Things I liked about 2006

By Mike Lin

I wanted to do some reflecting and make some kind of new years list but I didn’t know what kind of list, so this is just going to be a list of stuff I liked in 2006.

The only thing I’m going to leave out of this list is people, because I don’t think I can express how much I really appreciate the people in my life in just a sentence or two each.

So here they are in no particular order:

1. Jeeves and Wooster

   P.G. Wodehouse’s novels and their early 90′s BBC screen adaptation make me wish so much to be a 1920′s British dandy.

2. Breakfast of Champions

   by Kurt Vonnegut. Throws out traditional story telling for a more representative view of reality.

3. Snakes on a Plane

   Ridiculous.

4. Little Miss Sunshine

   Favourite movie of the year.

5. Scott Pilgrim

   Got me back in to comics, and made me start thinking about moving to Toronto.

6. CBC Radio 3

7. Ghost House

8. B.A. Johnston

   Ridiculous

9. R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet

   Finally got around to watching this. Pure genius!

10. Fark cliches

    “I’m in ur list, paddin ur numberz“

11. High-profile atheists – Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris

    Evidence based views of reality are just so hot right now!

12. Nature the journal.

    Work has a subscription, even though I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who reads it. Accessible news section at the front for keeping up, and journal papers at the back if you need to exercise the grey matter. Has spawned many interesting thoughts.

13. Zidane’s headbutt

    More entertaining than actual soccer.

14. Off-roading

    Kerry let me drive his truck on some snowy logging roads. Also, winch + dead tree = awesome.

15. Smash to Pass

    The second time we went, there was a fist fight on the track!

16. Tubing on the Cowichan river

17. Disc golf

    Victoria is severely lacking in this department. Vancouver is great though.

18. Nerdy board games – Settlers, Carcasonne, Betrayal at House on the Hill

19. Modded Xbox

    You can watch .avi movies on it, and connect it so your stereo to be your party juke box, and you can play SNES games on it! I don’t actually have any actual Xbox games, except for the next item. Thanks again CFlan for modding it for me.

20. DDR

    Gotten ostensibly because my aunt’s doctor said she needed more exercise. So fun to watch people play, although less fun than watching people play Wii.

21. Flying kites

    I want it to be summer again, so I can go to Clover Point and just sit their with a kite, and fend of friends who say I’ve had it long enough and that now it’s their turn.

    I got to fly Kerry’s kiteboard trainer too, which was pretty exciting.

22. Martinis

    “The breakfast of champions.” After an excitingly frivolous $20 martini at the Bengal Lounge, martini’s are back at the top of my favourite drinks.

23. Folk Fest Victoria

    Big shows this year. I saw K’naan, and Sam Roberts. I hear they are going to tone it down this year, but I won’t be here anyway.

24. Cycling

    Favourite mode of transportation in 2006.

25. Vancouver

    The occasional weekend jaunt and 2 weeks in the summer have made me love Van all the more, mostly because of my amazing friends there.

26. Words and Rhymes

    eg. Pachydermatous journalist.

27. Earl Grey tea

    Makes for a pleasant afternoon.

28. Pictures of food

    They are almost pornographic.

29. Airhogs

    Little remote control planes that you can fly around and knock people in the head with. An essential toy for the unemployed.

30. Tiny hats

    Smaller than regular hats.

31. Keytar

    I can now play selections from Double Dragon, Zelda and Punch-out on my Yamaha SHS-10.

32. Percocet

    Silver lining to getting my wisdom teeth out.

33. Dogs

34. WordPress

    My new favourite blogging platform

35. LiveJournal

    I love our little community.

36. Linux

    It’s been about 2 years now, and I’m never going back. I love the Ubuntu distro. It’s also really convenient having the same OS on my laptop as on my webserver.

37. Making Caps Lock another Ctrl key.

    Would totally have carpal tunnel x3 by now if I hadn’t done this at the start of last year. Bending your pinky down there to the regular ctrl is so painful, and moving your hand is so repetitive stressy. Oh so easy to do in linux, sort of easy to do in windows.

38. Vim

    The text editor. I should have listened to the TA in my first year comp. sci. lab who said learning Vim early would earn great returns later. I finally got around to it this year. Better late than never.

39. Free SkypeOut

    Free computer-to-phone long distance. No longer free in the coming year, but still pretty darn cheap.

40. Web2.0 – facebook, youtube, netvibes, del.icio.us, last.fm, reddit, digg, google maps, etc.

41. Python

    My favourite programming language. Java seems clumsy and weak in comparison.

42. No Fluff Just Stuff

    Software conference work sent me to in September. It showed me how little I really know about the field.