It’s come to that time of the year, when I need to spend several hours putting together a post summarizing everything that happened during 2008. Last year, I did my 2007 summary and ended off with a traffic distribution, this year I’ve put some more effort in and am going to try and summarize things as best as possible. The best way for me to do this, is by categorizing things and then elaborating on each category.
2007 was a fantastic year, I put everything down onto paper, organised myself and went further than I thought I could ever go, until 2008.
Social
2008 has been an exciting year socially, I’ve made a ton of good friends in the web industry and maintained friendships with all of my friends outside the web world. This year saw many exciting events and to point them out to you, here are some of the ones I remember:
- Codfather in Camps Bay
- Relish Restaurant by candle light
- Picnic at Kirstenbosch
- Massive night out at Hemisphere
- Weekend away at Yzerfontein
- Warrens bergie party
- Green Dolphin Jazz
- Andre the Hypnotist
- Rocking the Daisies and here
- Puppetry of the penis
- My makeover, kinda
- Fedisa Fashion Show
- Boskloof Swemgat
- Getaway weekend
Apart from these events, 2008 saw the start of the Not So Geek Dinners, which was a monthly trip with all my mates to a restaurant of choice by one of the attendees. The event was a huge success and here’s a collection of the destinations we went to:
- Relish, Balduccis, Magica Roma, Royal Yacht Club, Willoughby & Co, Buena Vista, Hussar Grill.
I think I’ve missed one or two, but these are the ones I have covered on my blog.
Another area which bursted this year was geekery; I’ve never attended so many geek events in a year before and I have to mention some of them:
- Cape Town Geek Dinner and here
- Bloggerati and here
- openCoffee and here
- Crazy Bloggers at Asoka
- Geek at Tank
- Neighbourhood Bloggerati
- Twevent
Personal
There are three major things to cover in my personal life and that’s my girlfriend, my flat and my car (I do love my family too).
At the begining of the year I went out and bought myself a new car. It took me weeks of searching, I remember getting up every Saturday morning to walk to streets of Wynberg and Voortrekker road and then the one morning, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, the Fiesta ST. I’m telling you, I searched high and dry for a BMW Compaq and just couldn’t find one in decent condition and I was walking out of the car shop when I saw the ST and I just knew I had to have it - A girl was there with her mother, she was sitting in it and smiling, I looked at the sales guy and with my hands I told him that it’s sold, he hurried off the girl and called me over - no jokes, that’s how I got the car. It’s been one of the funniest purchases of my life, even through the expensive times! It’s now kitted out with a pretty darn big sound system and controlled by a Belkin Radio Frequency Player. SEO GURU WP license plates..
This year also saw me moving into my new apartment on Roeland Street and I can honestly say that I’ve never been happier. I live in the most beautiful city in the world, Cape Town, with views of Table Mountain that many would die for. I’ve invested so much time and money into the flat to ensure that it’s kitted to the max! To give you an idea, here are some related topics:
- First pictures of the flat
- Flickering lights
- Cops crashing
- More pictures of the flat
- My 32″ LCD TV
- DivX player
- Styling things up
- Most recent photographs
So that’s the flat, what do you think?
In 2001, the 24th of April to be precise, Fe and I started dating. It was a bumpy ride, in which we both dated other people and did things I’m sure we both regret, but 2008 saw our reuniting and things have been great since, it’s almost a year now since we got back together. We’ve both spent a huge number of hours chatting and working on things to ensure that we’re both happy and form a bond of trust and openess between us. The journey has been hectic, Fe has completed her first year at UCT and been accepted into doing her LLB, but not only that, she’s been on my entire journey this year, which she’ll agree, was a hectic one! Two topics which came to mind whilst wring this, were when I felt as though I was being emotionally backed into a corner (thanks heavens that was resolved.) and a lovely evening at The Green Dolphin.
Two sad events this year were the near death of my brother and the death of DChetty’s brother. Thanks Bloggisphere for your support!
iMod, Chris M and Christopher Mills
I reall don’t want to spend too much time on iMod and self branding, so without going on, here are a few things:
- iMod wins the South African blog awards (watch the movie)
- Boobs at the blog awards?
- Freelancing with The Rubiks Room
- Writing for Tech Leader
- iMod attends AMD live broadcast
- Featured on ModelBase
- iMod top ranked blog on Afrigator
- iMod donating thousands to BreadLine
- iMod mentioned on Read Write Web
- Featured on MyBroadBand
- Featured on Campus Mail
- Me on Read Write Web
- Alexa Ranking
- Top 10 on Amatomu
- Freelancing
- SEO
Amongst other amazing things!
2008 has been a year of making money online and whilst I’ve done so, I’ve kept track of my journey, which consisted of challenging myself month to month to make more money. I outlined the importance of incomes and expenses, make sure you take a read. I’ve documented a great deal of my journey as I’ve earned more and more Adsense over the year, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. During this mission, I’ve taken a huge amount of time to research monetizing websites and of late many website owners have been approaching me to ask for advice. If you’re interested in monetizing and marketing your website, read my marketing articles (here too), otherwise I work as a consultant, so please drop me a line and I’ll quote you.
My Job
I started off the year consulting and freelancing for a number of companies, but wanted something more substantial as well as something I could learn a lot from, this desire lead me to working for Web & Mobile Development company, FormFunction. During my stay at FormFunction, I lead the company from an operational view, nothing happened with a project without me knowing about it and I was pushed so hard that I almost went onto happy pills. I learnt time management extremely quickly and as well as project management skills. Some of the other things I experienced were:
- Second Facebook Developer Garage
- Jazzing up your offices
- Bowling
- Birthday web 2.0 cakes
- Web multi-tasking
- Gossiping
I left FormFunction and was invited to work at The Forge after several months of freelancing. My stay at The Forge has been short, but I’m totally head over heals happy about the job! The Forge has already presented me with some amazing memories:
- Getaway trip before work
- Travelmate laptop
- New adventures of Christopher Mills
- First day at work
- My new office
- Christmas lunch at Greens
I guess that brings me to the end of everything, sheesh, I could go on for hours and hours with all the experiences I’ve had, but I think this is enough for those of you who want to get an idea of everything I got up to.
2008 has possibly been the best year of my life, thank you to everyone who played a part!
I look forward to everything that 2009 brings me, let’s go!
Ps. For those of you who follow - I reached my Adsense target - More on that later, there’s a beer waiting for me :)
Happy New Years!