Well, it’s that time again. It seems that yet another year has managed to fly by in the blink of an eye. That’s not how it looks at the beginning of the year, but at the end, looking back, that’s absolutely how it seems.

So what happened in 2007?

On a personal level, 2007 was certainly an interesting year. This is by no means a complete list, but some of the more interesting items, as chronicled by my blog, are as follows:

Started working with ASP.NET 2.0 - This is still a work in progress; however, I like what I see so far. But Microsoft have recently gone and released ASP.NET 3.5! Ay yi yi, I’m well behind now! Fortunately, .NET 3.0 and 3.5 are just additive layers of new features on top of 2.0, so when I get 2.0 licked, there hopefully won’t be too much further to go to get current with .NET.

I didn’t keep up with my ASP vs ASP.NET series of posts, probably because I’ve been trying to get 2.0 figured out. I do have a few half-finished posts in the pipeline, so hopefully I will be able to push those out in a month or two.

I attended my first web developers’ conference in February, Web Directions North in Vancouver. It was such a good experience, I will certainly want to do it again.

Started a new job at a local web shop, Atomic Crayon. It’s been a good experience working with the folks there and on the different projects that come our way. I’d say I’ve certainly broadened my horizons a bit since I started working there.

I decided to give Outlook Express the boot, and switched to Thunderbird as my email program. And I’m glad I did - TB gives me so much more control over organizing my emails and contacts than I ever got in OE. I also learned how to integrate Google Calendar with Thunderbird, making tracking appointments, meetings, and other important dates much easier.

I jumped on the Adobe CS3 bandwagon not too long after the new software was released. And I am overall glad I did: the new software is very suitable for my needs as a working web developer and photographer hobbyist. I have been cranking out reviews for the various components within the overall suite, but have been slow about it. Again, I have some half-done posts in my backlog, so I hope to start getting those online “soon”…

Along with using RAW for my photos, I have been working on my photography skills as well. Learning more about composure, aperture, lighting, etc I have turned out some fine photos this past spring, summer, and fall. I picked up a new lens for my kit, the 30-300mm Nikkor lens, which gives me more reach than I get with the kit lens (but doesn’t replace it). I have gotten numerous distant photos that I wouldn’t have come close to with the closeup lens.

After acquiring Photoshop CS3, I started learning about how to shoot RAW photos with my Nikon D50 camera, so I can easily adjust the photos afterwards. RAW photos are much easier to work with after they are taken than straight JPEG images - read the post to find out why, if you don’t know already. From now on, I shoot RAW only.

Aside from all the other new(er) technologies I’ve been picking up this year, I have been continuing my self-improvement as a developer, both web and software. To that end, I learned, and wrote, how to start using Subversion to version-control codebases. This makes tracking and rolling back changes much easier than the “old” way, and is how I will be working on any non-trivial project on my own in the future.

Internet Explorer has long been maligned as a behind-the-times web browser, but there was a recent storm in the news when the IE team announced that the next version of IE will take a few steps towards catching up with the current crop of browsers. How? Apparently, developer builds of IE8 have been passing the ACID2 test for some time now. Good to hear, but it’s not a done deal (or browser) yet!

Again with my development best practices, I have picked up on using NAnt for automating .NET project build processes. Read more about my initial foray and experiences.

What’s happening next year?

Not too much I can see at this point - just want to get this year over with first! - but so far I have a few observations:

Attending Web Directions North earlier this year was a great time, and I have read that it is happening again in late January, about a month from now. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to I won’t be attending it this time around. I may be planning on attending the one in 2009, if there is one, but we will see!

I hear work is going to be getting reeeeeeal interesting by mid-month at Atomic Crayon. This is because there are quite a few clients, primarily government types, that will be coming to us with year-end projects before the end of the fiscal year in March. There is expected to be a good variety of projects, and most if not all will have some aggressive timelines, so I imagine things will be hopping eventually.

I’m going to keep up with the photography, improving my techniques. I would like to add another decent lens to my camera bag, and have a few candidates in mind, so need to be watching for sales. Hopefully I might get it, whichever it turns out to be, in time for Spring!

Speaking of learning, I will also be keeping up (or trying to) with my programmer/developer self-improvement by learning new best practices for building and managing projects. These include unit testing, code analysis, and documentation. I will ikely be posting about these along the way, as I learn and solidify the concepts.

This site has been in a generic, half-finished state for several months now; I really need to finish a new design I have been kicking around, get it fed into the markup/styles machine, and establish some sort of “identity” look for a site that is, admittedly, all about me ;P And I need to get that pesky portfolio and résumé up to date and better-looking than they are now.

I hate loose ends. I really do. So to that end I will (hopefully) be emptying my backlog of half-done posts in the next couple/few months, and to keep them moving. I have a few CS3 product reviews to put out, and some of my continuing ASP vs ASP.NET series as well.

And of course, I will be looking to keep with my (irregular) posting schedule, with anything and everything that interests me, and may interest others.

Whew…

Those were some lists! So if you’ve made it this far, I congratulate you…

Have a happy new year!!!