Something happened in February that I didn’t give enough attention to at the time. This site, HybridLogic, turned 15. A lot has changed in that time. Both on-line, and off.

There was a lot to like in 2016, and also a lot to dislike.

Likes: Hiking Scotland. Meeting new people. The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet. Writing 250K words. Arrival. London. London Calling & Dirt. Dishonored 2. Bliss n Eso. Arabic Abjad. Puffins. Gravity waves at TEDxBrum. Seeing Chris Hadfield. Victoria auf Deutsch. New swimming PBs. Knowing Birmingham, roughly. Family, all of them. Shipping code to millions. Rebel Rounders. Stranger Things. Trying things.

Dislikes: Surgery. Recovery from surgery. Trump. Cancelling Bali. Build tools. No running PBs. Brexit. Nationalism.

I don’t do resolutions. The best time to start something was yesterday. The next best time is today. I lost a kilo while lying in bed 18 hours a day. I can read the Arabic alphabet and simple words. 2017 I will travel, make more friends and learn more trivia because I already am.

Happy New Year.

When I was eight, I wrote some words on an aging RM laptop using Word 97. They were terrible words and they ran together to form an even more terrible sentence. But it was the first ‘thing’ I had created with a plot, characters and a purpose and I have continued ever since; through terrible fanfics, introspective ramblings and enough robots and aliens to thoroughly exhaust the subject, I’m still putting words on digital paper. So far, five months into 2016 I’ve written a few sentences shy of 100,000 words.

And last week I received my first payment for it. Continue reading »

It happened again. It got towards the end of the financial year and I had a large chunk of remaindered holiday to take. Last year I was in San Francisco but this year I just wanted to do nothing. Continue reading »

Ten years ago I decided to take a domain I had registered the year before and put it to good use. I replaced my homebrew CMS (the second version) and replaced it with the freshly released WordPress 2.0 along with a new design. Continue reading »

I haven’t done one of these since 2012, so I thought it’d be good to do a recap. This’ll be short and quick, no ranking, just what I remember of 2015. Continue reading »

I’ve been blogging here for ten years now. This is my home online. All the posts and stories and guides I’ve written, all of them end up on HybridLogic. I’m nearing 300,000 words spread across dozens of pages. I’ve read longer books (heck, I’ve read longer fanfics), but these are my words. Continue reading »

Yesterday was my 9th birthday on Twitter. Nine years. It’s like a journal, a micro-diary of every day and every interaction, all there for the browsing. Here’s a snippet of what I’ve done on 17th November for 10 years (including yesterday). Continue reading »

I owe a lot to my parents. From my mothers side I’d like to think I received my creative side (and an excellent beef stew recipe) but from my dad I acquired an analytical knack for exploring the world. There was one thing he always showed me growing up as a kid, and I’m fairly certain it is the single largest contributor to why I’ve become the programmer I am today. Continue reading »

383’s growing. It’s really weird to see and feel; there are the tangible things of course. Desks for nearly 40 people. Asda shopping drops that consist of more cans of coke than a Columbian submersible. But then there’s the more important side of it all. The Culture. Continue reading »