If there's any tradition that I try to keep on this blog, it's this annual post, the one that recaps the previous year and tries to sound optimistic about the future. I try to be thorough enough that someone might easily get a beat on what my life's been like simply by reading one post a year for the last 11 years. Of course, I've not been as disciplined as I might have liked on this front. I don't have anywhere near 11 "year in review" posts.

Looking back on some of those posts though, I realise that it must have been easy to write them: my life was either in transition, or just moving into or out of one. 2014 by comparison hasn't been particularly remarkable -- at least in the sense that one might be able to point to it as a time in my life that something was happening.

Mostly, 2014 was a year of being comfortable in my life here in Amsterdam. In much the same theme as the my life and theirs post from way back, 2014 has seen me get comfortable with the idea that I'm here for the long-term.

Christina and I are the real deal, with three years together as of February. We share a lovely place in Amsterdam with a beautiful view of the Ij and life here is pretty good. Work hasn't changed much either, but I'm comfortable in my role at RIPE and I enjoy working for a company that actually does Good for the world.

My life hasn't changed much at all this past year, but I still can report that my life is going well. I'll try to recap some of the highlights here.

Travel

As with every year since my moving to the Netherlands, 2014 had a lot of Travelling in it. Not as much as last year, but I did manage to seem some amazing places.

FOSDEM

As is becoming tradition, Christina and I took the trip down to Brussels for the annual FOSDEM conference. There's not much to report on this other than that FOSDEM is amazing and probably the best conference I've ever been to. If you've never been, you should go.

Vienna

Christina had a conference in Vienna in the Spring, and she took me with her so I could meet her friends Max & Julia who promised to give us a tour of the city. Vienna is lovely, and strangely grandiose, as if to give one the impression that The Empire was still alive and kicking. Wide open spaces surrounded by tall marble buildings, imposing in the shadow they cast on passers by -- it's not like any other city I've been to.

But the hotdog I had there, OMG. The best thing I've ever had from a street vendor. I ate something called a Bosna and every time someone mentions Vienna, I salivate.

Seriously, I'd consider a trip back just for that sausage if I could justify the environmental implications and financial costs.

Marseilles, Lyon, & The French Riviera

The other conference I attended in 2014 was DjangoCon Europe which, in 2013, was held in Warsaw, but this year they decided to host a 3 day conference on a tiny island off the south coast of France. I took the opportunity to do some sightseeing around Southern France and find myself surprisingly disappointed with Marseilles. Lyon on the other hand is beautiful and impressively both managed and designed. Photos from my trip can be found in my image gallery.

Manchester & Couch

Some of you may not know this, but Christina may have been born in Greece, but her mother is British, and the other half of her family lives in a sleepy little town called Chesterfield, or Couch as I lovingly refer to it.

Chesterfield is an out-of-the-way hamlet without an airport in the North of England. When I asked people what I should see/do there, locals would always say: "Have you seen the crooked spire?" When I replied with "Yes, anything else?" I was met with silence. Yes, Chesterfield is that boring.

I did get to meet Christina's other side though, so that made the trip worth it.

Thessaloniki, Athens & Nafplio

Christina had another conference in Thessaloniki (Θεσσαλονίκη), so we decided to take a couple weeks and see some more of Greece. This was my third trip to Greece, but my first time leaving Athens to see other parts of the mainland.

Thessaloniki is a town with a lot of promise, but the Euro crisis has taken its toll. Some (touristy) areas are well maintained and busy, but there were whole blocks with nothing but abandoned or condemned buildings. Some amazing graffiti though. I wish the graffiti artists in the Netherlands had half as much talent.

We stopped off in Athens for a week or so to spend some time with Christina's family, and then headed off to the Peloponnese (Πελοπόννησος). Christina drove us from Athens to Nafplio (Ναύπλιο) via Corinth (Κόρινθος), and we stayed at a beautiful hotel nestled on a hill surrounded by an orange orchard. We did a little touring in Nafplio (and lots of frozen yogurt), and also took a trip up to the ruins of Mycenae (Μυκήνες) where I was attacked by giant bugs and had a mild panic attack (good times).

Vancouver & Kelowna

Thanks to an um... lets go with scheduling conflict with my dear friend Jeong-Yeon, I ended up in Vancouver this summer, burning most of my vacation days and Jeong-Yeon was nowhere to be found.

Thankfully, I have lots of friends and family there, so it was hardly a waste of a trip. I spent some time visiting in Vancouver, and then headed up to Kelowna to help out around my parent's house and play with my adorable niece.

Photos are here for those interested.

Sydney, Auckland, and much of New Zealand

The Big Trip of the year, possibly the biggest for a long time, was my trip to the country I swore I'd never set foot in, (Australia) and a further adventure into New Zealand.

