About a year ago I wrote a post called What I’m looking forward to in 2010 about – as you might’ve guessed – the things I was looking forward to in 2010.
As 2010 is now no more, I thought it would be fun to visit that post again to see how things turned out. So, walk with me on this short tour of 2010
Books
I was looking forward to John Resigs book Secrets Of The JavaScript Ninja…and I still am as the book has not been published yet. I did however preorder the book sometime during early 2010 (it was on sale at Mannings Deal of the Day Twitter stream (highly recommendable)), so I have read some of the chapters already and so far it looks good, here’s to hoping that the book will be released in 2011.
Other books that I’ve enjoyed reading in 2010 are Dan Cederholms fine book Handcrafted CSS and Nicholas C. Zakas book High Performance JavaScript.
If you’d like to see every book I’ve read in 2010, you can take a look at this post
Music
I mentioned the Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb concert in Horsens as a thing to look forward to in 2010, so how was it? Not the best performance by Depeche Mode in my opinion, it was a so called “intimate concert” with a measly 5.000 attendees so one could expect something special perhaps. That did not occur, it seemed as if they were just delivering their “standard” show on a smaller stage. Don’t get me wrong, a concert with Depeche Mode is always great, but I was just hoping for a bit more, as this was an intimate concert (I mean…come on, is playing your entire catalogue from A Broken Frame to Violator to much to ask for…really??).
Nitzer Ebb were fookin’ excellent, I’ve never seen them live before so it was a first, but I certainly hope it won’t be the last time. After the concert I bought their latest album “Industrial Complex” and it is highly recommendable. Here’s to hoping they’ll soon go on a tour that brings them to Denmark again.
Other musical hightligts of 2010? I’ll tell you what, I’ll write a blog post about it later…deal?
Software
I mentioned upgrading to Java 6 at work as a highlight of 2010. We DID upgrade and are now using Java 6. Furthermore we’ve started using JSF 2.0 which is a major step forward from using JSF 1.1 as we did previously. Has it made our life easier then? In some ways yes, but I still spend most of my time trying to fit various (somtimes unfittable) pieces together and then debug for hours and sometimes days when things fail…and they do!
Hardware
The iPhone 4 was released…and I still have my old iPhone 3. I was hoping for a 64 GB version, but no! Maybe the iPhone 5 🙂
Other
Our children grew older (and continues to!). Our daughter has started in school and our son has started speaking (on and on and on and on). It is really nice that our children are getting older and can do more things by themselves now, and at the same time one gets a bit sentimental knowing that they are no longer our little precious babies who are 100% dependent on us. Heck! Before we know, they’re grown up and’ve left home.
The Tour was so so, the duel between Contador and Andy Schleck was never really happening was it?
Allow me to rant!
I think that the last couple of Tours have been somewhat boring. Nobody dares to attack anymore because they’re afraid that they’ll fail and then loose precious time. Therefore on the so called “key” stages, they’ll sit there, watch each other, wear their lieutenants out, but not dare to attack themselves, and then, on the final kilometer, someone will attack and win, typically by a few seconds. Safe? Yes. Interesting to watch? No! It’s times like these that I miss a rider like Pantani.
OK, rant over.
The Paris Roubaix then? Well, a great win by Cancellara for sure, but at the same time a little boring to watch. He went away with 40+ kilometers to go and from there on, he just continued to increase his lead, meaning that there was never any doubt that he’d win the race.
Toy Story 3? Fantastic film. Our son just loves the Pixar movies so we’ve already seen it about 20 times I’d guess (and the ending can still bring tears to my eyes)
What else is there to remember from 2010? I joined the local cycle club and went on some great rides, the longest being 103 kilometers. We had a lovely holiday trip to Rhodes in the summer. The snow stayed until March, our daughter got her first bike with gears, we got a trampoline and a new shed in the garden and I’ve probably forgot a lot of other interesting things that happened. All in all 2010 was a year with highs (mainly related to family life) and lows (mostly work related) but, to quote Torry Amos it was a Pretty Good Year.