We’re back from the second half of our summer holidays: sailing the Strait of Georgia, motoring around Vancouver Island, watching the Symphony of Fire (plus bonus Wide Mouth Mason show), and anchoring in some of British Columbia’s finest nooks and crannies. It was great. My retirement will be early, located on a 40′+ sail boat.

Warped is PAUSED for a week while I rest, relax, reset, and otherwise recharge. We’ll be staying in a cabin by a lake in the middle of nowhere, British Columbia, without access to landlines, cell towers, and the internet.

If you need some reading and/or inspiration while I’m gone, you can feed off of my del.icio.us backlog:

Warped’s del.icio.us raw feed

[stars: 5] Weezer discography. I found their entire collection at a garage sale over the holidays and I fully enjoyed every track. I wasn’t expecting much after their disappointing second album, but they found their grove and laid it down song after song in their unique style.

I like to spend my winter holiday thinking about the year, and what I didn’t do enough of. Next year, I hope to:

1. Write more. Not just web fluff and links (which is fun), but more real fiction and non-fiction. I love to write, but life and complexity just keep on getting in the way.
2. Do more creative stuff. I have an artistic side, but the geek in me naturally suppresses it. I need to learn better balance.
3. Learn more healthy habits. I love good food, I grok nutrition, and I enjoy exercise. I need a bit more of each (and less of the crap).
4. Learn Ruby/Rails well. Last year I polished my C#, Javascript, and Php skills (as well as time spent with SQL, CSS/XHTML, etc.). This year I need to at least know why Rails isn’t for me. So far I’ve only spent a dozen hours with it, which isn’t nearly enough.
5. Focus. Life is noisy. Work is noisy. Learn to deal with both: I will overcome the chaos.

One thing I like to keep in mind with resolutions is that sometimes a year isn’t enough. Life is a garden, and sometimes crops fail. The key is to keep doing healthy things, and remember that growth takes time, practice, and effort.

My wife knows me well. We don’t subscribe to the all-out yuppymas, rather we spoil each other (and the kids) with a few small things to fuel each other’s passions. My recharge this year:

• An Amazon gift certificate. I’ve been craving some new fiction, but I’m not quite sure what yet. This makes it easy.
• A nice white board. It’s the only luxury missing in my home office, and I find schema design easier on a whiteboard than on paper. Dunno why.
• Two nice, hand-made picture frames. Now I have to be artistic again.
• Two hubris-inspired mouse pads (made from a few of last year’s shots).

That’s it. That’s all I need to spark my creativity in the new year. That, and a bit of rest.

Dozens of free, DIY box-making templates. Nothing beats shafting da man, and making your own holiday gift wrapping. Be creative, and recycle old stock from art projects, or corporate rebranding fiestas!