My travelling partner for this one was the ever-ready-for-adventure Stephanie, who had this whole idea in the first place. We did a few days in Sydney, where I was confronted with a GIANT FUCKING ARACHNID in our hotel room and was thoroughly terrified of the wildlife for the remainder of the trip.

We did yoga on Bondi Beach. I cannot begin to confer how beautiful Bondi was. I am forever indebted to Stephanie for convincing me to face my fear and visit such a beautiful place.

I got to pet a wombat, and a kangaroo, and an echidna, and a koala named Claire. I saw penguins, and a tasmanian devil, and a cacophony of crazy looking exotic animals that weren't trying to kill me, and then I ate a kangaroo burger. Stephanie drank All The Beers, and I watched her consume what would appear to be the finest beverage in the world... something called a rum old fashioned.

And that was just Australia.

We met Sue in Auckland, who was a welcome travelling companion for a few days. She drove us from Auckland to Hobbiton where we saw hobbit houses and drank at The Green Dragon, then onto the Waitomo glow worm caves, where we went cave diving with wet suits and inner tubes. Once again, Stephanie convinced me to do something I never would have considered and I am once again thankful for it. Imagine yourself floating in darkness with billions on tiny blue lights overhead surrounded by cave walls and cool water. It was amazing.

From there we headed to Rotorua, where we visited Te Puia, a Maori cultural centre, before heading back to Auckland and getting my picture next to the Xena Way sign. That was way more fun than it should have been.

We left Sue the next morning for the third and final leg of our trip: the South Island. In Queenstown I rode a horse for the first time in my life and was less terrified than I thought I'd be. I also got some really amazing pictures. We also took the long trip to see Doubtful Sound, an untouched wilderness of trees, water and wildlife, it was also the furthest South either of us had ever been. Indeed, it's the furthest South most people, alive or dead, have ever been.

We rented a car in Queenstown and Stephanie drove us on the left up to Lake Tekapo where we hiked to the top of Mt. John (less impressive than it sounds, but still lovely), and we took advantage of the night sky reserve one night to see the Southern Cross and explore the night sky as we'd never seen before.

From Tekapo, Stephanie drove us up to Mt. Cook, only to be turned around by the weather. It would seem that we wouldn't get to see a glacier on this trip. Instead, we drove East to the outskirts of Christchurch, where there was no cell service and barely any people, so we could crash at a cool little place called SiloStay which, as it turns out, wasn't really all that awesome, so I'm not linking to them here. We did however have a quick dinner at a place called Hilltop Tavern, which had prettiest view I've ever seen from any tavern.

The next morning we drove to Christchurch to see what was left of the city after the massive 2011 earthquake. To say that the town was heavily hit is a colossal understatement, and I'm not convinced that they'll ever recover entirely. Three years later, and there are still houses and buildings everywhere that are just half-destroyed and abandoned. However it was nice to see how some were taking advantage of the opportunity to rebuild the city in a way that makes sense (more pedestrian space, better cycling infrastructure etc.). We visited the earthquake museum, learnt about the colourful use of the term munted by officials during the crisis, and then crashed at our guesthouse before getting on our respective planes the next morning.

It's was an amazing trip. It cost me thousands of Euros, sixty hours of air travel, and twelve timezones of jetlag, and I regret nothing.

Photos from all of this, save for a good many lost from my Bondi Beach trip, are available here.

Professional

Professionally, my life hasn't really changed this past year. The RIPE NCC is still a pretty good place to work, if for no other reason than that working there means that I don't go home feeling guilty every night. Instead, strangers thank me publicly for the work I do and my code is Free to share. It's pretty fabulous.

Projects

I did a lot of work this past year on a whole whack of mini projects. Now that I'm finally understanding and using git, a tool written by people who show very little interest in making tools other people can use, I'm now hosting a lot of nifty stuff on GitHub, including my ever-present side project, that mobile game Stephanie and I have been poking at over the years...

Spirithunter

I got a lot of work done on this in 2014. In fact, I had a working alpha back in September, achieving my end-of-year goal months early. I managed this in part by finally saying goodbye to doing bits of work for Collin, and in part by getting some vitimin D into me. I got more work done on this project in 1 week in Athens than I did for most of the rest of the year.

The big challenge for 2015 is going to be:

• Moving away from django-tastypie because it's effectively abandonware
• Switching to 1.7
• Getting some front-end working (coughStephaniecough)
• Getting some artists to sign on to provide some character artwork

That last one is especially tough, because let's be honest, nobody likes to work for free, so I might just have to dip into my savings and pay for some artwork up-front. I dunno.

RxLenses.ca

I also started doing a lot of work for my father's side-project, RxLenses.ca, an uncut lens reseller for retail optical stores. In the last months of the year especially, I've been working on getting a big feature setup, and once that's finished, the project should be mostly self-sustaining, so I can go back to my other stuff.

