Week Notes - A Year In Review

By @edent · meta NaBloPoMo WeekNotes · 950 words · read ~244 times.

It's my birthday! As is customary, here's my year in review. See 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.

It has felt like a bit of a "holding pattern" year. When I started writing this post, I really didn't feel like I'd accomplished much. Turns out, I'm an idiot and have been franticly busy!

Domestic Life

Huge thanks to The Hodge for turning me on to this great way to track to-dos and achievements. Cheap chalkboard-paper and some chalky-pens. Sure, I could start yet-another Trello board - but this forces me to spend my breakfasts looking over what I've done and what I've yet to finish.

Travels

Singapore for a couple of days, then New Zealand for a couple of weeks. That means... ROAD TRIP!

Terry and Liz in a convertable car, their hair flowing.

It was great seeing family and friends. Eating and drinking all sorts of exotic things. And exploring a new part of the world. But the absolute highlight was visiting the Nevalea Alpaca farm.

Brussels

A mix of work and pleasure. For work, representing the UK at the EU's MSP. That's a lot of acronyms - but basically discussing Open Standards around the world.

And for fun, chasing around the city guzzling chocolates and beers.

And kissing. That's almost as good as chocolate and beer.

Berlin

Annoyingly, I saw nothing of Berlin except airport-taxi-hotel-taxi-hotel. I know it was a business trip, but I do like to carve out a little time in the evenings for adventures. Oh well, another city I'll have to go back to.

I did get to drink some beer though.

EMF

I had a rubbish time at the Shambala festival last year - I felt old, ugly, out-of-place and tragically unhip. But at EMF, I finally found a festival made for people like me!

My talk was in a tent full of people. Lots of people!

Bonus points - we grabbed a cheap campervan from Wicked Campers - it had this delightfully subtle paint-job...!

Reading books

A friend of mine once told me that she struggled with reading fiction because "it's all made up - anything could happen!" I thought she was silly - but I'm coming round to her way of thinking. I've read some great fiction books this year, but I'm always conscious of the fact that it is just a story.

And when I read non-fiction, I'm always conscious that someone is trying to sell me something.

It is trying, and has meant I've read less books this year than I'd like.

Cars

The Renault Zoe went back. It was a fine little car, until we hit a pothole and had to spend several hours shivering in the snow!

And so on to a Kia Soul EV.

Work

I completed two years at the Government Digital Service. It was only meant to be a 2 year contract - but they haven't found a way to get rid of me yet!

They're happy sending me around the world to talk about Open Standards, and to stay home to blog and podcast about Open Standards.