JW's Top 5 Tech Accomplishments Of The Past Year

When I left the Air Force in the summer of 2007 & moved to The Woodlands, I decided I wanted to reimmerse myself in some tech-oriented hobbies & passions that I'd somewhat neglected after finishing college. Looking back at 2008, these things stick out in my mind as projects I've enjoyed undertaking.


1. Loading My Entire 1TB of MP3s Into iTunes
- 70,000 files spread across 9 hard drives joined in a single library
- Nested Playlists that mirror folder structure on drives
- Experimenting with Shared Libraries & AirTunes streaming

2. Organizing A Weekly Mario Kart Wii League
- Use of Skype for voice chat, MeBeam for video chat, Gmail Chat, a Digital Camera for photographing cup results, & a shared Google Spreadsheet for documenting weekly race results
- Had 6 regular participants from 3 different states
- Here's the Flickr Gallery of race results

3. Implementing An Automated & Fairly Robust Data Backup Plan
- SyncBackSE software performing nightly incremental backups
- 2TB WD MyBook serving as the main hub, & a 320GB WD MyBook Studio for Time Machine
- Mozy Subscriptions on desktop & MacBook Pro performing nightly off-site backups

4. Sticking With Daily Twitter Updates
- This has turned into the type of journal I attempted to keep in high school. I try to post an update each night before bed, and it's a great way for daily reflection.
- I also live-blogged our Hurricane Ike experience via Twitter's SMS updates back in September once both Entergy & Sprint data failed.

5. Taking The Plunge Into OS X & Linux
- VMWare Fusion running Windows 7, Vista Ultimate, XP SP3, 98, 3.11, & Ubuntu Hardy Heron
- Use Leopard & XP daily, and 7/Vista + Linux when tinkering on the weekends