Good Riddance 2016. G’day 2017!

Blimey. I survived 2016. XD

Even saying that as a joke makes me feel a little guilty, especially when we lost so many notable people this year. People are saying that we should start getting used to this trend, but I choose to remain ignorantly hopeful otherwise.

So 2016 is over. It blew past so fast. So amazingly fast. I’m not even sure what the hell happened.

I considered 2015 to be a transformative year. It was a year where I moved from consulting and predominantly web work, to fully plunging into the mobile software space in Silicon Valley. In retrospect, it feels like 2015 was landing on the tip of the iceberg and 2016 ended up being actually discovering the rest of the giant iceberg under water.

Some of the highlights of 2016 included:

• Travelling to Kyoto to catch up with a mate and hear rumblings about the game his company was building. Glad to see it has since successfully launched!
  

  Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to Vitei’s monthly gaming, sandwiches and beer nights! I made some new friends, got rekt in Bomberman, kicked a few Jigglypuff butts in Smash, and overall had an excellent time! ^_^

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Feb 26, 2016 at 9:16pm PST

• Traveling to Tokyo to deliver a presentation at an iOS conference on Core Animation. In Japanese. As terrifying as that was, it was also amazing to actively contribute to the Japanese iOS scene and make a lot more friends over there.
  

  And my #tryswiftconf talk is done! Boy that feels liberating! XD Thank you so much for all of the positive feedback and the photos everyone! I went into that talk absolutely terrified, so I really appreciate it! ^_^

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 2, 2016 at 12:32am PST

• Meeting the hosts from the old Australian childrens show Cheez TV. That was a slice of my childhood right there. XD
  

  Managed to meet both of the Cheez TV chaps and personally tell them that Pokémon was my jam back in 1999. Perfect way to end a week! XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Mar 18, 2016 at 9:56am PDT

• Travelling to SF in May to meet some of the new Realm teammates and attending an American baseball match for the first time.
  

  Spending the evening at some kind of American… ritual… event thing. XD #Baseball

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on May 6, 2016 at 6:44pm PDT

• Back in SF the month after to hang out for WWDC week. I sadly didn’t get a ticket, but I was extremely fortunate to score a ticket to the keynote viewing event at Twitter HQ. Thanks again to the folks at Twitter who selected me!
  

  First in line for the WWDC viewing party at Twitter HQ! 😀

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Jun 13, 2016 at 9:03am PDT

• Went back to Japan again to attend a 10 year reunion of a Japanese scholarship in which I participated in 2006. That was before social media had taken off, so there were a few people I hadn’t seen since then!
  

  So in 2006, back when I was still a Uni student and not even legally able to drink in Japan, I joined 19 Aussie and 400 Japanese students on a boat from Kobe to Perth. This year was the 10 year anniversary of that event. A LOT has changed since then but it was great to see some old faces again! ^_^

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Aug 14, 2016 at 4:32am PDT

• Went to Melbourne to present at /dev/world/ on iOS 8 size classes and trait collections. By far my favourite conference of the year!
  

  Whelp! My #DevWorld talk is done! That feels good. XD Thanks a lot to everyone who came! I think I saved my footage in the right folder though… Not sure… XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Aug 30, 2016 at 12:04am PDT

• Took the plunge, got a US visa and moved to SF for a few months to directly help Realm with the launch of the new Realm Mobile Platform. Getting to work at the Realm office in person was a fantastic experience and it was so much fun getting to know the rest of the team better.
  

  Alright. Time to officially drop the bombshell. XD I’m off to the US again! This time for a little longer than the previous times. While remote work is fantastic, there’s only so much I can do and so much I can learn being so far away in the completely opposite time zone. I’m very excited for this opportunity to properly see what it’s like in the trenches. XD In any case, this means I’ll be missing out on a few things in AU this year (namely running kaiWA, PAX and my 30th birthday), but I think this opportunity definitely outweighs all of those together. 🙂

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Sep 20, 2016 at 8:57am PDT

• Continued pushing my open-source projects and spinning up a few more in preparation of adding that functionality to iComics.
  

  Yay! Yesterday, my little cropper project of one year overtook my web viewer project of three years to be my most popular code library on GitHub. It’s been an absolutely fascinating process watching this library grow over the last year, and I’ve been really happy with the feedback it’s received. On the flip side, it’s been a really eye-opening experience on just how entitled some people can be with regards to harassing/demanding things in the open source world. XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Oct 9, 2016 at 9:44pm PDT

• Travelled to Singapore to present at iOS Conf SG. Singapore was an absolutely beautiful place. I’d love to live there some day. 😀
  

  Blimey. You can’t get views like this in Perth! #singapore

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Oct 18, 2016 at 4:49am PDT

• Travelled to Copenhagen to hang out with the entire Realm company as a whole for a week.
  

  MY MY. SUCH A LOVELY DANISH DAY. XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Nov 4, 2016 at 4:57am PDT

• Turned 30. D:
  

  Blimey! I turned 30 today! I managed to scrape up a picture of myself when I turned 20 to see what the ravages of time have done to me. Terrifying. XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Nov 20, 2016 at 2:28pm PST

• Went to my first US anime convention and met some awesome people.
  

  Spent my final dying throes of being 29 checking out @krakencon, my first ever US anime convention! XD I had a fantastic time! It was really nice and casual; it didn’t feel claustrophobic, yet didn’t feel empty. 😀 Additionally, I got to say hi to @charletchung, voice actress of D.Va in Overwatch, and @kylehebert, one of WAI-CON’s legendary alumni. Both incredibly nice people! ^_^ All in all, not a bad way to turn 30. XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Nov 19, 2016 at 3:05pm PST

• Tried attending a Japanese engineers meetup in SF. A place where using English was actively discouraged. A fascinating experience!
  

  I had an absolutely fantastic time at the Japanese Engineers of SF Christmas meetup tonight! Such a great way to finish up in SF. ^_^ I just hope kaiWA goes equally as well in the next few hours. XD

  A photo posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Dec 14, 2016 at 11:39pm PST

• Bought a ridiculous keyboard. 😀
  

  TheCherryMXBlueExperience.mkv XD

  A video posted by Tim Oliver (@timoliver) on Dec 25, 2016 at 6:00pm PST

All in all. It was a very busy, but ultimately very enjoyable year. Moving to SF was a fantastic experience and I’ve never learned so much in a single year as I have this time. It was a very eye-opening year.

Obligatory resolutions for 2017 in comparison to the 2016 ones:

• The clichéd ‘lose more weight’ resolution. Still working on this. Goddammit. 75kg please. XD
• Learning to manage working remotely better. I definitely started getting better at this. It’s a matter of trying to stick to normal work hours, but appreciating that that isn’t always possible. I’ve definitely learned that working in an office is a lot nicer.
• Studying more. I learned a lot in 2016 in terms of languages like Swift and coding practices, but I certainly still have a long way to go. Moving forward, knowing Node.js will come in handy.
• Revamp iComics. Being busy with lots of other things, poor iComics got absolutely no love this year. I’ll put in an extra effort next year.
• Leverage my YouTube channel. Made a small bit of progress, but hopefully next year will be better. 🙂
• Strive for QANTAS Gold Membership. I got this one! Yay! Now to just hang onto it…. XD

Hopefully you all out there had a great 2016 as well. If not, I’m sure 2017 will be full of new challenges. For all of us.

Happy New Year everyone! Let’s make it an even better one! 😀

-Tim