Since it is almost the last day of the year, I suppose it is time to take a look back and see what has happened.

My research has progressed, but not very quickly. I missed several conference deadlines, and I’m still trying to get a paper done. However, I’m quite close!

My advisor retired in February. Not much changed until recently, when he announced he was not sure about funding those of us left in the lab next year. This spurred some panic, but we have time to figure it out. I’m thinking of taking an adjunct teaching position somewhere.

Inspired by _why’s potion language, I started working on my own little programming language called Brat. It’s been my best project, keeping me busy pretty much all year. I’m always running into or thinking of new things to do with it. Writing your own language forces you to learn a lot of things. Not just about parsers and compilers, but nearly everything, since any libraries will have to be written (or at least wrapped up) by yourself.

My parents came and visited around my birthday. That was pretty fun, although I now have a better list of things to do if they come visit again.

I was considerably absent last school year. Accordingly, this fall I made a resolution to be more involved, especially with the CSGSC. So far, I’ve been successful with this.

I also had an interesting programming experience wrapping up gdbm using FFI, making it usable from JRuby and other Ruby VMs. It was my first time using FFI, writing a library for JRuby, and packaging up something to be used as a gem. Quite a learning experience, but one I really enjoyed. Hopefully, it will eventually get included in JRuby itself.

I started a couple little websites: the Fledgling Languages List and a Neko Tutorial.

I picked up a T-Mobile myTouch, thinking I would get into Android programming. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still hoping to get going on it. I understand it’s pretty straightforward once you get the dev environment all set up, I just haven’t gotten past that part yet.

I lived through Michael Jackson’s death and Los Angeles’ frenzy over it. He was taken to the UCLA hospital, so I got to see some of it first hand.

The summer roadtrip I had hoped to take didn’t work out, although my girlfriend and I did get to go to Ohio for a little family reunion. We just flew instead of driving.

I was able to see Zao play a concert in a tiny little place in the middle of nowhere.

Despite having completed the WQE two years ago, I just now filled out the paperwork to get my Masters’s. Now it only takes 3-4 months to get my diploma.

Now I just have to get in gear for the new year!