The Challenges of 2010

The start of a new year, a time to look forward to the future. To set goals and make resolutions. This year I haven’t set any resolutions, I have three geeky challenges I’ve set myself, there are some other personal challenges that I might share on the blog in the weeks to come but for today I want to focus on the geeky ones.

Find my Blogging Voice:

I have been blogging on and off now for 4 years. During that time I have gone through 3 iterations of my blog. Michael’s Thoughts, Evolving Dad and Geek With Kids. The first two were on the same site, one just evolved into the other, which has now been taken offline. I’m pretty sure I back up the posts but as I write this I have a sneaking suspicion that I forgot to back up the MySQL databases and so I might not have kept the posts. Backed-up or not, in all that time I have yet  I’ve yet to find a consistent posting pattern for my posts. I would have spurts of high activity followed by months of nothing. That was one of the reasons I started Geek With Kids, to have a fresh start. Of course it didn’t work. I had a good month of posting before falling back to just weekly picture posts.

When I took up the Challenge of NaBloPoMo three months ago, I didn’t think I would have the stamina to still be going at it, but here I am over 90 days later and I’m still posting. Of course it hasn’t been easy there have been a ton of days where I just didn’t have anything to write, but I found something to say, even if it was just a cheesy video from YouTube. Now I’m still looking for a consistency in my posts but I am posting every day. I’m hoping my other 2 challenges will help with that. By giving me something to write about on even on days when nothing is coming to me. So going into 2010 I hope to have a post every day for the year, in fact as you’ll see below I’m hoping to have more then that.

Project 365:

A few weeks ago Melissa told me about Project 365, a photography challenge. Take a picture every day for a year, and share it. It seemed like a an interesting challenge. So I figured why not do it. Of course I was planning on using my Cell Phone as my Primary Camera, but over the last week my camera has become unreliable, so I’m not sure if I will still do this challenge. As of today the challenge is on, I’ll just have to use our Cannon point and shoot or our Nikon D50 for my pictures. Might not get as many spontaneous shots but they should be better pictures over all.

After all I’ve been meaning to get more serious about photography ever since we got our Digital SLR for Christmas a few years back. This will give me a great reason to really do that. I plan on posting the picture I take every day to my blog, In addition to my regular posts. Of course I know this wont last. There will be days where I only get one post out. The only thing for sure is that my filler will now be Project 365 related and less rambling. We’ll see how it goes.

Coding Challenge:

I still need to code more. I don’t program enough, and having the PS3 around the house this last week hasn’t helped. With the beginning of this new year I’m more determined then ever to get to coding regularly. The disappointment I had with never getting my Ping.FM application approved for distribution in the fall really sucked the life out of my coding effort. I still use the application for my on posts but I haven’t had the drive to expand it or the ability to share it. Now it’s time to reboot that effort.

So here is a plan, I’m going to try doing an Program a Month. Each month I’ll sit down and pick something to write, plan it out and code it.  So I need a new project. I’m thinking I’ll write something for my better half. Who is currently in the mist of planning our little girls first birthday and is trying to get together the addresses for all the people she plans on inviting and she’s complaining about not having an address book for all these people. I looked at some options for her online, but figured why use some program I found on the internet. I’ll write one for her. It’ll get me coding again and make sure she has a program that does what she wants. More on this in the coming weeks.

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