On 12 December 2013 10:36, Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@webdrake.net> wrote:
> On 12/12/13 00:32, Francesco Cattoglio wrote:
>>
>> Oh, also, I hope to run away from Italy, and spend a good year somewhere
>> in
>> Europe! :D
>
>
> La situazione corrente chiaramente non è buono ... :-(
>
> Where in Italy are you based, out of curiosity?

Sì, non è affatto buono.  Most of my recent friends (and my partner) have moved from Spain or Italy in the last year or two.  The street I live on has quite literally turned into a little italy.

On 12 December 2013 10:48, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org> wrote:
> On 12 December 2013 10:36, Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@webdrake.net> wrote:
>> On 12/12/13 00:32, Francesco Cattoglio wrote:
>>>
>>> Oh, also, I hope to run away from Italy, and spend a good year somewhere
>>> in
>>> Europe! :D
>>
>>
>> La situazione corrente chiaramente non è buono ... :-(
>>
>> Where in Italy are you based, out of curiosity?
>
> Sì, non è affatto buono.  Most of my recent friends (and my partner) have moved from Spain or Italy in the last year or two.  The street I live on has quite literally turned into a little italy.

Minus the mafia. ;)

For me 2013 has been very interesting. Learnt a huge amount with regards to D and system level programming. Basically knew nothing before hand.

Have done a lot with my tertiary institute with regards to helping others (in an official capacity).
Before the end of the year I'll be doing streaming and considering D tutorials on youtube.
My goal at least before I start back at my degree next year is get DOOGLE released, have my web service in a showable condition.

For 2014 the goal is:
a) Get my degree in ICT
b) Have a fully functioning gui toolkit
c) Have my web service live with support of at least one tertiary institute and maybe a conference (its educational in nature and does fill a need).
d) A stretch goal of getting or starting diploma in adult education.

So if anyone in Christchurch or New Zealand in general needs a D dev I'll be available second half of next year as part of my degree (project with a company). Would help me a lot!

So for me it will definitely be very exciting.

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:51:29 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On 12 December 2013 10:48, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org> wrote:
>> On 12 December 2013 10:36, Joseph Rushton Wakeling
>> <joseph.wakeling@webdrake.net> wrote:
>>> La situazione corrente chiaramente non è buono ... :-(
Diciamo non buona abbastanza ;) I like Italy a lot, don't get me wrong, but I think I need a decent experience somewhere in "northen" Europe if I want to find any good chance for professional growth.
>>> Where in Italy are you based, out of curiosity?
Milano right now. But no, I don't support neither Milan nor Inter :D
>>
>> Sì, non è affatto buono.  Most of my recent friends (and my partner)
>> have moved from Spain or Italy in the last year or two.  The street I
>> live on has quite literally turned into a little italy.
You said Brighton, didn't you?
> Minus the mafia. ;)
Trust me, some kind of mafia is everywhere :P We have an idiom here: "Tutto il mondo è paese"

Heh, nice thread :)

For me this year was absolutely insane. Main accomplishment pretty much says all about it - I have survived through it. Literally. Got hit by cerebral stroke (this must be the term) in previous December, almost died there - unconscious for a week, blind for a month, unable to walk for 4 more months. Still no one knows why it has happened. To own surprise have eventually recovered almost perfectly with only a few balance issues remaining. This crap has removed half of 2013 from my life though.

After that I have deciding that programming in embedded/kernel C environment is just too unhealthy and something needs to be done. Noticed that Sociomantic are hiring, casually applied, surprisingly got accepted. Moved to Berlin. Have discovered that I completely dislike Germany / Berlin but working with D is just too good to just move somewhere else :) Still struggling with that internal conflict, is definitely one of issues to address in 2014.

Also major goal for 2014 is to finally start devote some regular time to open-source projects instead of current chaotic rampaging migration between different points of interest in D domain.

On 12/12/2013 6:51 PM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 12/12/2013 12:09 AM, Mike Parker wrote:
>
>  > And on a personal note, I "won" NaNoWriMo.
>
> Wow! If winning means completing 50K words, my daughter did the same! :)
>

Yes, it does. Congrats to your daughter!

On 12 December 2013 11:07, Francesco Cattoglio <francesco.cattoglio@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:51:29 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>>
>> On 12 December 2013 10:48, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw@gdcproject.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12 December 2013 10:36, Joseph Rushton Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@webdrake.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> La situazione corrente chiaramente non è buono ... :-(
>
> Diciamo non buona abbastanza ;) I like Italy a lot, don't get me wrong, but I think I need a decent experience somewhere in "northen" Europe if I want to find any good chance for professional growth.
>
>>>> Where in Italy are you based, out of curiosity?
>
> Milano right now. But no, I don't support neither Milan nor Inter :D
>
>>>
>>> Sì, non è affatto buono.  Most of my recent friends (and my partner) have moved from Spain or Italy in the last year or two.  The street I live on has quite literally turned into a little italy.
>
> You said Brighton, didn't you?

