately crippling, and the Beatles' Love show was cancelled 5 minute in - which was very upsetting.

That said, we had front row seats to Rebo and Zooty Penn and Teller,

Saw Ray Kurzweil speak,

And flew over Vegas in a helichopter and landed in the Grand Canyon.

If that wasn't enough for one holiday - we then went on a Road Trip through the Mojave desert and pitched up at our friends' house for a week in San Diego.

Highlight was definably getting splashed by Shamu. I don't think Liz and I have ever been so drenched!

At the zoo, I caught this wonderful moment with the bees and rhinos. Probably the best photo I've ever taken.

The rest of February and most of March were pretty dull - livened up thanks to LibraryCamp

I gave a talk on Breaking OverDrive DRM on ePubs and how it wasn't the end of the world for libraries.

We also got to see The Book of Mormon, thanks to some last minute tickets from Dr Sue Black.

March also saw me discover and report a security bug about Samsung's Android phones.

I had started a martial art - Pil Sung Do - and I received my first grading:

I blogged about the latest Doctor Who episode, and how to get your WiFi network to look like the alien language. I published the blog post within a few hours of the episode airing - as of today, it's had 67 thousand hits! There are a lot of Doctor Who fans in the world :-)

In May I gave a very well received talk at OpenTech about Bribing MPs.

I also released a very silly tumblr which got a lot of attention - I Don't Want Your Fucking App dot tumblr dot com - which catalogued in sweary fashion all those websites who try to palm you off onto their crappy app.

June saw our first wedding of the season - Helen and Andrew got hitched

I jetted off to Dublin to speak at the OMA Conference.

BarCamp Brighton was my first big event with The Lab. Thanks to the organisational skills of Nic and Kevin, it was remarkably stress free. Liz gave a smashing presentation about video games.

I was a last minute stand in for Chris Atherton at the Learning Skills Conference. With my colleague Ruth, we quickly put together a very well received talk about mobile UK.

Next up, a flight to Glasgow! The Lab team was teaching computer science to school children - great fun, and a really interesting learning experience for us.

After much faffing about, I released my first Chinese Language website - http://莎士比亚.org/

I also told 22,000 people how to Opt-Out of Klout.

In July, my blog reached the One Million hits landmark.

By July, Liz had got a job at Oxford University! Cue a frantic few months of house-hunting and preparing to move.

But, before moving, we had to fly off to New York City!

Why? To watch our mate,s Greg and Jamie, get married! Yay! I love me a good wedding.

Of course, we had some amazing veggie food and beers.

And we couldn't visit upstate New York without getting soaked at Niagara Falls.

Finally, we went back to Strawberry Fields where I had asked her to marry me all those year ago.

As August started, I began constructing a 3D printer at work.

The RepRapPro would slowly take over my life for the next few months at work as we exhibited it all over the company and at Campus Party.

As our friends Mike and Nikki got married, we found out that the house we wanted was ours :-)

And that weekend we moved house to Oxford!

The next few months were mostly taken up with fixing the house, painting, decorating, wiring, and all the general chores which go with a new property.

I also released a "best selling" book. Which was nice.

I got to return to UEA - where Liz and I met - to deliver a lecture about mobile computing to MSc students.

We got solar panels installed which have been doing pretty well.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Currently generating over 2kW from my roof. Not bad this close to the solstice :-) pic.x.com/bjegmxmrss

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To cap the year off, I decided to grow a beard.

Dashing, eh?

So - that was my 2013 - how was yours?