Sam Iles's Blog

“New Year’s Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” – Mark Twain

Well, hasn’t 2010 been a fun year? Full of elections and snow (that really is all I remember). This is the time of the year when one traditionally makes resolutions that one hopes to stick to over the entire year (and rarely does). So, I figured I’d join in and share my exploits with you. Ready?

1) Launch an iPhone App 2) Start a software related podcast 3) Eat fruit 4) Drink water 5) Exercise more (yeah, right) 6) Get X users of Deverous (X is for me to know) 7) After much deliberation, learn to drive 8) Read more 9) Play more Xbox 10) Be an Inbox Zero guy (right now I’m Inbox fifty-eight) 11) Find a unicorn (organically or otherwise) 12) Make a million pounds (this is everyone’s resolution, right?) 13) Reckon up every minute

On the subject of minutes and the reckoning up thereof, let me leave you with this paragraph I found when reading The Idiot by the great Fyodor Dostoevsky. May it guide your actions throughout the Y2K11:

“Consequently, he had about five minutes left to live, not more. He said those five minutes seemed like an endless time to him, an enormous wealth… The ignorance of and loathing for this new thing that would come presently were terrible; yet he said that nothing was more oppressive for him at that moment than the thought: ‘What if I were not to die! what if life were given back to me—what infinity! And it would be all mine! Then I’d turn each minute into a whole age, I’d lose nothing, I’d reckon up every minute separately, I’d let nothing be wasted!’”

It’s 30th of January 2009. A curious person thinks that he had better try out The Twitter and makes an account with the web’s latest craze. He tweets something along the lines of “I have twitter”, then doesn’t tweet for months.

After a few months, he tries again and gets a little addicted. 10,000 tweets later and hear I am.

I’ve tweeted 10,000 times. 10,000. I can’t imagine how I’ve possibly had that much to say. But, apparently so. I still don’t really know what twitter is for, even. It’s even harder to try and explain it.

And yet, my week would be very different without it. I follow about 110 people or institutions. They are all accounts that I want to follow, who give me genuinely interesting information which I enjoy reading. I tweet a lot too. I don’t think I’m all that interesting. But, 280 people (rather, 20 people and 260 spam bots) do find it interesting and I thank them for following/spamming me.

I’ve seen a lot, too. I’ve seen #newtwitter, native retweets, geo-location, Justin Bieber getting banished from trends, CEOs leaving, ads introduced, purchasing of apps, deleting Facebook, me dying and more. Twitter has made me laugh and cry and my life really would be very different without it.

And then there is the matter of my 10,000th tweet. What to put? I thought of lots of possibilities. A micro-novel? A haiku? Some ode to my followers, thanking you for your support and being awesome? Nah. It was too important. I felt I wanted to discuss it in detail, so here we are. And, here it is:

Wow. This is my 10,000th tweet. How about that. I’ve blogged about it, too. Please read: http://bit.ly/fcsMPs

Boring, yes? Well, I don’t care. A blog post it is, and a tweet to said post it was.

I’ll leave you with a handful of some of my favourite tweets from times gone by (according to my twitter favourites). Once again, thank you.

@rmogull:
Someone dropped a glowstick in the urinal. It was like peeing on the future.

@MrHudson
having a fear of heights is not a good thing in NY. the pigeon on my window ledge is a legend

@laura_june
If Santa shows up at my house I will flip out.

@hotdogsladies
I get it. Busy people don’t have time to clean up their dog’s poop. Anyhow. Sorry about what I left on your pillow. I’m a very busy person.

@Stepto
This is a true fact, I blame reading “Summer of the Monkeys” as a child for my bias against sour mash whisky.

@bedheadblonde
Obama: 1. Legalize pot. 2. Tax it. 3. Add a Junk Food tax. 4. Cut income taxes in half. 5. Balance budget in one year. You’re welcome.

@MajorNelson
Odd phone call of the day: My mom asking me if there is an Xbox game with motorcycle racing. Not sure what she’s up to. Must find out.

@alandavies1
Grim Reaper,you’ve taken my favourite chef Keith Floyd,singer Stephen Gately & actor Patrick Swayze.My Favourite footballer is Didier Drogba

@pud
Getting married. About to walk down aisle. Putting phone on vibrate.

Well, in 2009 I started Smiles Software. To be honest, very little has happened. At least, little that you can see.

The only things that have been launched are Programming Challenge, our programming language learning website, and the Birthdays Widget, which is really just a tiny widget for Mac OS X.

Programming Challenge hasn’t been finished: learning help will be added shortly and more tasks will be added too.

Recently, the company was incorporated which means we are now a limited company trading as Smiles Software Ltd.

Those are really the only things that have happened that you can know about. Lots of coding has been happening to make products which you will be seeing in early 2010.

So that’s it for the 2009 retrospective. In conclusion, little exciting has happened. The 2010 retrospective will be better, trust me. :)