This year's been a good one. Here are the technical highlights*.

January

I hosted my fourth Sussex geek dinner in Uckfield.

February

Went to a London geek dinner, and won a trip to South by South West in Austin, Texas. Thanks again to Paul Boag, who pulled my name out of the hat.

March

Won a copy of Andy Budd's CSS Mastery. Great book, and saved me loads of time.

Went to SxSW. Had the most amazing time. Met some wonderful new people. learnt a whole load of useful (and useless) things. Got to explore somewhere I'd never been before. Went the furthest north, south and west I'd ever been on a single plane ride. Saw icebergs. Had fun with the word "plectrum". Met a couple of my heroes. Got inspired.

I also submitted a session proposal to speak at the third Developer Day (DDD), on the subject of MSBuild. My session wasn't voted for.

April

My name and blog url appeared in the appendix of Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book, Naked Conversations. I was deliriously excited by this.

May

I bought a tablet PC. This has changed my life, and my family's lives too. My children use it to draw pictures, surf the web, learn how to write and play games. I use it to blog in bed, write code on the train, take notes in conferences and to allow Julia to get online while I'm coding.

June

Went to Developer Day 3, a free event held at Microsoft in Reading on a Saturday. Learnt some interesting things, met some new people, and got to know some other people better. Gave my tablet PC its first outing.

Tried out Second Life to see what the fuss was all about. I can see what the fuss is all about, but other that a quick poke about with the API, I decided to leave it alone.

July

Went to a London Geek Dinner where Chris Anderson was the special guest.

Got a big spike in traffic after my SQL Server tips page got dugg, del.icio.used and meneamed (Spanish digg-like site) at the same time. Funny thing is, I didn't even write it!

August

I received my first cheque for $100 from Google Adsense, after about 18 months of having adverts on my site.

September

Went to two VBUG evening meetings, both about security.

October

Hosted a Sussex Geek Dinner in Brighton. It seems that there are many more geeks in Brighton than in Uckfield.

November

As it went down so well, I hosted another Sussex Geek Dinner in Brighton. These seem to be taking off now.

Started a new project with a complete stranger. I still haven't met him, but we exchange emails regularly, and think along similar lines.

Got the Ruby on Rails book as a birthday present, and have started learning how to use it. I absolutely love it, and I have another project brewing, which I'll start once I've finished the book.

Bought a cheap mp3 player on eBay to listen to podcasts to and from work. Scott Hanselman may not be as funny as Chris Moyles, but he's cleverer and doesn't play chart music.

December

He was so impressed with mine, that my Father-in-law bought his own tablet PC. He's a pastor, and can prepare his sermons on it without having to learn to type.

Went to the fourth Developer Day. They keep getting better. Again, I learnt some new things, and met some new people. The geek dinner afterwards was really good.

Things I've started to learn about this year

1. Ruby on Rails
2. Microformats
3. Web Accessibility
4. GreaseMonkey
5. Windows Installer
6. .NET Datasets
7. PHP
8. MySQL
9. Xml Serialization
10. Second Life API
11. WinForms Threading
12. PowerShell

Technical people I've met this year

I've met loads of fabulous, clever, funny, inspirational, famous and interesting people this year. Here's a list of those that I remember right now. Some I've chatted too briefly and I'll never see again, some I'll email occasionally, some I'll bump into regularly, and one or two have become friends.

1. Sven Latham
2. Simon Middlemiss
3. Mark Nurse
4. Dominic Mitchell
5. David Stone
6. Clive Walker
7. Julian Blundell
8. Geoff Adams
9. David Child
10. Dave Verwer
11. Ian Cooper
12. Toby Henderson
13. Sarah Forrester
14. Geoff Weekes
15. Steve Bissonette
16. Molly Holzschlag
17. Jeremy Keith
18. Eric Haugo
19. Paul Boag
20. Steve Marshall
21. Jim King
22. Robert Scoble
23. Mick Court
24. Joel Spolsky
25. Lars Ploughman
26. Diana Danka
27. Thomas Kurz
28. Derek Woodgate
29. Blake Stephenson
30. J. Scott Johnson
31. Ben Folk-Rittenhouse
32. Marc Canter
33. Jen Dixon
34. Tom Coady
35. Neil Ford
36. Sam Judson
37. Gareth Rodger
38. Anthony Steele
39. Andy Budd
40. Ewan Spence
41. Holland Hofma Brown
42. Jeff Casimir
43. Julie Hamwood
44. Brandon Silverstein
45. Miguel Escobedo
46. Simon Fryer
47. Zi Makki
48. Dave Seah
49. Amy Kugali
50. Ted Rheingold
51. Scott Becker
52. David Olimpio
53. Aaron Gustafson
54. Elliot Quinn
55. Craig Murphy
56. Walid Al Saqqaf
57. Sokratis Papafloratos
58. Christoph Burgdorfer
59. Justin Butler
60. Ian Finlayson
61. Wright Sullivan
62. Kathy Sierra
63. Jason Whitmore
64. Christopher Pollard
65. Kaliya Hamlin
66. Daniel Moth
67. David Thompson
68. Stuart Colville
69. Matt Taylor
70. Robert Schifreen
71. Caz Mockett
72. Christian Mitchell
73. Paul Fisher
74. Tom Morris
75. Ben Lobo
76. Danny Hope
77. Tristan Roddis
78. Jay Caines-Gooby
79. Ben Metcalfe
80. David Oliver
81. Liam Westley
82. Ryan the American
83. Colin Mackay
84. Ed Gibson
85. Dave McMahon

* There have been non-technical highlights too, but that's for a different sort of blog.

[Tags: 2006]