First things first. Happy new year!

2008 has been a very busy year for me, and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get as far with it as possible. There were far more highs than there were lows - but just a few to many for me to be satisfied. Having said that, I’ve learnt a lot and am looking forward to starting the year afresh with a new set of challenges and goals so I can get the most out of 2009.

It’s all very well choosing resolutions that say; “Buy insert product name here”, and I do have a set of things that I’d like to be able to purchase over the coming year. But is that really a goal? I’ve also tried to be slightly vague, by doing so I might be able to accomplish these goals in ways I didn’t initially conceive. That’s very important to me, because I know that, inevitably, I’ll be trying new things of the next year. If I have to focus on a set of tasks I’ll never branch out.

So, without further ado, here is what I would like to accomplish in 2009:

Become as proficient as possible at web design and creation
Ah web design, you’ve been the bane of my existence for quite a while. I’m always having great, if you don’t mind me saying so myself, ideas for website designs but just don’t have the skills to put them into place. This coming year I want to put a lot of my time into creating projects for myself that will allow me to gain more experience, whether it be fully fledged Wordpress themes or just a simple website, with no CSS.

The ability to transfer my ideas from my head to Photoshop and then a fully functional website would be a godsend. I’m always incredibly jealous of those capable of doing so, and I want in.

Continue to produce and increase the quality of the content on this, my weblog
Finally, I feel great about the direction my blog has taken. I don’t feel that pressure to write any new posts when I don’t have anything to say, and I think that the quality of what I have been producing has indeed increased (though, you may disagree with me there).  But I want to be better, much better. I write for myself, that’s important to me, and I won’t be happy until I feel that ever word I have written is a perfect representation of my thoughts and feelings. I still have a long way to go in expressing myself fully in writing.

Receive good results from my GCSE examinations
I’m by no means a particularly smart person, the only thing I’ve got on my side is that teachers tend to like me, a lot. But unfortunately that’s not particularly helpful when it comes to exams. Which is why I’m going to be pulling out all the stops to get some satisfactory results in my GCSE exams in June. In England they are a very big deal, and affect your future choices at what you might want to do at A Level.

Having said that, if every time I leave the exam hall I can say I did my best. I’d like to think I’d be happy with my results. I just hope that comes into fruition.

Finally, enter the realm of photography
I mean it this time. I swear. For a long while I’ve been trying to focus a lot more of my time into digital photography. I just never quite get there. Now this goal does actually involve a purchase, in this case my own DSLR. I’ve just been using my dad’s for that last year or so. But I can say safely, that this will be the year.

I also want to dedicate a lot more time to photography, I plan on going out a lot more often with the goal of taking photos and improving my skills. I am however, slightly worried that my MacBook Air won’t be able to handle some of the editing. We will see…

Budgeting Better
Unfortunately, I have a bit of a cavalier attitude to money, not having to pay for anything that I don’t want happens to be the main reason. So this year I’m looking at putting a lot more of my money into a savings account that I recently set up. I’ll be adding to the pot every month. I’ll also be budgeting how much I buy on iTunes and Amazon - the two biggest culprits.

I’m looking forward to 2009 and what it holds, I’ll be sticking this post up on my wall and hopefully it will inspire me every time I feel a bit down. What are you hoping to get from 2009?

I’m finally back from my trip to the British Virgin Islands, it’s kind of bitter sweet in many ways. I loved it there and would have easily stayed for longer if the opportunity was there. On the other hand, however, it’s good to be home. After all, the internet connections I managed to pick up were less than reliable.

One thing that I noticed when traveling around the islands is just how cut off one can be. There were islands that people seemed to have spent their entire lives on never venturing off, for instance, one island we came across had several abandoned houses and a shocking amount of graves on the island - a lot of them child size. These inhabitants most likely lived with no knowledge of what is going on outside their little world. A war could have been on and I bet they’d never have known.

Anyways, on a slightly lighter note:

Even though I managed to get some access to the internet, I managed to miss a lot. Here are a few things that caught my eye in the interim period.

MacWorld 2009 is Apple’s Last -
Now that they’ve done it, it makes a lot of sense to me. As Andy Inhatko said; “There’s absolutely nothing in it for Apple”. It seemed like a bit of a hard out though. I would presume that as time went on they would slowly decrease the amount they had to do with the show. Apple don’t like not being in control. From what I’ve heard there was a lot of times were Apple and IDG just didn’t see eye to eye.

As for Steve, don’t look into it any further than Apple’s efforts to separate him from the company a bit more.

Wordpress 2.7 was released -
OK, maybe it happened slightly before I left, but still; I’ve had a little time to play around with it and so far it seems to be doing the job. The interface changes are welcome, and building in automatic upgrade and plug-in installation was a smart move. For the next version however, I think that if themes became installable from within Wordpress, it would make a lot of people, including myself, happy.

iPlayer is now available for the Mac -
It’s been a long time coming. It should have been there from the start.

Google Chrome 1.0 -
I’m disappointed, of course, that the Mac version seems to have taken the back seat. That said, it shows how keen Google are to get Chrome a strong user base. I would expect that in the long run however, a lot more of the Chrome users will be on the Mac rather than the PC - they just need to get it out there.

MacHeist starts giving tree promotion -
I’ve only ever bought Mac promotions from MacHeist. Why? Because nearly all of the apps they ever release in a package are worth the money, unlike some which have a couple that stand out. This year for the festive season they’re giving away some applications, check out the site on the 25th for all of the apps.

Is there anything else I should have included in the list? Leave a comment, other than that, Merry Christmas.

I just need to get something off my chest. Ever since August, and the purchase of my MacBook Air the number one comment that I’ve had has been:

“Is that the one without a CD drive? Why did you get that? You can’t even watch DVDs”.

Yes, how observant of you. Have a cookie. If I wanted to watch DVDs on my computer I would have made a sensible move and purchased a computer that has an optical drive. I didn’t buy the computer unaware that it didn’t include one. Please don’t insult my intelligence by assuming such things. There’s a lot more to using a computer than watching movies.

iTunes. iTunes. iTunes. I buy my music from iTunes, I buy television shows from iTunes, I rent and buy movies; from iTunes. Problem solved. Move on.

That is all.