You will have noticed that I stopped the 30 days thing on Christmas Day. The things you have missed are a detailed recap of my week, month and year followed by my hopes and dreams for the future, followed by closing with another dose of whatever took my fancy. While I’ve tried to be relaxed about some of the topics of this meme, and to plough gamely on wherever I could, my inner editor filed that lot collectively as “2009 in review” and wouldn’t let me write ‘em separately, because it would bore the pants off anyone. Particularly with the meme’s terms of “in detail”.

So, in summary: I’ve had a good year. Started it by throwing what I think everyone agreed was quite a successful new year’s party. Fitted in trips to Toronto, Amsterdam and Belfast. Started dating a particularly marvellous human being toward the end of the summer. Ran a decent LARP through to its conclusion, ran some very successful (and some less successful) tabletop games. Took a decent number of photos I liked. Did a bit of writing here and there than I didn’t hate. Completely failed to learn a new programming language. Had a fairly profound religious experience by accident. Did a few stupid things, but on balance I think fewer than in previous years, which is all one can really ask for. And, of course, I continue to be blessed with marvellous friends and family.

Those of you I haven’t seen enough of through the year, I apologise, and tender my regrets – there isn’t one among you who I wouldn’t like to have seen more of. Those of you who have seen too much of me, the same. The to-do list for the rest of 2009 reads “tidy up, throw party”.

As for 2010, I simply hope it’ll be better than 2009 for all of us.

Well, I woke up, scratched, swung my legs out of bed, put one foot in front of the other, etc etc.

Yeah. You don’t actually need all the detail, do you?

I’ve had a bloody lovely day. Bucks Fizz and a croissant, the company of my family, a phone call with my grandmother, a turkey dinner, a walk at dusk and a bit of TV – The Gruffalo and then Dr Who. The former was excellent, the latter was saved by John Simm quite literally chewing the scenery and Bernard Cribbins being exactly as good as I’d hoped. Really very frustatingingly part one of two, and the big reveal at the end had virtually no shock value at all.

Notable gifts: a stock pot, and a copy of Larousse Gastonomique. Next year: soup!

I am fighting the tempatation here to gush about Miranda and my family, because it’s them that put my festive spirit back, but the rest of you don’t need my vomiting up joy and rainbows everywhere.

So instead, one last set of holiday wishes for you all. Hope yours was a good as mine.

The holiday season is in full swing, and while you’ll hear all about my day in full boring detail later, because that’s the next topic, I thought I’d use this “whatever tickles your fancy” to talk about the holiday season in general, and what it means to me.

I’m not religious in any sense that Christmas or any other midwinter festival could possible have any meaning for me. But I do love this time of year. I like that it’s been around in one form or another for thousands of years, like a groove etched in our collective psyche that says “it’s dark and bloody miserable out there. Take a bit of time to remember be good to one another, why don’t you?”

I feel like the days between Christmas and New Year are a time when we hit the collective pause button, and spend a bit of time with our nearest and dearest without any particular obligation to do anything but vegetate collectively. Work can sod off, plans that aren’t “let’s stay in and eat and drink, and maybe watch a bit of telly” can be paused. Everything else is window dressing – the family gatherings, the gift exchanges, the lights and the tinsel they’re all lovely, but really they’re just how we dress up a collective rest period to make it a bit more special. Remind me at some point to talk about the Lancastrian tradition of Wakes weeks in Summer, and why we really ought to make them apply to office work all around the country,

Honestly, by the point in the year, I’m ready for a few days of dead time, and battery re-charging. I’ve been having to fight to sustain a good mood a bit for the last month – November and December always kick the shit out of me a bit at work, and things have otherwise been a bit busy and stressful. One of my resolutions for next year is to have a more relaxed November and December, with less social run-around, because I don’t think I’ve had a week with less than three social engagements since October, and while I love you all, I don’t feel I’ve had much “me” time, and more time off work, because I’ve worked up to the last minute the last two years, and when your major clients are large pub chains, that means there’s a lot to do, and it’s put a crimp in my festive spirit.

So come back later today, to hear all about how I got it back.

Compliments of the season to all of you. May your holidays be filled with cheer.

Playing catchup. Longer post tonight, probably. Anyway, I know the meme said “YouTube video”, but I like Vimeo more, and I particularly like this video, about the unseen digital ghosts that haunt our world.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

Just one? But I’ve worked on so many…

Debenhams was the first website I ever did any professional work for. This is Local London was the first website I was responsible for the upkeep of. ipoints was the first website I ever really enjoyed working on. I’ve spent the last few years working on a bunch of websites for various large pub companies, and that’s been fun.

But I can’t really do a rundown of sites I’ve been involved with with putting Ninth Art squarely at the top of the list. It ate 5 years of Andrew’s life, and a lot of Antony’s and my free time on a less sustained basis. It remains the single website I’m proudest to have been involved with, even if most of what I wrote for it make me cringe now, but y’know, some of it’s coming up on a decade old, so y’know. I still don’t know how much of an impact 9A had on anything, really, but what I do know is that a number of people I like and respect were kind enough to say good things about the site, and every now and again, I do randomly meet people who remember the site, and say kind things about it, and even if the site did nothing else, I do very much miss sitting down with Andrew and Antony over drinks and talking rubbish about comics, and it gave us an excuse to do that.

I’m quite profoundly fucked off about the error at the DNS company that lead to us losing our two original domain names for that site, and having to buy the .org instead, and do periodically check to see if their of them have become available again. I also keep promising myself that I’ll rebuild publishing engine for the site, just because I’d like little things like nicer URLs on the articles, even if it is only an archive these days.

I’m kind of vaguely looking for a project on a similar scale to get involved with again, just because, well, 9A has been inert for a few years, and I don’t like that the single website I’m proudest to have been involved with is that old. There’s a few other websites I’m working on that I really like, but they’re small, private community things, rather than anything public, and I do quite fancy doing something digital and public that isn’t just blogging again – I don’t think I’d write for anyone again, but the idea of building a bespoke content management system for a website I genuinely cared about, that’s got some appeal, and I know I’d do it better this time around. One to think about a bit more in the new year, I guess.