Sagan

Sagan was my first "public" component for the RIPE NCC. It was fun to write, and it's been largely embraced by both the company and the community when it comes to do doing the stuff it was designed to do, which is honestly the best any Free software can ever hope for. That's pretty awesome.

Wrap Up

So, this is a lot of stuff to read, so I hope that if you actually read it all, you aren't bored by now. 2014 was good to me, albeit rather static. 2015 is looking good though: I've got a lot of travel planned, some more side projects, and maybe even dance classes. I guess we'll see how that all pans out in about twelve months.

I started this year with a grand plan: travel out of country 12 times, once for each month in the year. It didn't quite work out that way, but I got close, so I guess I'll start this Great Big Annual Post with the sightseeing:

Travel

Copenhagen, Denmark

Following what would appear to be an unfortunate pattern, Christina and I went North in winter, and did a weekend in Copenhagen. We saw Cirque du Soleil, wandered around the city a bit and ate as many danishes as we possibly could.

Honestly, I'd go back just for the danishes. Maybe we will in 2014.

Photos from our trip can be found in my image gallery.

Brussels, Belgium

It was my first FOSDEM conference, and knowing basically nothing about it other than the fact that it was about Free software and didn't cost anything to attend, I booked a train and a hotel for the weekend. I had such an amazing time, I'm already booked to go back for this year's conference.

FOSDEM is a big deal in the Free software world, and it's probably the biggest conference of its kind in Europe. I met some of the developers of my favourite Linux distribution and bought one of them dinner. I got to publicly thank the GNOME developers for all of their hard work while they were battling a mountain of user backlash, and got some stickers, which was pretty awesome.

Gibraltar, UK

Stephanie loves to travel, and so do I, so when she's in the neighbourhood (ie. within a few hours flight) we usually try to meet up and go somewhere interesting. After much deliberation over Skype, (and some scoffing from Christina regarding our decided destination) we settled on Gibraltar... and it was awesome.

Incredible views from the top of the rock, fascinating military history, and beautiful caves. Oh, and did I mention the super-crafty monkeys? If you've got the time, and don't mind potentially getting stuck there an extra day when the plane refuses to come due to weather, Gibraltar is pretty amazing. If you don't feel like making the trip though, there are some photos in case you're curious.

Edinburgh, Scottland

At last, Christina was able to share her love of Edinburgh with me. She'd been going on about its fabulousness ever since we met, so it was time that I saw it with my own eyes.

Truth be told, Edinburgh is quite beautiful, with a diverse surrounding landscape influencing the local architecture. We hiked to the top of Arthur's Seat and the crags, saw a choral concert and toured the underground with a guide I'm reasonably confident was high at the time. Oh! and I also got to eat a deep fried Mars bar. Not at tasty as you might think. Ew.

Photos are on my image gallery if you're curious.

Warsaw, Kraków, and Auschwitz, Poland

I'd hoped to do more travelling into the old Eastern block countries this year, but unfortunately I was only able to visit Poland in 2013. Fortunately, since DjagoCon EU was based there, I managed to bookend the conference with some personal time and save on airfare in the process. Before settling down to the conference, I toured Warsaw and Kraków, and saw the remnants of the horrors of Auschwitz. I'm still deeply effected by what I saw there.

There's photos from my entire Poland trip in my image gallery if you'd like to see what I saw.

Athens & Santorini, Greece

This was apparently my Greek year. Christina and I visited in June: first Athens (Αθήνα), and then the Island of Santorini (Σαντορίνη). The weather was hot, but not beyond my capacity, due mostly to the dryness of the climate. The food was wonderful, and the people both friendly and accommodating. Christina's family took us to the Acropolis (Ακρόπολις), and the Temple of Poseidon (Aκρωτήριο Σούνιο). I also got to meet the extended family, and Eat All The Foodz. With the exception of one horrific boat ride from Santorini to Athens, the trip was wonderful.

Here are the pictures if you're into that.

London, UK

Theresa made the trip to her favourite city in the world, and we arranged it so I could meet her one weekend while she was in town. We didn't have a lot of time, but we got the important part in: actually seeing each other and catching up on what's going on in our lives. We toured a cemetery, wandered through Hyde Park, and spent an unfortunate amount of time looking for a good steak house.

It's funny, but every time I go to London my opinion of it changes. After some trips I despise it, and after others, I can actually see myself choosing to live there.

Athens, Greece (again)

I didn't expect it, but my company chose to send me back to Athens for RIPE 67, so that I could help out for a workshop about the RESTful API I helped write for our ATLAS project. It was an exhausting trip, that saw me rarely leave the hotel, but there were a few evenings that I managed to get out and explore. I took a few hours one evening to visit Plaka (Πλακα), met Christina's father for a tour through a local museum, and for dinner at their house, and on my last night in Athens, Vesna and I hit the beach with a couple of her friends, had dinner there, and then headed across town to the local hackerspace, closing the night with drinks at the foot of the Acropolis. That was a really good time.

