2012 in Review
This is my first annual review blog post. I wish I had done these previously, but this year, I’m actually making an effort to make it happen. Below, you’ll see the Awesome Stuff, the Not Awesome Stuff, and The Numbers. Tomorrow I’ll be publishing what I’m planning on doing in 2013.
Awesome Stuff
I accomplished two of my life goals this year: Go on a mission trip overseas and complete an Master’s of Business Administration (MBA).
Rwanda
In May, I went with a church group and River’s Promise this year to Rwanda, Africa. It was an amazing experience. I’m pretty sure that the people there changed my life as much, if not more, than I changed theirs. I went with my wife, and 10 others to a remote Pygmy village in Rwanda. These are probably the poorest people I’ve seen in my life. Not probably. They are the poorest people I’ve seen in my life. The contrast of how poor these people were with the rolling hills of Rwanda was crazy: these were views people in the States would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for. The life expectancy of these people is extremely short. 95% of all children in the village die before the age of 5. Our team helped to build a house in this village. While we were there, we were able to spend time with the children and give away shoes, blankets, and hats. It was an amazing experience- one that I will never forget. If you have any extra money, I highly recommend sponsoring a child from the village.
You can see some pictures of the trip at Bird’s Eye Creative.
MBA
Also in May, before I went to Rwanda, I finished my MBA at the University of Colorado. I’ll be writing a blog post about that entire experience later next year, as I’m still not done at the University- I’m still finishing my Master’s of Science in Computer Science. Spoiler alerts ahead… It’s worth it (for some people).
Learning
As always, I’m in love with learning. This year was no exception to learning new stuff.
This year, I read a ton of books (see numbers below), which has been nothing short of fantastic. No, not every book was fantastic, but the ones that really stood out to me this year were Running Lean and Crazy Love.
In the physique side of learning, I started taking bboy lessons (breakdancing, another life goal). Bboying, of course, isn’t going to be learned overnight, so it’s something I’m expecting to keep up over the next few years. Bboying has been an excellent source of exercise outside of running.
Code (and more Learning)
This year I did quite a bit of coding, but I didn’t publish as much as I would have liked. A lot of the code I did was for school projects. However, I did publish my 2nd Android App, Ideal Tracker via my company Ideally.
While Ideal Tracker isn’t pulling in any real money right now (it’s ad-based, with an extremely small userbase), it did teach me quite a bit about the publish and upgrade process for Android apps.
I competed in all three Ludum Dare competitions this year. You can find my code and entries on the game dev link. I taught myself Three.js, Processing.js, and Cocos2d-html5 (and CocosBuilder) during these events.
I published 3 more screencasts (and recorded a 4th) on OpenGL. This was a major disappointment this year, as I should have published a lot more. I only recently got inspired as I didn’t realize how much time people were watching my videos over the last year (see numbers below).
Travel and more Life
As above, I went to Rwanda, Africa. Additionally, I went to Brussels and Brugge, Belgium (after the mission trip), San Francisco, CA (Startup School via YCombinator), Washington, D.C. (TechStars Patriot Bootcamp), backcountry backpacking in Boulder County, CO (30 miles in 2.5 days), and Las Vegas, NV (to visit my brother and his wife).
My wife and I moved out of our apartment and into a friend’s townhome, which has been amazing.
Not Awesome Stuff
Last year, I did a Marathon and ran several races. This year, the longest single run I did was run with a friend for 9-10 miles of her marathon.
My wife and I watched a lot of TV (via Netflix). I watched even more Netflix and an unacceptable amount of Youtube as well. See the numbers below… the definitely speak for themselves.
And, as I said above, I didn’t publish enough code. Or perhaps, I didn’t write enough code. Or both. Next year, with graduation around the corner, this is going to change.
The Numbers
I’ve posted 2012’s numbers below. I’ve also included numbers for 2009-2011, as I haven’t posted those before.
| What \ When | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intellect | ||||
| Books read | 28 | 21 | 21 | 10 |
| University Courses Taken | 7 | 12 | 7 | 0 |
| Physical | ||||
| Total Miles Ran | 362.47 | 616 | 392 | 0 |
| Half-Marathons Ran | 0 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| Marathons Ran | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Total Miles Biked | 422.5 | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 14ers climbed | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| BBoy hours | 31.17 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Number of Workouts | 311 | 202 | 116 | 50 |
| Random | ||||
| Movies/Shows watched on Netflix via Instant | 347 | 245 | 156 | 170 |
| Movies/Shows watched on Netflix via DVDs | 50 | 53 | 100 | 62 |
| Emails sent | 912 | 704 | ? | ? |
| Concerts | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Songs starred in Spotify | 97 | 173 | ||
| Travel | ||||
| Roundtrip Flights to Montgomery | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Roundtrip Flights elsewhere | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Career | ||||
| Networking Events | 37 | 28 | 5 | 0 |
| Conferences attended | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tech | ||||
| Blog Posts | 32 | 22 | 16 | 27 |
| Apps Published (total) | 1 | 1 | ||
| Android Apps | 1 | 1 | ||
| # Releases (new and old Android) | 2 | 7 | ||
| Games Created (total) | 3 | 1 | ||
| Screencasts Recorded | 4 | 19 | ||
| # of views on my screencasts (Youtube) | 10841 | 2000 |
I only started using RescueTime in September of 2011, so some numbers may seem a little low. See % of year for actual comparison in that regard. I didn’t include everything from RescueTime, as there are way too many categories and details. I chose to share the ones that have the most time or relevancy associated with them.
| What \ When | 2012 | 2011 | 2012% | 2011% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RescueTime | ||||
| Hours Logged | 1926.5 | 682 | ||
| Productivity | 57% | 65% | ||
| Unproductive Hours Spent… | ||||
| … on Facebook | 108 | 37 | 1.23% | 1.31% |
| … on Google+ | 11 | 1 | 0.13% | 0.04% |
| … on Twitter | 4 | 1 | 0.05% | 0.04% |
| … on Hacker News | 115 | 34 | 1.31% | 1.20% |
| … on Silverlight (Netflix) | 143 | 28 | 1.63% | 0.99% |
| … on Flash (Some % is Youtube) | 155 | 78 | 1.77% | 2.75% |
| TOTAL Unproductive Hours | 536 | 179 | 6.11% | 6.32% |
| Productive Hours Spent… | ||||
| … house chores | 90 | 20 | 1.03% | 0.71% |
| … studying | 70 | 42 | 0.80% | 1.48% |
| … writing (gmail- debatable if productive or not) | 128 | 36 | 1.46% | 1.28% |
| … writing (google docs) | 110 | 71 | 1.25% | 2.51% |
| … coding (Emacs) | 129 | 70 | 1.47% | 2.47% |
| … coding (Terminal) | 34 | 14 | 0.39% | 0.49% |
| … coding (Eclipse) | 112 | 3 | 1.28% | 0.11% |
| … coding (Xcode) | 22 | 0 | 0.25% | 0.00% |
| TOTAL Productive Hours | 695 | 256 | 7.93% | 9.04% |
Not included is time spent on my Android device. I’d like to find a “RescueTime of Android” or equivalent, but have yet to look. I’ll be looking shortly though, so I can have more data for next year’s stats. The main things that change is the fact that I hardly play games on my laptop, but do semi-regularly on my Android. I also use Twitter almost exclusively on my Android, but obviously not a lot on my laptop. I also use Google+ more on my Android.
And that’s it. Tomorrow I’ll be looking at what I would like to achieve next year, and what I can, and will do to meet those goals.