{"id":836,"date":"2011-01-01T00:46:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T22:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/2011\/01\/01\/looking-back\/"},"modified":"2011-01-01T00:46:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T22:46:12","slug":"looking-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/2011\/01\/01\/looking-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>2010 has been an &#8216;interesting&#8217; year. Interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word mostly.<\/p>\n<p>I set a bunch of goals back at the end of 2009, but to be quite honest I&#8217;m not even going to look at them. If I achieved even one it was more chance than anything. Still there have been a couple of positive aspects to the year.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Enthusiasm for SQL-related stuff (and pretty much everything else) was finally relocated. I wrote 3 blog posts this last week, and it didn&#8217;t feel like a chore for the first time in many months. <\/li>\n<li>For the first time since I moved to consulting, my income comfortably exceeds my expenses. Moving to consulting at the start of an economic downturn was probably a stupid thing to do, but I never do things the easy way. <\/li>\n<li>Got the hardest part of my Masters thesis out of the way, all that&#8217;s really left is a bit more data collection and writing up. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, some goals for the new year\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Finish the thesis. This isn&#8217;t optional. I&#8217;ve committed to handing it in by June. <\/li>\n<li>Aikido at least once a week and archery at least one Saturday a month. I&#8217;ve skipped far too many classes and practices these last few months. <\/li>\n<li>Attempt the first MCM test. This probably won&#8217;t be until the latter part of the year. The Master&#8217;s thesis comes first <\/li>\n<li>Get back into computer graphics. Old hobby that&#8217;s been mostly neglected, but that I still enjoy <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>No blog-related goals or article quotas. I intend to write a fair bit, but I don&#8217;t want to set requirements.<\/p>\n<p>One last thing, for anyone wondering about the computer graphics, these are some work-in-progress or finished pieces.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/LadyOfTheLake.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"LadyOfTheLake\" border=\"0\" alt=\"LadyOfTheLake\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/LadyOfTheLake_thumb.png\" width=\"184\" height=\"244\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/BridgeFull.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"BridgeFull\" border=\"0\" alt=\"BridgeFull\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/BridgeFull_thumb.png\" width=\"364\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Castles.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"Castles\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Castles\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Castles_thumb.png\" width=\"364\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Orbs.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"Orbs\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Orbs\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Orbs_thumb.png\" width=\"244\" height=\"184\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2010 has been an &#8216;interesting&#8217; year. Interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word mostly. I set a bunch of goals back at the end of 2009, but to be quite honest I&#8217;m not even going to look at&#8230; <a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/2011\/01\/01\/looking-back\/\">(Read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7h6n-du","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlinthewild.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}