Reflections on 2020 and Earlier I can’t recall exactly why I didn’t bother write a goal post (pun?) last year, but let’s ignore that for now. I’m back in action! Let’s start with some reflections: Berlin has now been my home for 3 years. This is the longest I’ve lived somewhere outside of my home city since Calgary (over 11 years ago)! I’m loving my home and my life here so I don’t see myself moving again anytime soon. Read more...

Reflections on 2018 This will be easy because I didn’t set any goals last year! It felt great to take a break from goal setting because 2018 was a big year of transition. I moved yet again and I started a new role at work. I then found that it didn’t fit me and I finally had some self awareness to reach out for help and was able to switch roles again to something that suits me at this moment in time. Read more...

Reflections on 2017 Perform 1 pull up - This didn’t go so well. I’m now the heaviest that I’ve ever been (95kg). My psoriasis (scalp) has become really annoying and gets worse when I exercise. So 2017 wasn’t a good year for my health. It’s very clear that I don’t handle disruption of my routine very well. Below is a graph of my workouts: Only 1 or 2 of those gaps was related to illness; most of them were due to travel (work and play). Read more...

2016 was the first time I accomplished my goal! Reflections on 2016 Write in a Journal - This one I am marking as a success. Here are the (manually) calculated stats: Jan 9 Feb 3 Mar 12 Apr 9 May 15 Jun 9 Jul 13 Aug 14 Sep 12 Oct 14 Nov 9 Dec 12 I wrote 143 journal entries over the course of 2016. After counting them all up there are far fewer than I thought, but the frequency is actually more consistent than I thought. Read more...

This post almost didn’t happen. 2015 holds a lot of dead-air from me in the blogging world, but I’m so compelled by my routines that I felt that I had to do it! Honouring a self-made routine/tradition is my achilles heel and my biggest strength at the same time. Reflections on 2015 2015 wasn’t a good year for sticking to my goals, but I still learned a lot on the way: Read more...

This has become a bit of a tradition for me so I can’t quite writing these now. This one will be a bit different than the previous ones though. Normally these posts are my technical resolutions. I’m not that ambitious anymore when it comes to technical learning so I’ve dropped that from the title. Even though I tend to despise meaningless dates, I look at resolutions as one large pomodoro. So the tradition lives on! Read more...

I was tempted to not write this post. My motivations are changing a bit and growing strong technically isn’t one of my top priorities nowadays. Reflections on 2013 Last year was very interesting for me. It’s the first time I didn’t really have a home. I’ve split my time between India, United States, and South Africa, (ok, I was in Toronto for a few weeks too). During that time I’ve reflected a lot (probably too much). Read more...

2012 started off interesting because I was on on an iOS/ruby project. Nearly everything was new to me, but I liked how my past experiences with other technology stacks were still relevant. Even though I didn’t know the languages very well the patterns I’ve seen before still applied. The last quarter of the year was spent teaching new software developers in India, which has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career! Read more...

An interesting thing about 2011 is that my resolutions from earlier became quite prominent. Given that 8 months of 2011 were spent on a large account with less technical focus, I’m amazed at some of the technical things that I’ve done. Reflections on 2011 and carry over from 2010: Mouseless Computing (2010) - I think the practice is paying off as a colleague of mine told me “You make Windows fly! Read more...

Looking back at 2010 I can’t say I did a good job of following through with my resolutions, but I believe I have a valid excuse! For the last 12 months I’ve been working more as a build/release specialist than a software developer. Anyways, here’s a rundown of what I didn’t accomplish last year: Test Driven Design - I barely coded at all so that was a total flop. I also believe that this is something that’s hard to do on your own. Read more...

I’ve never made any New Years resolutions before. This year I’m going to break that trend simply to create a checklist of tasks to keep me on track. I easily get distracted, but having to check things off a list is a sure way for me to stay focused. Not wanting to over do it, I made goals that are easily attainable. Hopefully upon completion I’ll get more ambitious the next time around. Read more...