Seen in a recent episode of The Big Bang The­ory*. $395 from DC Direct.

*Star­ring every late model Gen­er­a­tion Xer’s pre­teen crush Dan­ica McKel­lar.

And now it’s time for the tra­di­tional look back at the year that’s been.

I set seven res­o­lu­tions for 2009 and for­got half of them just a few weeks later.

1. Learn how to make bread. Be able to make sour­dough and whole­meal high tin loaf.

Pass.

Call it lazi­ness or fear of the unknown or that I work best under pres­sure, but I didn’t attempt to make bread until just a few days before the year ended.

I’d been told that mak­ing bread with­out using a machine to knead the dough would be extremely dif­fi­cult, but I had no prob­lems with that or any part of the process. In a nut­shell throw flour, sugar and salt into a bowl, then  add a cup of beaten eggs, luke­warm water and yeast. Fol­low that up with two ses­sion of knead­ing ses­sions alter­nat­ing with two rest ses­sions. Bung it in the oven for 30 min­utes and you’ve got one crusty white bread loaf. Too easy.

2. Go on a mush­room picking tour.

Fail.

I remem­bered I had this down as a res­o­lu­tion about two days after mush­room­ing sea­son fin­ished. Whoops.

3. Con­vince the Ital­ian com­mu­nity to let me get involved in mak­ing sausages.

Pass.

I was all psy­ched up to make sausages this year, but then my con­tacts decided they’d much rather go on a holiday.

To make up for that I took a sausage mak­ing class through CAE back in Octo­ber, so I at least had some­thing of sausage mak­ing experience.

4. Sub­mit fic­tion to at least two short story competitions.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about.

I did attempt NaNoW­riMo in Novem­ber and man­aged to write just over 19,000 words. So this year wasn’t a com­plete bust in terms of my writing.

5. Fin­ish a 100 page script for Script Frenzy in April.

Fail.

I started Script Frenzy. I fin­ished Script Frenzy.

Did I write 100 page? No.

6. Par­tic­i­pate in Dry July.

Fail.

Another res­o­lu­tion I com­pletely for­got about. (Are you sens­ing a theme yet?)

7. Loose 10 kilograms.

Fail.

I became a full mem­ber of my work gym at the start of 2009. I had my first pro­gram writ­ten up for me in mid-Jan with new iter­a­tions every 6 – 8 weeks.

From 14th Jan to 21st Dec I went from 93.3kg to 90.8kg and my body fat per­cent­age dropped from 26.6% to 25.5%. So I only ended up los­ing 2.5kg in weight. BUT, I lost cen­time­tres off my legs as bi-weekly ses­sions on the spin cycle began to tighten up my leg and hip mus­cles. On top of that I’m lift­ing over twice the weight was  was when I first started there. Mov­ing to the “big boy” free weights was prob­a­bly the high­light of my gym year.

In Con­clu­sion

Two Passes, five Fails.

It’s become very clear that New Year Res­o­lu­tions and I do not mix well. So there will be no res­o­lu­tions this year. They’re too easy to make and too easy to break.

I have a bet­ter idea for 2010. One that I’m really excited about and has the ben­e­fit of not need­ing year long man­age­ment like New Year god­damn Res­o­lu­tions. But I’ll save that for another post.

Despite the set­back of not hav­ing a func­tion­ing veg­etable gar­den I was able to meet the Pasta Pri­mav­era chal­lenge, as the photo above will attest.

I had a rough, sev­eral hun­dred word post in my head on my adven­tures in veg­etable out­sourc­ing, how I made my own pasta from scratch and only dis­cov­ered the cho­sen Pri­mav­era recipe a day before I was due to cook it.

But this photo says it all really. I did it.

My all con­sum­ing love for Pixar con­tin­ues unabated.

Today is Blue Beanie Day. Where all peo­ple involved in web design, devel­op­ment and other sub-industries are asked to wear a blue beanie on their heads (dig­i­tal or oth­er­wise) to show sup­port for web standards.

There’s even a Blue Beanie Day Photo Pool for those who enjoy tak­ing pho­tos of themselves.