year++; Annual Recap
- published:
- 2012.01.08
As every new year has passed since I've started this blog, I've done an annual timeline of events that were important to me over the previous year. I really like being able to look back. It helps me realize that I got a lot done, even if there's so much more yet to do! Here are some things from 2011 that I'd like to share:
January
Attended CES in Las Vegas
Created the game Re-Infiltration at Dusk with more monsters!
Re-Infiltration at Dusk becomes a Finalist in the Mozilla Labs Game On competition
February
Was in Vancouver and Berlin doing user experience research interviews and testing
Cobblestones 1, Zach's Foot 0
Touch Screen Directory project gets 4th Place at U of M Quality Fair
March
Started working for myself!
Awesome trip to New Orleans. Best food ever!
Created and animated the character Commander Clone
Sprite walk cycles are hard!
April
Attended another successful MinneWebCon (I'm one of the organizers)
Worked on prototype "What Ya Doin?" app for Watermelon Sauce
Dug into the Akihabara HTML5 game engine
Released a run n' gun genre HTML5 game prototype starring Commander Clone
Began doing work with the Permanent Art & Design Group crew
Got to hang out with Ian Bogost via my very lucky connection at U of M Press
May
Founded my business, Zachstronaut LLC
Super awesome Hawaiian vacation
Swung through San Francisco, too. Man Man and friends!
Presented on HTML 5 gaming at IGDA-TC
Made the game Dangerous to "Go" for Ludum Dare 20 in 48 hours
June
Launched the Firebomb plugin for Firefox, made with Add-ons SDK
Created the Firebomb site, too, with exploding logo (click it!)
Exploited browser features to make CSS3 rain ripples
Worked on SQLite integration in NimbleKit for a client's iOS app
Visited Northampton, MA
July
Launched Firebomb AR for iOS, built with Titanium
Visited Mystery Cave and Niagara Cave in Minnesota
August
Started to learn the Impact.js game engine
Created a CSS3 3D Spark Shower
Dug further into node.js and socket.io
Created Apestronauts for Node KO with Team Watermelonsauce in Mountain View, CA
Got to hang out with my buds Paul Armstrong and Jesse Mullan
September
Responsive WWWhiteboard for 10K Apart
Presented Apestronauts to IGDA-TC
Updated my 360 degree Zachstronaut pixel art with some feedback from TIG Source forums
Saw Commander Clone running on Ryan Foss's Arcade Machine at IGDA-TC
October
Did a ton pixel art characters, landscape tile art, and story writing
Christopher Winter is a saint and made me music for my game
Released the first episode of my video game The Legend of Equip Pants
Went and saw some seriously Giant Pumpkins
Made a video about some of the quirks with jQuery Mobile RC1
November
Updated New Deal Design's website with a new iPad friendly design
Made use of Infinite Scroll and Masonry
Bent and shaped WordPress to my whim
December
Moved Scribbls and Apestronauts from SliceHost to Linode, reconfigured Ubuntu
Attended JavascriptMN Meetup and spoke about Apestronauts and node.js
Kris Layon's 2nd book Mobilizing Web Sites was released. I was Technical Editor again!
Documented some of the crazy bugs I found in iOS 5 while doing the New Deal site
Shared my custom bash shell environment ShortShell on GitHub
Helped make @shauninman's JavaScript code run 2000% faster :)
Turns out 2011 was an incredibly significant year for me. Beginning to work for myself full-time was a huge change, and one I had been pondering for quite awhile. I'm already going to be busy with work well past that one year anniversary. I feel very fortunate. I look forward to all sorts of exciting client work and creative collaborations in 2012.
Of course, the main reason I started working for myself was the flexibility. I wanted to be able to try out more ideas, and be free for more projects. I did manage to release my own iPhone App in 2011, as well as three of my own video games. And I collaborated with friends on one really neat multiplayer node.js game! I hope to learn more about myself as an artist in 2012, and release some app and videogame work in 2012 that is even more personally meaningful.
I made some wonderful new connections in 2011, including all the folks at the IGDA-TC community and at JavascriptMN. I will have all sorts of fun with all these people in 2012, and I'm sure I'll make lots of new friends, too.
I'd say 2011 was a year about mobile, iOS and Android, as much as it was a year about JavaScript. I have zero doubt that mobile and JavaScript (and thus "HTML5") will be front-and-center in 2012. I view mobile as kind of a given now. Saying that mobile is a big deal is kind of like saying the web is a big deal... "no duh!" JavaScript is really going to keep growing in a major way in 2012. WebGL is huge. Realtime multiplayer/multiuser via WebSockets is huge. JavaScript on the server with node.js is really interesting.
I wish you a wonderful 2012.