2007 came and went and what a phenomenal year it has been, at least for Apple and gaming. Apple brought us the best operating system ( or rather, updated what was already an amazing OS release, Tiger ), the iPhone ( I doubt any single other device affected the world as much in recent history ) and a host of other goodies. The gaming world hasn't seen so amazing, gorgeous, wonderful, [your adjective here] games since, since probably never. Game reviewers and critics had a really hard time hand-picking those 'game of the year' gems, for its nigh impossible to tell which is 'better' given the above-great quality of most games that came out. Good luck Apple and Game Developers beating 2007.
On a personal level, it has been the worse year of my life, mostly because my beloved father passed away. A really close to us cousin, one we grew up together, also left this world - and another friend who was also our age departed along-side. It has been really tough. In addition to that, I had ( still am, but I am working on it ) been 'blessed' with major productivity woes and severe mood swings. Most likely a byproduct of the aforementioned events. If it wasn't for the support of the ones that I love and my friends, I am not sure my sanity would have stayed with me in the end.
Here is hoping 2008 will undo what can, and should, be undone, improve what can be improved, keep us healthy and happy and make each day count.
My little pet-project is complete. There are a few features that would perhaps be nice to have, a whole lot of more testing to get it through, but its done, and, even-though I am very displeased with the fact it took months to get it out, it sure beat my expectations. Its a component for our Switch library that offers transactional ( read ACID ), safe ( backed up by journaling ), fast ( optimized read-ahead, write operations reordering and coalescing etc ), page-locking based I/O operations on groups of files. In addition to that, it makes use of a nice memory management system ( layers of caches, check ARC ) that makes it possible to operate in any environment ( from 32K to whatever ) you confine it to - the more memory dedicated to it the better, of course. Hopefully we are going to start integrating to various existing projects, including new Trinity, and some new ones.
Other than that, I spent some quality time going through the various Apple tutorials on iLife and iWork and I can't stretch enough how wonderful, powerful and simple to use they are. Apple products ooze greatness. I also got to learn the basics of Photoshop ( thanks, Jim!) and understand the basics of 3D graphics and trigonometry ( thanks, Stelios! ). In addition to that, I think I am ready to start working on my first Mac OS-X, Cocoa based app.
Happy 2008, everyone.
2007, well, i can't say i have much good to say about the past year, at all. I honestly don't know anybody who it was a good year for. Personally some of the worst and most fucked up shit so far of my life happened. But at least there were a few positive things which kept me moderately sane (i think... lol).
I'm curious to see what 2008 brings, even though i don't really believe in the whole "new year, new start" stuff. Life is just a continues flow, you will hit rocks, many of them, regardless of what year it happens to be. I just try to make the best i can of the calm parts of the river/flow.
With some luck however its possible to drastically change the flow, for something that looks calmer and better (unless you're a badass hero from some american action blockbuster, cause then you'll just head straight for the waterfall with razor sharp rocks bellow... lol).
With that said tho, i wish you a calmer and less rocky ride through 2008 :)
Happy New Year friend! I wish you the best for 2k8 [be healthy, code a lot etc etc ;) ].
I hope this year will change everything to what we most want and need! =)