Happy New Year

So I guess it's time for the obligatory look back at 2006.


World Events

All in all a fairly quiet year in terms of world events, except towards the end.

Bird Flu flapped around a little mid-year but the panic seemed to disappear just as quickly as it came.

The situation in Iraq continued to simmer fiercely, causing huge amounts of stress for Tony Blair as it became more and more reinforced that the people of the country didn't want us to be involved in the first place. However he continued to prove determined to cling on as PM for as long as possible even if it kills him, giving an "I'm going sometime, honest guv" speech to keep the media quiet.

North Korea made a few growling noises in the corner of our planet and were strongly in need of a slap. It's yet to be delivered.

A mass murderer went around Ipswitch, Suffolk killing 5 prostitutes. Nobody really knows why.

And finally, Saddam Hussain was hanged for his crimes against humanity. I'm going to dicuss this one briefly. He was an evil murdering scumbag and there's no question that he deserved what happened to him. I was grinning as much as the rest of the world at the news that he'd swung. But then I got philosophical. Sure he got a fair trial and that's fantastic, I'm glad that it got handled maturely to show how things are supposed to be done. But look at the rest of us, laughing and cheering at the death of a human being (ok he barely had any humanity, but you know what I mean), people dancing around his dangling corpse - sure he deserves it - but are we really that much better?


Sport

In sport, of course we had the World Cup. Yes, even I got a bit of the football fever around that time - when practically the entire population of the country are following something, it's nice to take part. Sadly, although England clung on for a good few matches and continued our skill at scraping through on the edge of our seats, we eventually got taken out during a truly nail-biting penalty shoot-out against Portugal in the semi finals. Oh well, next time!

The World Cup proved to be a great time for internet humour as Zinedine Zidane finished his career with a bang - literally. After headbutting Italian player Materazzi his actions triggered the great internet meme of Zidane headbutt animations involving video game characters, the giant kitten with its paws in the air that keeps finding its way around the net and so on.

Michael Schumacker retired from Formula 1 - in my opinion the biggest "end of an era" since Murray Walker retired as commentator. At least it means someone else might have a go at winning this year!


In tech news....

The virtual world of Second Life really began to take off, featuring frequently in international news. Interesting for people like me who were there early, as I remember it when it started about 3-4 years ago and only consisted of a small handful of regions. We all knew it was somewhat revolutionary, but not that it'd spark such an amazing growth, even drawing in big corporations like Vodafone. It's now used in very serious environments for training for example.

YouTube kind of sprung out of nowhere and suddenly everyone on the planet started using it. It was very sudden. Google promptly acquired it.

Internet Explorer 7 was released, pouring a bit of fuel onto the second great Browser War which was beginning to heat up. Whilst it's not up to the proportions of the old IE/Netscape war, it's still a case that most of the frequent/advanced users switched to Firefox in their annoyance at IE being so succeptable to popups and viruses. IE7 is a much better product than IE6, also featuring tabbed browsing, but if you're using an old version of Windows then you're out of luck. Upgrade to XP!

Windows Vista was released to manufacturing, but very few people are likely to use it until it's released to the general public in early 2007. I'm using the Release Candidate and am suitably impressed. The only thing that annoys me with it is the way Explorer works now - they've made it a lot less user-friendly by removing such important things as the "Up a level" button which I used extensively in XP.

The Wii was released towards the end of the year, and proved to be a huge hit. Nintendo already proved that they know what games are all about with the DS and the new DS Lite (as opposed to Sony's largely failed PSP where they were determined to make it into a mini DVD player). The other problem with the PSP was that all the games for it seem to be cut-down versions of PS1 or PS2 games, so they always have that "incomplete/cut-down/simplified" feel to them. Nintendo instead took the approach of making completely unique games for its DS such as the hugely successful Brain Academy, Nintendogs and of course the newer incarnations of Pokemon.

While they were on a roll with the Great Ideas (the touchscreen) they came out with the Wii and its unique Wiimote controller. Apart from sparking the inevitable "I want a wee for christmas LOLOLOLOLZORS!!111!!" it was a huge hit. I think it will continue to be so even with the very quiet ticking-over of the Xbox 360 (not hyped enough) and the release of the PS3 (extremely expensive - Sony's greed is going to get the better of them).


My life?

Marched onwards some more. I tried my hand at this relationship malarkey. April is a lovely girl and to be honest it seems highly unlikely that I'll meet anyone like her again. But the long distance issue (England and Canada) meant that it felt a bit forced and impractical to me, and really I didn't want to end up moving over there (or having the responsibility of dragging her over here) or to jump straight into the long-term implications that would arise from taking it a step further forward i.e. meeting up. So I let her go instead when the pressure was at maximum. It was a tough decision but sadly the right thing to do for my own sanity. I'm delighted that we're still friends - very few relationships end with friendship, or so I'm told.

I got more of a life, beginning my new found love for walking in March. I'd already been considering doing this (I was considering joining a rambling club at the time) when one of my mates brought up the idea in a thread on our messageboard and basically we went "mountain climbing" (if one can call it that with the little hills we have) just about every weekend. This was only interrupted on occasion when we discovered that we rather liked messing around in/by the nearby lake - Coniston Water - during the peak of summer. That was also a highly addictive (and social but lazy) pursuit!

On the back of all that I really got into photography bigtime. I always held it as an interest, but this became a serious interest as I got better and better cameras (now a Canon 30D) and there's little I like more than going around shooting scenery.

I can positively say it's the best summer I've experienced - rather than sitting at home sweating away and wishing it was cooler we found the best possible ways to enjoy it. We had a great time on the weekends and evenings and totally soaked up the sun (Sheryl Crow would be proud). Roll on Summer 2007!

And at the end of the year, another breakthrough as I landed a new job. I really did enjoy working at CAF, even though it got a bit "atmospheric" and low-morale last year, and I'll really miss some of the people there. But it seemed like the right time for me to move on, and I landed a job as a Web Designer at Marl International in my own hometown of Ulverston, which I start tomorrow. I couldn't ask for better really - it's about 1 mile from home, in the area where I'm determined to stay rooted, working for an international blue chip company. Wow. Bring it on! I'm looking forward to starting there tomorrow.

I'll stop there as I want to get a few things ready for tomorrow, and I've covered everything that was buzzing around in my head for now. Here's to 2007!