2013 - Year In Review

  1. 1. Philosophy
  2. 2. Beyond
  3. 3. Statistics:
    1. 3.1. Top 5 Blog Posts (By Page View):
    2. 3.2. Bottom 5 Blog Posts (By Page View):
    3. 3.3. Top 5 Blog Post Referring Sites:
    4. 3.4. Presentations Given:
    5. 3.5. Conferences Attended:
    6. 3.6. Videos:
    7. 3.7. New GitHub Repositories (notable):
    8. 3.8. Some Interesting Numbers (Blog):
    9. 3.9. Some Interesting Numbers (YouTube):
    10. 3.10. Some Interesting Numbers (Photos):
    11. 3.11. Some Interesting Numbers (me):
  4. 4. Thank You!

It’s that time of the year again. A time to look back on all that was accomplished in the previous year, and a time to look forward to all that can be accomplished next year. Once again, let’s look at what I was able to do this year:

Philosophy

In 2013, I tried to do something different. I tried to purposly be myself on the internet. Not a branding. Not a persona. But completely myself. At the beginning of the year, I purposly tried to put myself out there for everyone to see.

There are some things that I held back for myself, but for the vast majority, I was an open book.

I think this experiment worked. On one hand, I did get hurt from time to time. It’s hard to not take things personally when you put yourself out completely. It wasn’t a persona that people attacked, it was me. But that wasn’t bad.

What did happen was that I made a lot of friends. I made a lot of connections. I gained a lot of confidence in myself.

Beyond

This ultimately led to me writing the Beyond Series of posts.

There is something about those posts which I never really said completely. Every one of those 4 posts was me putting my vulnerable ideas out in front of the world. None of those ideas were fully formed. None of them were vetted. All of them had ideas of my own which I’ve never seen before posted by others. They were really just ideas that I’ve had that I wasn’t able to fully flush out.

Basically, I put my raw and unadulterated ideas out in front of the world. I put my most vulnerable thoughts. I took a chance by showing all my cards. And it was so well received that I couldn’t be happier!

Some people complained that they “weren’t my best work”. That “they could have been written better and better thought out”. And honestly, I took those as compliments. Because rather than spend a year trying to think each one through and write them out as best as I could, I shared. And even if you think it wasn’t my best work, that’s fine because it wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be a raw glimpse into what I’ve not been sure of. Into what I’ve not fully developed…

But enough of all of that, on to the stats!!!

Statistics:

Top 5 Blog Posts (By Page View):

  1. Rambling On Internals
  2. Beyond Clean Code
  3. Beyond Design Patterns
  4. Beyond Object Oriented Programming
  5. Backwards Compatibility Is For Suckers

Bottom 5 Blog Posts (By Page View):

  1. Upcoming Talks - Spring 2013
  2. JavaScript Closures - Programming With Anthony
  3. Musings And Inspirations
  4. Don’t Be Afraid To Be Silly
  5. Design Patterns - Programming With Anthony

Top 5 Blog Post Referring Sites:

  1. Twitter
  2. Reddit
  3. Habrahabr.ru
  4. StackOverflow
  5. Planet-PHP

Presentations Given:

  • Password Storage And Attacking In PHP
  • Don’t Be STUPID, GRASP SOLID
  • Development By The Numbers
  • Code Review For Security
  • PHP Under The Hood

Conferences Attended:

  1. PHP Benelux
  2. SunshinePHP
  3. MidWest PHP
  4. DrupalCon Portland
  5. Symfony Live Portland
  6. Dutch PHP Conference
  7. NYCCamp (Drupal)
  8. North East PHP
  9. DrupalCon Prague
  10. PHP North West
  11. Symfony Live Berlin

Videos:

  1. JavaScript Closures
  2. Dependency Injection
  3. Iterators
  4. Mediators
  5. Design Patterns
  6. Becoming A Better Developer
  7. Failure Is Always An Option
  8. Commuting To Times Square - 1 Week Through Glass

New GitHub Repositories (notable):

Some Interesting Numbers (Blog):

  • New Blog Posts: 37 (Including This One)
  • Comments: 314
  • Google Plus +1’s: 904
  • Unique Visitors: 128,864
  • Unique Page Views Of Blog Posts: 680,755
  • Estimated Total Time Writing: Over 250 Hours
  • Total Ad Revenue: $111.54

Some Interesting Numbers (YouTube):

  • New Videos: 8
  • Comments: 180
  • Likes: 1,133
  • New Subscribers: 2,103
  • Unique Video Views on YouTube: 79,828
  • Estimated Total Time Producing: 40 Hours
  • Total Ad Revenue: $59.13
  • Total Minutes Watched: 335,125

Some Interesting Numbers (Photos):

  • Photos Taken (approximately): 17,000
  • Cameras Purchased: 2 (Sony NEX 5r and Google Glass)
  • Lenses Purchased: 6
  • Photos Uploaded (Flickr): 149
  • Likes Received (Flickr): 21
  • Likes Received (Tumblr): 5

(Stats taken from Flickr And Tumblr)

Some Interesting Numbers (me):

  • New Twitter Followers: >2000
  • BitCoins Mined: 2
  • Mailing List Posts: 188
  • Commits To Public Repositories: About 300
  • Projects Quit: 1
  • Miles Traveled: 57,403 miles
  • Countries Visited: 7
  • Cities Visited: 31
  • Mountain Passes Driven: 2
  • Days Away From Home (Traveling): 70
  • Emails Received (personal): 22,090
  • Weight Lost: 40 lbs
  • Addictions Overcome: 1 (smoking)

Thank You!

Most of all, I couldn’t have done anything this year if it wasn’t for your support. So thank you! And I’ll see you all in 2014!!! Have a WONDERFUL New Year!!!