..even though it's technically now the beginning of the year. This is a belated reflection on 2013.It had its ups and downs, stresses, happy moments, less happy moments, some travelling, too much work at some points, learning curves, ruts, changes. And it went by in a flash.. If 2014 goes by as quickly I hope I watch it fly by from a less apathetic state than I did 2013..

Looking forward then on 2014. There's certain things I would want. Change - mainly habits. Not get stuck in the "work, eat, sleep, repeat"-cycle again. Need to get my crap together. Want to do more of the stuff I enjoy rather than being shattered after work and spending the evening and/or weekend on the sofa (and we get back to habits and the need to change them). I did a 30-day photo challenge a few months ago, and I'm thinking of doing something similar this year. There's the 365 project where you take a photo a day. But I think I'll do a weekly one instead to start off with and see if I can stick to that for a year. Make my own little fifty-two weeks project :) Also want to get round the country a bit more. So day-trips with my camera will be on the cards now I've finished the payment plan for the loveliness that is my iMac. Can get cheap coach tickets try and do one a month or so. Finishing off the my website, and making it mobile friendly, is also on the to-do list. Not much left to do on it apart from uploading a lot of photos.

At the moment I'm really looking forward to 10 days of in about a week. Having worked all of xmas (apart from xmas day which we all got off) and new year, I'm going over to Sweden to see my family. It's always nice to go visit them, especially when I've not seen them for 6 months or so. So now I'm counting down the days :) Also got myself an appointment at True Tattoo to add to my tattoo "collection" on 14-Jan :D excited about that :) and I'll obviously post a photo on here once it's been done.

Anyway, I should get to bed (or rather switch the light off as I'm actually posting this from my bed on my iPhone) as it's getting on for 1am and my alarm is set for 6am..

Have that weird feeling where it feels like I've been off work for more than 4 days, but at the same time it feels like my long weekend has gone by in a flash. Not gotten as much done as I wanted to - maybe partially due to feeling completely out of it for most of Saturday and sleeping half of Sunday away. I seem to get to Saturday afternoon and then I crash and burn these days, and the work "hangover" sets in where I literally feel hung over despite not having had a drop of alcohol.

Today has been a bit of a geeky day, at least in the afternoon, but I also managed to go out with my camera for a bit whilst there was a brief break in all the raining. Actually trying to decide which photo to use for today for my 30-day challenge that I'm doing. Narrowed it down from three to two so far - all of them of the same motif.

On a geeky note, I've managed to find an iOS emulator (which was included in Xcode - a free IDE for coding/web development). So I can now test my website in that without potentially breaking my actual live site/blog/galleries, because at the moment it's not very readable on a mobile. Will be trying to sort it out in the week, if nothing else next weekend.

This was my desk this afternoon :) You'd think with having a job where I spend 7.5hrs (or 8.5hrs when I work through my lunch) in front of a computer that I wouldn't want to spend my weekend in front of one. But on the weekend it's by choice, and it's doing things I enjoy (although I enjoy my job as well).

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My desk

Watched the Apple event this evening, and was very pleasantly surprised at them offering OS X Mavericks for free. When I upgraded from OS X Lion to OS X Mountain Lion on my laptop when Mountain Lion was released it was only £13.99 which isn't exactly extortionate, especially how much it used to cost to upgrade Windows. But being rather (very much) skint until January I was planning on putting it off until then to upgrade OS X my iMac and Macbook Pro. However, now I can upgrade for free :D Happy days :)

In fact, this is what shows up in the App Store now :) Another project for next weekend ;)

App store - Mavericks update

So the re-design of my website, galleries, and blog is finally finished :)

Had a weekend of geekyness, and despite suffering from a work "hangover" and having spent the best part of the weekend in front of my computer I feel refreshed. Most likely because even though the weekend was spent at my computer I was doing something I really enjoy and it was productive at the same time. 

I love my job, but it's sort of wearing me out at the moment. But then I suppose it has to do with how I approach it as well. Also, can't do it all on my own.

Anyway, the re-design is done - and there is now one theme running across my website, galleries and blog. I'm pleased with the look of the site, and the fact I've managed to wrangle a WordPress theme and a ZenPhoto theme into submission and made them look the same. There is a sense of accomplishment certainly, and it has made me realise again how much I enjoy the coding part of web development (not using no WYSIWYG editors here).

An ongoing project will be to upload photos taken with my DSLR (Canon 600D) over the last 9 months. And there's quite a few of them.. As I'll be doing it in my spare time, it might take a while to get it all sorted.

Another project is to make my site to look better on mobile devices, i.e. make it more mobile friendly. The galleries part of it looks ok atm (although not centred on the page), but the website and blog not so much. So I guess I'll have to go digging round in the WordPress files to sort that one out.

Will also try to update this blog more often (and with other things than my ranting/waffling when I'm tired ;P). One thing I've thought of is to do a 30-day challenge type thing and take a photograph a day and post them on here. Since it's October 1st tomorrow it would make sense to start then, and it'll have to be a 31-day challenge (otherwise it'll bug me that it doesn't last the whole month).

Time for some lunch now before going to work for the late shift. Geared up for another week at work - bring it on!