Goodbye 2009. Hello 2010.

Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 @ 17:31 CET

Nearly two weeks after the new year its about time for a roundup post I suppose... *sigh* If you're wondering why its been quiet...

Anyways. 2009 was a great year for I and I.

I started off the year getting forced onto a snowboard by some friends right before Christmas 2008. Well I say forced but it was more of a gentle prodding. And I became addicted. Completely and utterly. It was crack to my Whitney.

I suppose it still is.

So after 8 years in Oslo I finally managed to get around to play in the snow and actually enjoy winter. Whoda thunk it. So while that was going on during the evenings after work - you can ride until 10pm on weekdays up at Tryvann which kicks ass - during the day I spent my time learning a new language. I spoke a dialect from my uni days but it had been years since I'd written any C so I needed a refresher course. I needed a bible.

That language was Objective-C and I immediately fell in love with it and Xcode, which beats the pants off any other IDE I've ever used. Eclipse and anything built on top of it simply can't compete - I suppose the closest would be Visual Studio but its been a really long time since I used that. Actually the last code editor that I embraced to this extent would probably be FlashDevelop. Ahh, FlashDevelop. I miss you.

Come to Mac, please. I'll wait for you.

Anyways, I started to play with building iPhone apps and it was fun! Is fun! Reminded me of the early days of Flash when anything was possible and free and great, when unicorns roamed the cotton-candy fields along with ponies and other cute animals. Maybe I'm being nostalgic but for some reason lately its just not been the same, but I'm sure that will pass.

So iPhone apps! The first one I built was for the city bikes in Oslo and amazingly it reached the #2 spot on the Norwegian app store, and #1 in the Utilities category. It got great reviews in Aftenposten (Norway's largest paper), Macworld and Twitter until it died. But that's another story.

Summer came around and so did one of the most fun projects I've had the privilege to work on. While Chris and Paul were making the Flash on the Beach Connect website, Håvard G designed and I developed the iPhone app for FOTB'09. Its always a pleasure to add life to a beautiful design.

Otherwise there's been lots of small proof of concept apps and prototypes for work - building these is one of the things I love most about my job.

In other news, our local user group, Flash User Group Norway really grew last year and is doing really well with a core group thats grown from 10 to about 15. Our December meetup had over 30 people which was fantastic! I also held a few talks there last year:

Mashup my Bike - on mashups and that
Bunny Love - on hacking a Nabaztag
Sharing is Caring - on SharedObject goodies
From AS3 to iPhone - Quick Intro (Keynote, PDF)

I also held a talk at FlashBrighton in November which was great fun, though a bit nerve-wracking at first since the audience held the likes of Niqui, Seb and Aral - all of whom I'd seen talk several times at Flash on the Beach. Luckily I think it went over pretty well :)

Although at first I planned on staying in Oslo for summer I ended up going as far north as I've been in Norway - not very far north - for some white water rafting at Sjoa, a trip to Dubrovnik to celebrate a dual-30th birthday of some friends, a week in Ibiza and a few days in Malaga visiting some childhood friends. As well as a few trips to Brighton...

Ah Brighton. Lovely city by the sea where many a fantastic time has been had. The place where this year I spent my first Xmas without family. The city where my love resides.

Home...

Yes, home. After 9 years in Oslo I'm finally packing it up and moving over to Blighty to a fantastic flat in Hove with a cat and a lovely garden. In March. About 7 weeks.

2010 is going to be exciting!

- paulo