Why?

Because I have (as of tomorrow) started another stage of study. I am going to do a Bachelor of Applied Management at CPIT, majoring in Business IS and Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Thankfully work have effectively let me have a day a week for classes (paid! woo!) and most of my papers are online. I’ve also managed to arrange it so that I get a New Zealand Diploma in Business as well – the combination of these and my other degree should increase my repertoire quite well.

Also on the cards is the birth of my first son – scheduled for June (fingers crossed it doesn’t clash with Exams ).

As for my own business, well finding time to get any development done is a bit tricky at the moment, with everything else. But thankfully everything else with it is ticking along quite nicely, and it will be up for its official first birthday in April – really good considering the minimal amount of income is just enough to pay the bills and that I am effectively working for free. But that’s what it’s all about right? I’m doing something I enjoy, learning skills whilst I do it (Web Design/Development, Business, People, etc.) and I have a bit of opportunity to contribute back – put some money into different people and tech that I feel will benefit the community and the environment. Oh, and the number of clients regularly paying for hosting and such is increasing slowly

Finally, my hobbies are going well too – the garden is full of heaps of different shapes and sizes of green tomatoes. I wonder if they will ripen this summer properly or not – the weather has been kinda crap. Crap like a summer with only a handful of good sunny days. This, of course, makes the tomatoes take longer to ripen. And when coupled with the sheer amount on each vine takes even longer. But I’m not complaining too much – there are occasional red ones which get scoffed before anyone sees

My trains are coming along quite well too – I have been building up an N gauge layout which takes my mind off other stressing factors. Just purchased come carriages off TradeMe which should look good with the new platforms I just built.

Oh yeah, and to top things all off I am going for my restricted driving licence next week…

2. Did you keep your New Year’s Resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t think that I had any New Years Resolutions this year. I will soon post what I aim to accomplish in the next year (2010, ja?), but it will be pretty simple

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yep – WillowSam

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully no.

5. What countries did you visit?
Nothing outside NZ this year (Does the North Island count as another country). Really trying to keep Carbon use down, which thus means less flying…

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Less stress, more structured home life, more time to do what I want: Family, gardening, business, hobbies.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
28 March: Wedding day, 1 April: Kiwinewt.Geek incorporated, July 18, Dec 23: First major car crash, just to mention a few…

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Pulling off: Gardening, Work, Family, Website jobs, Study, Life and looking after my Hapu wife…

9. What was your biggest failure?
I don’t know. I think that this year has been relatively successful. Not much of a high achievement level, but what I have aimed at has been successful. Oh, there was one job that fell through, but it wasn’t anything personal.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Crashed into on my scooter

11. What was the best thing someone bought you?
Recently, my Pizza stone. Over the course of the year, the Scooter (I was loaned the money to buy it, so it’s both purchased by and for me…

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Livi – she has come so far this past year. Liz – she is just awesome. Pixi – best best (wo)man ever!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A certain person who has made my life living hell often over the last year. I still want out…

14. Where did most of your money go?
Overall… I would say even split between Livi, my trains and my garden.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Getting married and finding out Liz is Hapu.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Nickelback – Animals

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier. I always have someone to cuddle. I live with the 2 most beautiful girls in the world who I love and who love me back.
b) fatter or skinner? Fatter. Stupid lack of exercise…
c) richer or poorer? Same. Last year I was a student, but this year I am on a crap salary and have to look after my family.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Living for the moment. There are some things that I wish I had noticed more at the time…

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Work, of course.

20. How do you plan to spend Christmas?
Family, friends and good times.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yep. Same 2 girls every time I see them

22. How many one night stands?
None.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
Dollhouse, Stargate Universe and Sons of Anarchy. I don’t think Dr Who can be classed as a TV show this year

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Yes. But lets not talk about that right now.

25. What was the best book you read?
All the Pratchett books I re-read.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Just mixing Liz’s and my music… Oh, and Trace Adkins.

27. What did you want and get?
Muh woman!

28. What did you want and not get?
I wanted to be working somewhere else, preferably for myself. Didnt happen though…

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Thats a tough one. I don’t know.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went out for a family dinner for my 22nd.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
To still be working where I was at the start of the year.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
My own. I wear what I like.

33. What kept you sane?
If I was sane, it would be because of my girls.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
No one really.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
The lack of action on Climate Change.

36. Who do you miss?
Family in the UK

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Kat

38. What was the best thing you ate?
Homemade Pizza…

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009?
If I attempt something and want to do it and have a deadline… it will get done

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

Congratulations on the successful completion of the 102 course and now also the SIT Certificate in Organic Horticulture.

Overall your work has been excellent as usual and it has been a pleasure having you study. Your work is always well done and great to be completed ahead of time like this (much appreciated at this end) – I wish you well for the future.

Kind regards
*muh tutor*

Looking good now for the next wee while… Study finished which means more spare time to work on the business side of things

Does anyone have ideas on what they would like to see as part of this? One addition I will add is a flickr feed on the sidebar for my upcoming Project365.

2 sidebars? 1 sidebar? left? right? colours? fullscreen? fixed width? guess I will have to think about it for a bit… :S

Although, I do think it will be something relatively green with a good TechnoHippy feel to it. I might also take the opportunity to move it to SliceHost too.. :S

The instructions that come with them say to use a cup of soap nuts to a litre of water and simmer for 20 minutes, which I followed. Oddly enough, the result was a liquid that looked like dirty water (and smelt like concentrated mulled wine).

I poured it into a bottle and tried it in the shower – the liquid was way too runny for shampoo, and the bubbles from shaking it up did nothing much either. After the shower, however, my hair does feel a lot better

I then put half a dozen of the used nuts into a calico bag and put that in the washing machine with a load of clothes – the water felt extremely soapy, which I hadn’t expected, and the resulting greywater was a lot blacker than normal.

Overall, I recommend Soap Nuts for in the washing machine and that, but am yet to find a good way to use it as shampoo. I also think that the liquid, when well diluted, could be a really good general garden spray (soapy water can kill some pests, discourage others and in some cases help stop fungi and diseases).

I’ll update later when I have played with them and the “recipe” a bit more..

I hereby will take one photo per day from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2010. Oh boy…

Expect to see lots of garden and train photos… possibly with some IT stuff too…

I am, however, getting on top of these again now and will get into development as soon as I am able. Tonight I even installed my copy of a Ruby on Rails Ticket Management System, had a bit of a play with it and almost instantly decided to rewrite it myself. but thats the beauty of Open Source, isn’t it? I can look at the code and see how things have been done and write them the way I think that they should be. The project is old enough that to bring it up to date will just about take a complete code rewrite, so starting from scratch would be a good idea – and it means that I can incorporate a load of plugins to do the work for me

As far as other projects go, I have moved PageSprout over to my GitHub now, so for people going to download it the whole thing looks a bit more professional. Soon I will hopefully be able to work on it as well – I have a growing roadmap on my computer of what I want to do with it and where I want it to head.

Hopefully business will pick up a bit again and it will be all go

Tomorrow, I shall go out and take photos of my garden as it currently is, try draw up a bit of a diagram of it (to scale, if I’m lucky!) and jot down a bit of planning on what I want to do with it (hint: I NEED MORE TIMBER AND COMPOST!)