</2009> Predictable Year in Review Post
- published:
- 2010.01.10
Well, yesterday was the last day of 2009, and today starts a new decade. Hello 2010. You are so shiny and futuristic looking. Anyway, I figured I'd succumb to the incredibly predictable year-in-review post. So what did I do in 2009? I did quite a bit actually, and writing this post helps to remind me of that... otherwise I just have a tendency to think of all the things I didn't accomplish. Also, I find years tend to blur together without any reflection. Here's a handy little timeline [made with pure CSS and no images, don't-chya-know] of oh-nine:
January
Wrote this blog app using my own custom PHP/MySQL MVC framework
Launched zachstronaut.com
Had a little fun with the 40-below weather
Connected with Karl Swedberg of Learning jQuery and helped to patch his smooth scrolling script
My Canvas+JavaScript Black Hole 404 page became 404 Research Lab's 404 of the Week
February
Celebrated 1234567890 day
Created the Harvey Birdmanizer as a way to play around with WebKit's CSS transforms and transitions
Found a use for the beta Events feature that popped up in my Google Analytics
Patched jQuery to standardize access to CSS transforms across Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
March
Released my rotate3Di jQuery plugin that makes isometric 3d rotation of html content possible
April
Spoke at MinneWebCon 2009 about Web Human Interface Guidelines
May
Had an emergency appendectomy
Won a award for the web-based JavaScript video game Handy Andy 2
Presented ShortJournal at minnedemo
June
My "3D" CSS isocube was an official Mozilla Hacks demo for the Firefox 3.5 release
Created a CSS realtime spotlight effect, another official Mozilla Hacks demo also featured on Ajaxian
Showed some pixel art in the Together show at the umber° studios art gallery
July
Celebrated my nation's independence by blowing up a small part of it
August
Patched jQuery to support animation of the rotation and scale CSS transforms
Created the JavaScript RPG Equip > Pants in seven days for the Experiment Gameplay Project
September
Remixed Chris Coyier and Devon Govett's bookmarklet Printliminator into the Printliminasploder
October
Invited to demo Scribbls with Paul Armstrong at the 2009 MIMA Summit
Had a wonderful Halloween holiday in London, England
November
SitePoint published my article about browser cache control for images, CSS, and JavaScript files
Attended the awesomest minnebar yet and met some really great folks
December
Attended An Event Apart in San Francisco and made new friends and saw old friends
Met Zeldman, Meyer again, Snook in person, and saw Spool do magic tricks
Previewed my 3D-flipping image gallery LightBox-clone
Used CSS text-shadow to create a burning text on fire effect
Made the Winternizer, which creates realistic snow on any website with some CSS text-shadow trickery
Phwew... I got tired typing that, and even more tired re-reading it. Where do I get off thinking I didn't get anything done in 2009? It is a year I should definitely be proud of. Other things from the year not in the timeline: a bunch of browser bugs I found and submitted over the course of the year, countless projects at my full-time job at the University of Minnesota (probably most memorable is launching a complete redesign of the Events & Conferences site), and a ton of new friends gained and connections made.
My stated resolution for 2009 was to, "Help the collective improvement of the web." I'd say I kept that promise to myself (probably a personal first for a New Year's resolution). Every bug I submitted, every patch I wrote, and every crazy thing I tried to get web browsers to do were all my contributions to the vast collection of brilliant people out there who all helped to make 2009 the year that web browsers really got awesome.
In 2010 I will continue to work to make the web more awesomer [sic], and I'm also making some personal resolutions to dig deeply in the mobile web, spend a lot of time on interactive design and games, and also make way more time for doodling and drawing.
Another important statement I made back at the beginning of 2009 was that I believe making connections is perhaps the most important thing to be doing. I am genuinely grateful for every single connection I made with so many people over the last year, both new connections and re-connections. 2009 was a banner year in that regard, but staying connected is just as much a 2010 New Year's resolution for me. I look forward to attending more conferences, working with more people, helping people succeed at their passions, and being inspired by the work done by all of you brilliant folks.
Have a great 2010! Oh, and if you are interested, check out the CSS for no-images-used timeline.