Its that time of year again – time to overeat, overdecorate, and generally overindulge in everything. The year is over, and it is time to relax and prepare for the new year.

This year has not been a great one for many people worldwide, and while I have had no major problems this year it hasn't been filled with great leaps forward either. But it has been a generally enjoyable year, and one filled with minor accomplishments.

As always I have been taking interesting courses online through the year, and I am especially proud of my new skills in physics based rendering and in virtual reality programming. They may never come in handy for anything by my own silly little hobby projects, but the mere fact they were and are enjoyable make them worth doing!

I am also still actively doing my physics and mathematics research, leaning more on the latter than the former at this point, and I have some exciting projects that I am hoping to complete by the spring. It is too early to give many details, but one of the projects I have been working on frequently in the past two months has the potential to change its field forever. Assuming that I don't get beaten to publication as my last two papers were, and assuming that the remaining calculations do not prove my idea to be impossible or already excluded by other research. But if all goes well I should have some big news to report soon.

On the employment front, I am still enjoying doing odd jobs as a freelancer/contract worker type of situation. It is great fun to work on different projects each week or month, and most important it gives me the freedom and flexibility that I require right now as I am still acting as a fulltime caregiver (although I am really hoping that those responsibilities are reduced very soon). I do have a tentative offer of some scientific research work at a new start-up early in the new year, so hopefully next year I can report more on that great new project!

In the virtual world, I have been busy early in the year making upgrades to my websites. As many of you already know, last year I was targeted by a number of cyber-attacks possibly related to security flaws in my webhosts hosting software. As such I finally made the leap last year and registered my own domain names (drchrisbird.net for new content and drchrisbird.ca for older content) , and started the arduous process of moving all of my old content to a new webhost. It has been very slow going, but it is still proceeding – although I have decided to leave a lot of the old content on the old site, and mainly focus on writing new content for the new websites.

Otherwise it has been a fairly dull year. For those who had asked earlier, I did get up to the island for a few days in the summer, and greatly enjoyed getting away from the urban sprawl and into the rustic countryside. Even though the cabin chimney was missing and the mice and owls had made a mess inside, it was still an enjoyable retreat. I always do my best thinking when I can sit in the forest or walk the beaches there. One of the many joys of living on the westcoast.

So that is about it for my year. I am hoping to bring you some great news in a few months, but that will have to wait until then. For now, I hope that all of you have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a Wonderful New Year!