2016: A Year in Review

Another year has passed and it's time to take a look back and see what I accomplished!

Open Source

It's been a busy year in open source for me with over 1100+ contributions, let's see...

• excalibur.js: Excalibur remains one of the largest OSS projects I help maintain. I redesigned the Excalibur.js website. I made about 49 pull requeststo the codebase. We made 4 releases, bringing us from 0.6 to 0.8 (over 177 issues closed!).
• TypeDoc: This was a close one, last month I submitted a PR to support TypeScript 2.1.4.
• DefinitelyTyped: Made my first PR to DefinitelyTyped even though I've made tons of private declaration files for my projects.
• UnderscoreKO: Updated for Underscore 1.8
• PoshOpenWeatherMap: I made a fun little weather Powershell module.
• cassette-sri: I needed Subresource Integrity support for KTOMG, so I published an extension to Cassette.

New Tech

I definitely enjoy learning new things and playing with tech.

• Played with Azure Key Vault
• Dabbled in some ASP.NET Core
• At work I dove deep into Powershell DSC and JFrog Artifactory
• I set up equipment for my course recording: Behringer XENYX Q802USB Mixer, ATR2100 Microphone
• I got a Raspberry Pi 3 for Christmas and made it into an emulation console using Lakka

Gaming

Making and playing games remains one of my passions, that much is clear:

• Keep Track of My Games: I released 10 updates to KTOMG last year, some of the biggest ones so far, adding tons of major new features.
• I participated in the Ludum Dare 35 game jam with the game Hex Shaper.
• Me and Erik Onarheim made a ASP.NET Core demo game for a work code camp
• We also made a Planet Wars AI simulator in Excalibur for a work competition
• I've been working on a (currently private) sample game for Excalibur, it will be used as a the primary learning sample for new users.
• I played some games

Speaking & Conferences

I gave some talks and went to conferences! I spread the TypeScript love.

• Midwest.js: I gave a presentation on Demystifying TypeScript at Midwest.js in August this year. It was a lot of fun, but the recording still isn't up on YouTube yet.
• TCCC20: I gave a presentation on TypeScript in Action at Twin Cities Code Camp 20 in April.
• MS Build: I attended Microsoft Build 2016 with my coworkers. It was a blast.

Publishing

I want to try and commit to beating 2016's blog post count:

• I published 16 blog posts in 2016.
• I accepted a contract to make an Introduction to TypeScript video course with Packt Publishing.

Life

• My wife and I are expecting our first child in February! I'm sure this will definitely affect how much time I get to spend on side projects so developing some kind of rhythm will be key.

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting--but I'm super proud of all the stuff I got done this year. Here's looking forward to 2017 as a new father!