Yes, moved to Brighton. :-)

>>
>> Minus the mafia. ;)
>
> Trust me, some kind of mafia is everywhere :P We have an idiom here: "Tutto il mondo è paese"

Haha, :o)

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 09:21:46 UTC, monarch_dodra wrote:
> On Wednesday, 11 December 2013 at 19:45:25 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> As for my future plans, I'm hoping to land myself a nice
>> programming-related job next year. I've never had a programming job,
>> most of the paid work I ever did was physical work, such as drilling
>> through bricks, rock, concrete, installing and repairing air
>> conditioners, installing central heating systems, lighting and
>> electrical work, and stuff like that.
>
> I'm actually baffled to hear that someone of your caliber has is not a professional programmer. Passion and theory alone will only get you so far... (IMO).
>
> So, I hope you land yourself that job.
>
clip

Andrej is like Matt Damon's character in "Good Will Hunting" (hopefully without all the psychological issues).  Good luck in the job hunt.

I am sort of the Anti-Andrej. My big accomplishment for 2013 was to complete my Ph.D. in Computer Science (after many years), but I am actually not a fantastic programmer.  My degree is in 'theoretical' computer science, a number of the profs in my research group would likely have been happy to do all their work with just paper and pencils.  I kept asking my supervisor to let me do some implementation project as part of my research, but he kept answering "No, it will take too long".  Finally, a reviewer for one of our papers said the only way he would except it was if we included 'experimental results'. So I got to implement something, and of course I used D!

Considering I have a BES and M.Sc. in Geography, and no extensive math background, I figure getting a Ph.D. in CS is a bit of a coup on my part.

With that out of the way my goal for 2014 is to improve as a programmer and hopefully start making some contributions to the D community.  I actually started making some small documentation corrections to various D projects this past year, and want to work my way up to something more substantial.

Congratulations to all the new parents out there.

Cheers,
Craig

On 12/12/13 11:48, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> Sì, non è affatto buono.  Most of my recent friends (and my partner)
> have moved from Spain or Italy in the last year or two.  The street I
> live on has quite literally turned into a little italy.

Quite apart from any other reason, you get loads of people coming to Brighton for the language schools, no?  But the sad thing is almost all the talented young Italians I know are considering when and how they should move somewhere else.

As for the mafia -- they get everywhere. ;-)  You'd be amazed how many legit businesses in the UK are actually mafia investments.

On Wednesday, 11 December 2013 at 19:45:25 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> I thought we'd enjoy a bit of reminiscing of the past year and talk
> about our plans for the future, whether it's something personal or
> D-related that anyone is willing to publicly talk about. It should be
> a fun topic, or so I hope! :) So let me begin..
>
> Generally this has been an awesome year for me. This year I've become
> a part of the D core team, which is not something I even planned for,
> but I'm really grateful it happened. It's an awesome team to be in!
>
> Another thing that happened, is that after many years promising myself
> that "this year" was going to be the one where I get in shape and live
> a healthy life, it turns out that 2013 was that year! I've lost 20 Kg
> (44 lbs) this year and now my BMI is in the normal range at around
> 22.4 BMI. It was 28.4 BMI at 95 KG (209 lbs) at the start of the year.
> It wasn't just frequent exercise that helped me lose weight. I started
> eating healthy food, and now spinach, kale, beets, and other
> vegetables are a permanent part of my diet. I wouldn't dream of saying
> this last year, but steamed veggies are absolutely delicious!!
>
> As for my future plans, I'm hoping to land myself a nice
> programming-related job next year. I've never had a programming job,
> most of the paid work I ever did was physical work, such as drilling
> through bricks, rock, concrete, installing and repairing air
> conditioners, installing central heating systems, lighting and
> electrical work, and stuff like that.
>
> I also want to and plan to study algorithms this year. Whenever some
> algorithm-related discussion popped up in the newsgroups I would
> typically avoid giving any input as most of the conversation would go
> over my head. But I'm gonna bite down and study hard, I really want to
> "grok" it.
>
> Ok, so who's next who wants to share?


2013:

Got myself accepted and funded for a Physics PhD to do research in to data-analysis techniques for magnetic-containment fusion.

Completed my research masters, as a matter of fact I'm making the final corrections to my thesis now.

Started the PhD and I'm learning at a greatly accelerated rate compared to previous study. It's great.

Learned a lot more about various bits of programming, thanks mostly to D and its community. Cheers :)


2014:

Learning. Learning learning learning.

Research. Research research research.

I'd love to get back in to playing music regularly. Coding and reading textbooks/papers every waking hour is too much.

Get in shape. Again, too much time reading and coding.

Complete a few of my D related projects. I'm terrible for starting things and then abandoning them before they properly take shape.