Here are some of the highlights of this year. First off, there's this blog and pyblosxom, the software that it's running on. I'd been thinking about starting up a blog, but early this year I finally did it, and used it as an opportunity to learn Python as well as a bit about the various blogging related specifications.

My first book Professional XML Development with Apache Tools : Xerces, Xalan, FOP, Cocoon, Axis, Xindice got written and published this year. It was a tremendously educational experience all the way around.

Conference wise, I went to OSCON, which was a great opportunity to meet people in other open source communities, a trend that I'd like to continue. In a foreshadowing of things to come, I got to meet some of the Chandler team in person. Of course, I also spoke at ApacheCon this year, giving a pair of presentations on XML related stuff.

On the Apache front, I agreed to be the mentor for the XMLBeans project, and as a result I got sucked into the ASF incubator project. In principle, the incubator is a good idea, it's just the implementation that seems to be lacking. People mostly perceive it as a bureaucracy, which it sort of feels like. The other big open source news, is of course, my employment with OSAF working on Chandler. This part still seems a little bit like a dream, but the reality of it is starting to sink in, and I fully expect it will have made a home by early in 2004.

OSAF facilitated my return to the world of the Macintosh where I've been pleasantly surprised. I expected to be pleased with Mac OS X, but I'm more pleased than I expected to be. Little touches like Launchbar and system wide emacs bindings (yes, even in Word, and iChat) have really made me feel at home. I've also been pleased to "work" again with Macintosh developers. When I was a Mac user previously, I did a bunch of beta testing for various products, and the feeling of being close to the developers was something that I valued. In open source projects this is something I expect, and I've been pleased to see that this tradition has continued in the Macintosh developer community.

Other highlights of the year have been the Bainbridge Island Geeks reading group which got started up this year. I've really been enjoying the chance to meet with some other islanders who are also software folks. That doesn't mean that I don't also appreciate the Seattle Java User's Group (SeaJUG), where I've mad e a bunch of friends. Even after the group moved to the east side (Bellevue/Redmond) area, a few faithful friends have gone out of their way to make sure that I'm still able to attend.

No highlights are complete without Julie and the girls, who get to put up with my working from out of the house and who benefit from the extra time that we get to spend because I don't have to commute.

1. Chandler - I hope to get fully engaged once I've finished the learning curve. We're going to start working on queries in earnest in the new year, in preparation for shipping 1.0 in last 2004.
2. iSight/iChat AV/IRC - As I mentioned yesterday, I'm going to be using these tools more than I have in the past (the ASF is heavily mailing list oriented), and I'm interested to see how we can use them not only to improve coordination with the rest of the OSAF staff but to build community with folks interested in OSAF as well. Here's hoping that multi person iChat AV is on the way soon, and a DSL with no bandwidth cap.
3. Blogging - I've enjoyed my first (almost) year of blogging -- I've posted voluminously, but I would like to do more original content. I'm thinking about changing the pacing of my posting, but who knows. This will likely be the year of Atom -- feeds are coming out, Brent is working on support in NNW, etc. I'm interested more in API support -- I'd like to have that for pyblosxom. I'd also like to spend some time hacking blog software this year, something that fell by the wayside with the book and adjusting to a new job.
4. Macintosh - On the software side, I expect to be surprised by more cool stuff buried down inside Mac OS X. In particular, I want to look into AppleScript for automating some of my workflow, and once I figure out how to do that, then I want to do that in Python -- AppScripting and PyObjC, here I come. If Apple/IBM succeed in ramping G5 performance to the level of the rumors, and manage to do a PowerBook G5 that has decent battery life, then I may never go back. The top of the OS isn't open source, it's true, but for the desktop, there's nothing that can touch it right now.
5. Python - Needless to say that I'm going to be immersed in Python this year, and there's a bunch of core Python stuff that I need to really get solid on. I'm also looking forward to pypy and Parrot, and hoping that somewhere someone is out there hacking on a great environment for Python. Give me refactoring, smart navigation, and a good interactive loop and I'll be happy.
6. Groovy - James is on the right track here, and I like what I see so far. Now that its out in beta, I think that things will start to improve rapidly -- we need that Eclipse plugin support. I just need to think of a good project to do in Groovy. By extension, I'm interested in what the folks at Codehaus are up to in general.
7. Subversion - It looks like the collab.net guys are branching for Beta, so maybe we'll see a 1.0 pretty soon. I can't wait to switch over. It's not perfect, but it'll be a whole lot better than CVS.
8. Bluetooth Phone management - I'm looking forward to replacing the Nokia 6310i, which doesn't know how to properly speak Bluetooth, with something that is Sailing Clicker or Romeo compatible.