Almost a full year has passed since I last posted so I figured it was as good a time as any to brush the dust away and write a summary of the past 12 months.

I had a great new years eve last year, probably the best I’ve had, at the Arches in Glasgow with my now former flat mate (he’s emigrated to Oz). Eric Prydz was playing and well, you can’t beat that place for a great atmosphere.

Around December I started hitting the gym 4-5 times a week with a colleague of mine. We were there at 6:30am most weekday morning. This carried on for around 7 months and we both made some great progress. In May/June my training partner moved down to London for work and It’s been somewhat down hill from there. I am getting back into it again now, but keeping an eye out for a new gym buddy as it makes it good deal easier to get out of bed!

Work has been going well with two promotions in a short space of time. I’m now a Principal Engineer, in charge of architecture and quality across the Flash teams.

In June I spent a month in Kuala Lumpur on site with the Flash team there providing training and support during an intense delivery window. The guys in the office really went out of their way to make me feel at home which made the stay that much more enjoyable. Working on the 51st floor of the Petronas Towers is something I won’t forget any time soon either.

In August I headed over to Vancouver to attend my cousin’s wedding. This was the first wedding I’d been to since I was about 6 but I can safely say it was a great one, with a wonderful setting, weather and people. It was fun catching up with my other cousin, aunt and uncle too, and meeting loads of family I never get the chance to see.

Since I returned from that holiday (actually the day I returned) I’ve found a really nice little apartment and moved in on my own. The move came about due to the emigration of my old flat mate to Australia. I contemplated moving in with another flatmate but the chances of getting on as well as I did with my old one were slim and I quite fancied  having my own space. So far I’m loving it!

Back at work, over the past month or so at work I’ve (re) designed and developed a lightweight component framework in Flash for mobile. Last year I carried out a similar task with some success, but deadlines and other business needs meant I was never given the chance to complete it and undertake some much needed optimizations. Looking back this was a shame as we’ve struggled in this area, but now with a little more weight behind me, I’ve had the chance to push this through and the benefits are becoming apparent.

I’m hunkering down for the next few weeks and then it’s off to Cairo with my mum to spend Christmas with my sister and her partner. It’s been a while since we all spent Christmas together so I’m really looking forward to it (and a little sun!).

Ah and one last thing. In February my laptop died, and I mean totally died. Of course it was just out of warranty so I was faced with spending £3-400 on repairs or moving to use a work laptop. I opted for the latter but this has meant I’ve not been able to get to some of my code, including the dependency injection (DI) framework I was working on (yes I should have backed up, and yes I do now use a remote repository to store my work :) ) Since then a number of AS3 DI frameworks have been released which offer similar features, but I still plan to complete and post my work when I get access to it again.

That about covers it. My aim is to be somewhat more regular with posts, and keep focus towards mobile UI development as that’s may main area of expertise. I reserve the right to deviate however.