2008 in Review

I know, it's a month and a half into 2009, but... well, better late than never.

The following is a list of the most popular posts on this blog and on my web site in 2008. Numbers 1, 3, and 5 hit Reddit. People mostly found the other articles by searching.

1. Top Ten Essential Emacs Tips.
2. Scrolling with the Thinkpad's TrackPoint in Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid. Who knew a little X.org tweak could cause so much trouble?
3. A million lines of Lisp. Apparently, people will read anything about Lisp.
4. Emacs in Ubuntu Hardy now has anti-aliased fonts. And it is beautiful.
5. Stupid screen tricks. GNU Screen has changed the way I work and the way I interact with computers.
6. Instructions for setting up Emacs on a variety of platforms.
7. Towards using the FreeRunner as my primary phone. Which, I am happy to say, I have been now for months.
8. Writing a raytracer from scratch. Why, you ask? Why the hell not? It was a lot of fun and I learned a thing or two about software and math.

(Google Analytics helped me make this list. Interesting tidbit: among the browsers that people typically use to read this blog, Firefox has a commanding lead with 75%. The runner-up is Safari with 7%, followed by IE with 5%.)

Highlights of the past year:

• I wrote a thesis and got some papers published. In the course of my work, I also learned a few things about software development and tools, which I'll share shortly.
• I traveled to New York, Las Vegas, Germany, and Switzerland (with passage through Spain, Liechtenstein, Austria, and the UK). All of these were a lot of fun.
• I got a new phone (some would say, a mobile computer with a phone in it), one capable of running only free software. It's glorious.

2008 was a great year. Except for the collapse of the global economy, but remember, now is the time to buy. Here's to 2009!