2005 has been quite a year. It's been a year of ups and downs in my personal life and I'm happy with the fact that I can honestly say things look very good for 2006 at this point. When it comes to my professional activities (which include this weblog) the year 2005 has brought me many good things. I've accquired an enormous amount of new knowledge in the field of design and development and this weblog has grown from a virtually 'non-existent' little place on the web into a respected weblog with an ever growing amount of visitors and RSS subscribers.

Of course that's all nice and dandy but it doesn't mean I plan to sit back and relax in 2006. I guess that makes this rainy second day of Christmas a good day to write down some plans for the year 2006!

1: Become an established designer

The results of the Typo Theme Contest came in like a dirty kick in the groin but fortunately the 'pain' didn't last long. Tons of people are using Lush and I've even received some work offers to do designs for various people. Turns out I'm a designer after all! So here's the first goal for 2006: To become an established web specialist not longer only known for his great code but also for his excellent designs. Of course there's still a lot to learn but ... I plan to really push the design side of life. I've been a 'developer' for over 6 years already and I'm clearly feeling the urge to become more than just a developer. I plan on broadening the field in which I work and design is one of the things I want to add. I've even started working on a redesign for this website. Prepare for a surprise in the next months to come!

2: Become an AJAX expert

As much as I think the whole Web 2.0 buzz is bullshit, I love AJAX. I love writing about it, reading about it and I love developing AJAX stuff. Rich user interfaces are the way of the future web and I want to be part of that as a developer. I've been a back-end developer for quite a while but lately the client side of the story is getting more and more interesting. Stay tuned for a lot of AJAX stuff on this weblog in 2006.

3: Only spend time online on useful things

Spending time online is great when it results in something. This 'something' can be new knowledge, nice accomplishments on my weblog, or interesting, stimulating contacts with nice people like on the 9rules forum. This 'something' is definitely not meaningless chatting or brain-dead surfing. In the last couple of months I've very well managed to stick to this goal and I plan to keep it that way. This leaves a lot of time to spend on important people like my wonderful girlfriend Renie and other people that are worth my time, as well as fun stuff such as taking ballroom dancing classes, watching movies, going out and partying.

4: Stop being a spam fighter

I give up. The spammers have won. In 2005 I've spent an enormous amount of time on fighting spam in the blogosphere by means of a slew of plugins for both Pivot and WordPress. I'm sick of this fight. Whatever I developed, it worked for a while until they found some way around it again. It's a frustrating and annoying cat-and-mouse game I'm not going to dedicate much time to anymore. I'm very sorry but that's how I feel. There's more useful things to do. My last effort will probably be to create an Akismet plugin for Pivot and that will be the end of it. If that won't work well enough I might even switch off comments and trackbacks. I'm totally done with this shit!

5: Become a top 1000 Technorati blogger

Less than three months ago I posted about being a 4 figure Technorati blogger. The 'rise' has continued. In less than three months I've become a top 5000 technorati blogger! At the moment I'm writing this my rank is 4638 which is totally awesome. In 2006 I'll reach for the sky. Becoming a three figure Technorati blogger is the goal. No less. This blog is bringing in more and more positive things every month in terms of interesting comments, work offers and other exciting things which clearly shows spending time on my weblog is worth every minute.

I guess these are my plans for 2006 for now. I might update this posting in case I think of other New Year's resolutions to add.

Enjoy your holidays and I wish everyone who reads this all the best for 2006. May all your dreams come true!