A very belated goodbye to 2010

Posted on Monday, April 25, 2011 @ 22:27 CET

So here we are at the end of February and I'm trying to put together what it was exactly that happened last year.

That's how this post started two months ago, already two months late. Now its the end of April and I still haven't put this up, how nuts is that. Its been a crazy busy time, but who isn't nowadays. Lets see how I can go about summing up the past 12, nay, 14 months.

Last January I gave my landlord notice and got ready to emigrate from Norway. After a little over 10 years in Oslo it was strange to think that I was leaving all of this behind for sights unknown but I had become enamored with the bright city lights of Brighton and more importantly one of its residents.

In February we went over to Lillehammer for an extended weekend in Lillehammer to celebrate Niqui's birthday and do some snowboarding at Hafjell, one of the resorts used for the 1952 winter Olympics.

In March I closed the door to my apartment for the last time and waved goodbye to Oslo.

April was my one month anniversary of Brighton living and things were good. I was still working for the Norwegian consultancy Tarantell (which has since become part of Making Waves), as "the UK office". I held two talks at Flash Brighton (since become dot brighton) on transitioning to iOS development from ActionScript.

We also won an award for Best Mobile Solution at Gulltaggen for the 2009 Flash on the Beach app. And somewhere in my spare time I built the "Where is Influxis" thing which I really should revisit.

In May I quit Tarantell. Niqui and I joined forces and started up Jade Hopper - a micro-agency for web and mobile development, though we have yet to take on a web-based project. Starting our own company (along with the Brighton move) has been the smartest thing I've ever done. Even though people reassured me everything would be fine, you never really know until you actually take the plunge. No risk, no reward as they say. And the reward is definitely worth it. Its also given us the chance to work with some friends which has definitely been a learning experience, challenging at times but fun and great overall.

That month I also did a talk at async - the local JavaScript user group - on using JS in Adobe's Creative Suite applications. Showed an example of scripting Photoshop to generate random "artwork" and as a very simple workflow tool within Flash.

This was also the month I started to work with the clever guys at ribot to further develop the Tesco Groceries app for iPhone. If you haven't seen the clever ad you should check it out on YouTube.

In June we headed over to Slovenia to celebrate my birthday by road-tripping around the country. Beautiful place. Highly recommended. Flickr pics coming... sigh.

We also saw our two friends Nat and Simon tie the knot in what was a beautiful (and geek-filled) wedding.

In July we headed over for a long weekend in Dublin. Temple Bar Porterhouse oyster stout. NOM!

In August I did my first ever remote-talk which was a completely bizarre experience for the Ottawa Mobile Developer Day. Yelling at your laptop over Skype while people are listening in across the pond. No feedback other than a Skype chat. Nuts.

We also built a virtual chat room for some friends that put on the play "Closer". Basically a simple, scripted Flash app that animated pieces of text when triggered from behind the scenes. Watching people act around your SWF was great fun. You can check it out here - click on it and press Space to go through it. It is quite explicit.

September was the yearly pilgrimage to Flash on the Beach though this time as a local. Once again we had good fun building the official app for iPhone and this time AIR for Android too.

Around the same time we launched the Tesco Groceries app for iPhone which has been a great success.

October involved more flying, this time to Lisbon for Flash Camp Portugal where both Niqui and I were invited to speak. We had a great time there thanks to the lovely Paulo Moreira, Joao Fernandes and Joao Goncalves along with our great driver Fernando.

Around that time we finally launched v1 of GoodStuff - a streetwear and sneaker store finding app. Its a cool concept and its fun to see where they are taking it.

In November I experienced my very first Guy Fawkes day in Lewes which was mental and highly recommended. Remember earbuds. A week later I flew off to Canada to spend 10 days working in Ottawa. We can talk about that soon.

December included 3 awesome (truly awesome) weeks driving all over South Africa with Niqui and Natimon clocking in 5,000 kilometers of terrain covered. Elephants, rhinos, zebras, great white sharks, giraffes, lions, cheetahs, mongeese and monkeys. All were spotted - amazing.

This was followed by 3 weeks visiting my mom on the Cayman Islands for the Christmas and New Year's festivities while working on designing an exciting new app.

January included a short stint back in Oslo to visit friends and kick off a project, then Switzerland for the Swiss instalment of gotoAndSki.

February was filled with crazy work and an unfortunate deportation. In March we spent three weeks in Canada with a short stint back for NSConference and Ian's 35th.

We've since spent all of April back in Ottawa where we've been working on things we would love to be able to talk about but can't.

Yet.

In any case 2011 has been pretty kick-ass thus far. And on Saturday we head off to Toronto for FITC before heading back home to pack for the next set of epic adventures.

Onwards!

- paulo

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