Paris, France

Christina took a work-related trip to Paris, and I decided to surprise her for her trip home. We didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing (we'd already been a few times each, so this wasn't all that high a priority). We actually spent most of the night looking for a good place to eat and eventually found ourselves disappointed at a place I thought would be good. It's the thought that counts though right?

Vancouver, Canada

Finally, this was the year of Christina's first trip to Canada. We set off at the tail end of November to see Vancouver and Kelowna, and gauging her reaction, she seems to really like my country :-)

We met some of my friends, and most of my family, wandered through Stanley Park, and I ate as much food as I possibly could. Seriously, I nearly broke into tears biting into a proper cheeseburger (oh how I've missed those!) We drove over the Rockies up to Kelowna where we did a little sightseeing and a lot of just hanging with my family.

Photos from both Vancouver and Kelowna are available in my image gallery. Bonus: there's a shot in there of my fabulous Movember mo.

I'm hoping that 2014 will see us make a trip to Eastern Canada, maybe a road trip form St. John's to Toronto? We'll see.

Personal

Joined Houses

On the personal front, the big news of the year was Christina and I moving in together. This is only the second time that I've managed to get this far in a relationship, and the last time we sort of fell into it, after having moved from Vancouver to Ottawa. I'm hoping this time works out better.

Christmas in Amsterdam

Having a home of our own meant playing host to the Angelopoulos family over Christmas. Christina's sister is in the UK, her cousin in Belgium, and her parents in Athens. This made our place a logical destination for the big dinner shindig. Her parents were here for roughly two weeks, while her sister and cousin were crashing for only a few days. It was nice to have someone to spend Christmas with, given that my family was thousands of kilometres away, and I even learnt a few new Greek words in the process.

I also took a few pictures that week.

My Health

The big cloud over my life this year has been an as-yet-undefined illness that makes me dizzy at times throughout the day. I assumed that this all started after that horrible boat ride from Santorini, but it's impossible to tell at this point. Since August I've had regular dizziness spells, and even fainted once. It generally doesn't get in the way of my day, but it's still rather disturbing. My ENT assures me that there's nothing wrong with me, which is both encouraging and disheartening: a person knows when something isn't right, and when their doctor just smiles at you like you're wasting their time, it tends to get under your skin.

I've had blood tests, an ECG, and an MRI, all of which returned with "all clear" results, so I can see where Dr. Smiley is coming from, but the symptoms are real, so I don't know where to go from here. Christina and I talked about it and we're going to wait a few months to see if things get better on their own. If they don't I'll be asking for a referral to a dizziness clinic in the hopes that they can figure this out.

I'm also getting fatter, which obviously sucks. At 34 years old, I've never actually had to work at maintaining an appropriate weight, and the realisation of this new reality is not a happy experience. We did just move into a building with a gym though, and I've just started making use of it. Hopefully by this time next year I'll be able to report that I've lost about 10kg and holding comfortably.

This Blog

This was also the year of version 5 of this site's software going live, as well as another big milestone: 10 years of blogging. I don't post here as often as I used to (it takes a good chunk of your day let me tell you), but I do enjoy going back over this thing to see how my life has been, so this is a labour I intend to continue. Thank you, for sharing this with me :-)

Corporate

Started on Spirithunter (again)

You know those people who have a great idea, who tell you all about how amazing their idea is, and how one day this amazing idea will be amazing? Well I've been one of those guys now for three years. This past few months have seen a renewed interest in the Spirithunter project, what we me having an actual desk to write code on now, and I'm actually starting to see traction on that front. It'll still be a while before there's anything I can show you people, but I think it's worth noting that things are coming back on track now.

My Father's Project

I've also got another, much smaller project going to hopefully help my family out with a website for their own business. It's on a tight deadline though: I started on it not long after I returned from Canada in December, and it has to be finished and ready by February. I'm about 30% done at this point though, so it's time to knuckle down.

RIPE: 1year

Lastly, I hit my 1 year mark at RIPE back in August, and strangely, this is the first company I've worked for ever where I'm not already bored after 1 year. Sure, RIPE isn't perfect, and the code doesn't look anything like what I'd like it to, but the environment is interesting, the field actually important, and not evil. And they fly me to Athens and Warsaw to do work related stuff. Seriously, this is a pretty good gig. You should work there.

Conclusion

I started 2014 with a goal of more travel, and despite missing the quantitative mark, I look back on all the things I've seen and done this year and I'm pretty happy with it. For next year: even more travel, this time to more Eastern block countries like Romania and the Czech Republic would be nice, and a public beta of Spirithunter would make for a good grade. Keep checking back here to see how I do on that front.