2009 is ending and so I’m reflecting on the year as well as thinking about the year ahead.

2009 has been a quick year. Aren’t they all? Not too long ago I was standing there celebrating the beginning of this year. My New Year’s resolution was to “take a chance”. “Take a chance” was just my way of defeating fears that hold me back. It’s been fairly useful over the year and I will continue to use that. This year I want something new though.

What to do? The last year was about gains of the internal kind but I think this year will be more external. Externally it’s damn hot actually. 42°C today. But I mean activities related to money, friends, family, possibly business, whatever is outside of me actually.

[intermission]So I went to get out the mail and a huntsman spider comes in with it. That was a delightful surprise when it crawled out between the bills to go up my arm. Almost as nice as bills themselves. The good news is the temperature has dropped like a stone to just 25°C.[/intermission]

So where was I? A resolution for the New Year. I think I shall go with something simple. “Don’t just think, act.”

BTW Happy New Year to you all. But don’t read this, go out and have some fun.

Went to an interesting event on Saturday. It was a Barcamp in Adelaide which is something I’ve heard about from Meatball and others but never attended myself.

A Barcamp is a rather informal meeting of a modest group of people who have the common thread. In Adelaide’s case it was a strong interest in technology. There’s presentations where all are encouraged to present but really the focus is on discussion, networking and throwing ideas around and most of all, participation.

All in all this barcamp seemed to pretty much do that and I enjoyed myself a great deal and learned quite a bit. Quite a mix of people there geeks, engineers, programmers, young businesspeople, twitter addicts

Some of the major discussions covered things like the future of ISPs, vine pruning robots, internet communities and business, social networking like twitter, Blender an open source 3D modeler, mobile phone application development.

It went on for most of the day at the Xentech offices off Rundle Mall and was well catered by 4 Wheels- 5 stars.

To all of you I wish a happy and properous 2009.

Merry Christmas all and hope you have a fun and properous 2009.