Day: 7/365 – Date: 1/7/2010
Chicago is covered in snow; this is a brick wall down the street, laced in ivy, topped and buried in snow.
Day: 6/365 – Date: 1/6/2010
A miniature snowman down the street.
Day: 5/365 – Date: 1/5/2010
Sheets of snow and ice on the balcony.
Day: 4/365 – Date: 1/4/2010
We flew back to Chicago today after spending the holidays in the South.
Day: 3/365 – Date: 1/3/2010
The young creatives at work. (Two of my nieces at Billy’s Bar and Grill in Birmingham.)
Day: 2/365 – Date: 1/2/2010
My family’s dog, Tippy, at home in Birmingham.
Day: 1/365 – Date: 1/1/2010
One of my resolutions for 2010 is to take a picture every day for the whole year. This one is of me and Ash on New Year’s, less than an hour into 2010. I hope to upload all these pictures to Flickr and here on my site.
Review and Resolution, 10 Years On
Time for another year-end wrap-up along with my list of resolutions for the coming year. If you don’t read this, I don’t blame you; there are a million of these written every few seconds, I’m sure. But of course, this one is a decade-end wrap-up, which is obviously less frequent than the simple year-end ones. Ignore this mundane first paragraph.
This decade was (and will remain) the Formative Decade for a generation (mine). Some grew up in the 60′s, and they experimented with drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Others grew up in the 80′s and experimented with roller skates and hair metal. We grew up in the 00′s and experimented with iPhones and Radiohead. The coming 10′s will be the Formative Decade for another generation, but it remains to be seen what they will experiment with.
The 20th century was a transformative century for technology, and the first 10 years of the 21st century have continued the progress. We don’t have flying cars, but we have cell phones that put the entire world at our (quite literal) fingertips. 2009 has been another year in the mass-market technological transformation of the global society. We saw the unprecedented exploration of the social web, the explosion of Twitter, and the promise of a new mobile web (and an Apple Tablet, which I predicted a long time ago…if I do say so myself…and I do…say so myself…*ahem*).
Ten years ago I was at a friend’s house here in Birmingham, Alabama, awaiting the destruction of Y2K. Of course, it never came. The new millennium came, but Y2K didn’t. Here we are ten years later, and Y2K10 is upon us (I don’t expect that to catch on, and not only because no one will read this far into this blog post – if you’re still with me, “You’re a trooper,” as my Mom says.)
What will the new year bring? I don’t know for sure, of course, but I have my thoughts, my predictions, my resolutions. What follows are those thoughts, predictions, and resolutions.
I think (like innumerable others) that the iTablet will revolutionize the tech-market, and TV will move to the web like Bill Gates predicted years ago, although not in the way he would have preferred. I fear that the US will be involved in Iran (And Yemen? Or Israel? What about North Korea?) like we are in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the US/UN will further seek destruction of nuclear weapons on a global level. I hope that we lift ourselves out of the global recession (depression?) in 2010, though that remains to be seen.
As for my New Year’s Resolutions, they are as follows, more or less….
1. Finish the C.S. Lewis corpus. I’ve wanted to read all of a particular author for some time, and I’ve read more of his than anyone else. David Mamet is a very close second. Maybe I’ll make him my 2011 goal, unless the world ends a few years early.
2. I have a few exercise/diet goals that I won’t detail here, but that’s a staple of any resolutions list, so I know you aren’t surprised or too terribly upset that it’s on my list and not detailed, respectively.
3. A goal for 2009 was to journal every day for a few weeks. I will make that a goal for 2010, as well, because it was a very rewarding experience, and I would like to journal more often.
4. And here is my most ambitious goal for 2010, I think. I saw someone do this on Facebook, and I think it’s a great idea. I would like to take a picture every day for a whole year. I’ll post them on Flickr in a specific gallery, and at the end of the year, I will hopefully make a book or poster or something to celebrate the whole endeavor and look back on the year in pictorial fashion.
Those are my big ones. I might come up with a few more, but those are the ones that I wanted to share. If you read any of this, thanks for doing so. I don’t know what to write in expectation of the next decade, though it will be the formative years for most of my 20′s. I’m excited about it, though, and I’m looking forward to a fantastic New Year and another influential decade.
I hope your New Year is bright and full of opportunity. Goodbye 2009 and the 00′s! Happy New Year! 2010!
Auld Land Syne,*
Neal
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*Means “long long ago” or “days gone by” according to Wikipedia.
P.S. If you’re looking for a good to-do app for all your resolutions, check out http://teuxdeux.com/
Penzu: Private Blogging
One of my New Year’s Resolutions for this year (2009) was to journal every day for two weeks. I know that may seem a bit simplistic, or trivial, or too little a goal to be substantial, or any other wording to that effect. Actually, it was a very rewarding experience. But I’m not going to bore you with that. I’m actually blogging about the website I used to do said fortnight of journaling: Penzu.
I don’t know where they get their name, but I like it. Obviously, the word Pen…but the zu part…I don’t know. In any event, Penzu is a private blog. They used to call those journals or diaries. All jokes aside, it’s a blog nobody can see but you. You sign in, create a journal and a journaling space, and you write. You can post pictures, links, etc., alongside your writing, or not. It’s all, of course, up to your mercurial fancy.
For a few bucks, they let you become a Penzu Pro member, which affords you some capabilities that non-Pro members lack, such as multiple canvas layouts, importing, extra encryption, and more. I haven’t upgraded yet, but it’s something I have considered. So far, the benefits of going Pro are not commensurate with the price tag. With services like Flickr, going Pro means a lot, namely unlimited storage, although they do throw in some superficials for kicks and giggles.
Penzu is a great free service. If you’re looking to have a place you can journal online that no one else can see, Penzu is probably your best bet. I really enjoy it. It’s easy to join, has a nice UI, and it’s free. Until they offer something incredible with Penzu Pro, I’m probably going to keep on using the free version. Check it out, though. It’s at least worth that.
Here’s a screenshot of one of the layouts.
