You wouldn’t think that a year that started with getting thrown of of my band would turn out to be so much fun but hey, it did.

The Trip

The first few weeks of the year were spent waiting to find out if I’d get approval to go work in Canada. Then it got approved and we had to wait and see if the Canadian Government would approve a Visa. Then we got on a plane and had to wait till we landed to see if the Visa would be granted.

It was, so we stayed there for four months. Toronto that is, not just in the airport.

Even looking back now, I’d still say that our time over there has been the happiest period of my life. Friendly people, great co-workers, lots of stuff to see and do - perfect. I was gutted at having to come back and still miss the place a lot.

We missed family and friends but that was about it. Hopefully we’ll make it back some day.

The Band

My involvement with the band I’d been in for a couple of years (The Secret then One Last Secret) came to an abrupt end when I was replaced behind my back. I had been seeing pictures of band practices appearing online (but being told that nothing was happening) and pictures of the full band without me in them (but being told that nothing was happening) since the tail end of last year. I also was removed as an admin for the Facebook page but, for a change, was told that nothing was happening.

Then, while we were in Canada (I’d mentioned to the guys that it was a possibility months before and we’d agreed they’d get someone to temporarily fill in at gigs while I was away), I got a message asking me to hand over details for the web address and hosting since they wanted to get the new site up with the new band info. Nice.

we again were under the impression, whilst although you may have been hurt by us moving on, that you also understood the situation

My reply sums it up for me:

Consider it from my point of view - I was emailing and texting about looking forward to a practice and some recording and then I get deleted as a Facebook admin. I asked what had happened and got told everyone had been deleted as an admin. Then stuff gets posted about practices. I ask what that’s about and get told that there weren’t any practices. It’s a pretty shitty situation.

Anyway. Not happy and still a sore point.

The Job

The project I was working on in Canada wasn’t the most stimulating or exciting project to work on; essentially being the hacking and updating of legacy code. Legacy code that has… some issues. But, I was in Canada, so nothing could get me down.

Then we came back to Scotland and I spent another 6 months working on the same code. And it looks set to continue.

So, overall, not great. There have been some fleeting opportunities to work on interesting code every now and again but it’s been slim pickings.

The Blog

As part of the drive to find more interesting stuff to work on, I decided to resurrect my blog at the beginning of the year. Getting into the swing of writing technical articles has been a good learning experience in breaking down processes into a readable format. It’s been fun, even when taking dozens of screenshots or setting up JS Fiddle examples.

I’ve not built up a massive readership or anything but a couple of the articles are getting regular traffic so it’s a nice start. I’m probably destroying that with self-indulgent articles like this one but hey.

The Family

Mrs. Me still puts up with me (even during my depressive ‘I miss Toronto’ episodes), I’ve gained a new step-mum (although I daren’t call her that), I’ve spent more time with my dad’s side of the family than I have in years and we had good news from the in-law side of the family as well (which I think I’m still banned from talking about).

No complaints there.

Overall

It’s been a good year. I hope the next twelve months is just as interesting and filled with adventures.

Happy New Year, everybody.