Happy new year chaps! 2014 is upon us!

Holy sweet freaking crap. Where did the year go!?

I can’t believe 2013 is over already. It feels like it’s too soon! Hopefully every year isn’t like this. What a roller-coaster ride it’s been!

At the end of every year, I like to do a quick reflection on the crazy crap I did in the year. It’s my goal in life to improve upon each year over the last. I find this a great way to set the bar for the next year. 🙂

This year, I was fortunate enough to:

• Host two panels at WAI-CON 2013 on the Japanese language, and the copyrights of fan-based productions.
• Move to Japan and work at pixiv as an iOS programmer.
• Update iComics with two new versions, fixing a deluge of bugs and adding a few new critical features
• Spend months in exchange with the tech support chaps at Twitch to secure the ‘ubergames’ username on the service. (Apparently the ‘berga’ in UberGames is Spanish profanity. Who knew… ^_^;)
• Use my trademark holder rights to negotiate claim to the username ‘UberGames’ on both Twitter and Instagram. ^_^
• Manage to get in touch with the legendary Ken Akamatsu and get his permission to feature Love Hina in iComics’ promotional screenshots. (Still coming to terms with this. Love Hina is what got me back into Japanese study after high school. Somebody pinch me. XD)
• Rebuild my blog with this sexy new, HiDPI-compatible, responsive theme. Learning much more about contemporary web development in the process.
• On behalf of pixiv, attend Google I/O, which included introducing pixiv to chaps from the likes of The Verge, Polygon, The Guardian, Crunchyroll, Air New Zealand, Epson, and more. Also, going out and partying with many of Google’s fine engineers (Blimey, that company knows how to party! XD)
• Get the rare chance to visit the Pokémon Headquarters in Roppongi to observe licensing negotiations firsthand.
• Attend both Summer Comiket, and the Pokémon Game Show at Tokyo Big Sight.
• Sing the Pokémon theme song on a karaoke machine on a boat in the middle of Tokyo harbour, in front of 60 Japanese people (Uh, bucket list?). XD
• After heading home to Perth, scale my work to 4 days a week, and immediately get deluged with a pile of contract work.
• Pick up where I left off as a contractor for pixiv from Australia.
• Buy a second video card to SLI my PC beasty, and start making my way through all the Steam games I bought while I was in Japan.

Oh yeah… and this. My greatest achievement of 2013: learning how to look skeptical in both directions. XD

All in all… I think it was a good year. Working at a company in Japan was an amazing experience, and I learnt a ridiculous amount about iOS development as a result. I’m a bit regretful that I had to leave so soon, but I’m hoping that once all of my commitments in Perth are eventually tidied up, I can go back over there for much longer.

And now… 2014. If 2013 is the new bar, 2014 is looking to absolutely raise it straight out of the gate. With the construction of my new apartment about to be completed… and it looking like I may be switching jobs once more, it looks like 2014 is most likely going to be one of, if not the most exciting year of my life so far. 😀

In any case, I’ve already got a few goals set out for 2014. With any luck, they’re not that far fetched:

• Finish iComics. Properly. Short of incremental updates (Assuming Apple doesn’t pull another iOS 7 stunt XD), finish the app so it’s completely done, and couldn’t possibly be improved. XD
• Lose a bit more weight. 75kg would be nice. (Gah. Exercise. XD)
• After iComics is done, dust off those old UberGames projects sitting in limbo and bring them to light. 😀
• Make more time for playing video games (Seriously. Apparently my Steam list is 84% untouched. O_o)
• Open up negotiations with Pokémon once more. Once more… 🙂
• Move into my apartment without failing on an epic scale (It’s not that hard is it? XD)
• Upload a few more videos to YouTube. Hopefully… XD

Anyway. I hope everyone enjoys the final moments of 2013 and is making their own resolutions to make 2014 even moree awesome.

Happy New Year everyone! See you on the other side. 🙂