I thought i'd be clever and write the title with just the part in quotes, but, obviously, I wouldn't be the first to say so.

Just for fun:

• "Blogs are so 1998"
• "Blogs are so 1999"
• "Blogs are so 2000"
• "Blogs are so 2001"
• "Blogs are so 2003"
• "Blogs are so 2004"
• "Blogs are so 2005"
• "Blogs are so 2006"

(...mmm, i love the smell of the observer effect in the morning...)

Seriously, though. Is this medium dead, or what? Has it really changed at all in five years, or since the first podcast?

It's beyond passé to wish yourself a happy blog birthday. But this *is* the root node of my vast vanity media empire, and I *just* happened to see the timediff "52 weeks 21 hours" in a log file, and it's been an inordinately long year so I feel the need to reify something of its essence and be done with it. I don't currently have a "regular" job, so instead of singing myself a song and trolling for happy comments I'll just write up my year's worth of accomplishments and areas needing improvement for next year as if I were undergoing an "annual review".

Accomplishments:

• Seeded vast vanity media empire with humbly named "One Big Library" online publishing venture; now has 350+ subscribers, and unprecedented annual advertising revenues which funded my recent purchase of two bags of groceries
• Completed class in formal languages and automata
• Gave talk at code4lib 2006
• Co-authored paper indexed in MEDLINE/Pubmed
• Served on first grant review panel
• Led development of unAPI spec
• Gave first talk in a few years on FLOSS in libraries in Ohio
• Co-authored paper on unAPI
• Landed a great consulting gig on a useful and fun project
• Learned some ruby and rails
• Started a fun podcast that's been "featured" in iTunes, now with ~200 subscribers
• Learned the basics of audio production (what *not* to do, in particular)
• Managed to not ruin Access Hackfest for a fifth straight year
• Saw Ottawa, Corvallis, P.E.I., Dublin (OH), and a tiny sliver of Quebec for the first time
• Got hand/wrist/arm strain roughly under control through divers implements of destruction, refraining from work, and dragon naturallyspeaking install
• Joined advisory committees for two fascinating projects
• Finally started writing that book
• Gave worst named talk ever at NISO meeting (it went much better than the title might lead you to think, honestly)
• Started a magazine column (slated to begin January 2007 in an actual paper-based periodical)

Areas needing improvement:

• Still *really* need to build up parallel processing knowledge and chops
• Improve skills in the area of killing projects that aren't working and need to be put down
• Get back to work on the book
• Stop thinking up projects faster than I can do them
• Learn to consistently communicate very technical ideas more usefully to less- and non-technical audiences
• Get better at doing projects faster
• Improve focus - practice doing one thing at a time
• Keep up better contact with people I've worked with in the past
• Improve practicable understanding of probability theory and combinatorics
• Stop freaking out every time I hear somebody say something idiotic like "at four petabytes it's five times bigger that the Library of Congress!"
• Learn a functional programming language
• Be sure to take time to exercise regularly while away on business travel
• Stop killing kittens (not what you think! film at 11)
• Learn to approach important deadlines more, um, gracefully

All told, 2006 will go down in my personal history as a year when many people I'd greatly admired and had met - some of whom I'd been lucky enough to spend some time with - passed away. If there's a party goin' on out there somewhere I'm certain that John Iliff, Ali Farka Touré, Ross Atkinson, and Fred Kilgour will be there. Or at least the library there will be *amazing*, with the most fantastic West African guitarist you ever heard playing nearby. And my dad will be taking pictures of all of it.

Been updating the ol' dr'pal, re-enabling modules as appropriate. The old theme or something like it will be back sometime.