2017 in review

It seems to be the done thing to do a "year in review" post. I initially scoffed at the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how keeping track of accomplishments can be a little encouragement and ego boost. So here goes!

The web world

My web world of 2017 was rather quite exciting. From books to blogs, the information I output in 2017 was probably the biggest yet*

I did manage to deploy a new version of this very site. Still running on Craft CMS, I'm a lot happier with the colour scheme and fonts and has helped me develop a "brand" with colours. I upgraded to Craft v3 which allows me to update via composer (along with other benefits!)

* not verified, just guessing!

I wrote a book

The big news of 2017 (squeezing in with just 11 days to spare) was writing my book. Over 400 pages of knowledge on Vue.js, seeing this book in print was one of the proudest moments of my professional career so far.

If you're interested in Vue, or just wanna check out the book, you can do so here: Vue.js 2.x by Example

I started in June, and it took about 5 months of writing around my job. Evenings and weekends were spent ignoring my wife, sitting in front of my computer and hammering out some words about Vue.js. It was a huge learning experience and my writing, JavaScript and Vue skills are all the better for it.

I started a YouTube channel

While writing the book on Vue, I was encouraged to start teaching via blog posts and screencasts. After writing several blog posts on the topic, I built up the confidence to record a screencast, demonstrating the skills in an alternative medium.

Check out (and subscribe to) my Youtube Channel.

It took a few videos for me to find my stride, but with a slow increase in equipment and production, I think the last video I published of the year was my best (and longest) one yet!

Blog posts

My most popular blog posts this year have been a mix of some new Vue ones and some really old surprising entries! Pulling the data of my most popular articles from Google Analytics, I've collated a list below of the top 10 most popular from 2017. (I've also included a date of publication for reference!)

Interestingly, there is only one post from 2016 on that list (and even that was early on)! I obviously wasn't very interesting that year!

Conferences

I went to a few conferences this year both web and none! My mind is forever growing with info. The following events were party to that:

And we organised another fantastic Bytes Conf in 2017, raising over £600 for codebar.

Other bits

There were quite a few exciting parts to 2017; I saw several of my friends get married including my sister, I went on holiday to Copenhagen, Dorset and Devon, I finally discovered a motorsport that I enjoy, Rallycross, and eventually got a new MacBook (for writing my book, obviously).

The other thing, along with Vue, that I really got into this year was coffee. I picked up a coffee machine on Gumtree at the beginning of the year and slowly got more and more involved. I purchased a good quality grinder (you always need a good grinder) and my wife bought me a latte art workshop for my birthday in August. In December, to celebrate finishing my book, I bought myself a Sage Barista Express coffee machine - bought with the funds of selling my old equipment. I enjoy having something offline I can geek out about.

Cycling

I didn't do as many cycling events as I had planned last year, with books, holidays and laziness getting in the way. However, comparing to previous years on Strava, my stats didn't suffer too much:

Distance: 2,249.7 mi

Time spent on rides: 180h 16m

Elevation gain: 134,459 ft

Total number of rides: 443

Walking

I also owned my Fitbit for the full year, so I was able to pull some stats, not sure how useful they are though!

Steps stepped: 3,601,903

Floors climbed: 13613

Miles travelled: 1,394.67

Calories burned: 1,176,406

It is worth noting that when I cycle, my Fitbit does count steps, so it's not 100% accurate!

That's 2017 wrapped! What a fun & productive year it's been!

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Mike Street

Written by Mike Street

Mike is a CTO and Lead Developer from Brighton, UK. He spends his time writing, cycling and coding. You can find Mike on Mastodon.