f5n : 2012 in Review

2012 comes to an end, might as well think about what happened last year.

WoW: Cataclysm (PC) - first few months of the year
WoW: Mists of Pandaria (PC) - came out in September, fourth expansion (Am I playing this game for 7 years now? Seriously?)
SW:TOR (PC) - Launched in late 2011, was subscribed until March.
Runes of Magic (PC) - more meh than yay
Rock Band/Guitar Hero (various titles) (Xbox360) - I think I like LEGO Rock Band the most.
Skylanders (Xbox360) - Awesome
Diablo III (PC) - I liked Diablo 2 better, but was a nice experience in the summer
Ingress (Android) - I seem to live and walk in the most remote parts of Munich... not so much fun
Mirror's Edge (Steam) - Refreshingly different. Nerve-wrecking in a way.
Portal 2 (Steam)
WH40k: Dawn of War II (Steam)
Audiosurf (Steam)
Borderlands GOTYE (Steam)
WildStar Online - Signed up for the Beta, haven't heard back. Can't wait though.
MechWarrior Online Beta (PC) - Did not like it.

The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - I loved it, reminded me so much of Neuromancer and all the better Shadowrun novels.
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford - Reread it, it's quite ok. I especially love how Crockford points out all the flaws in JavaScript's design without blaming the people responsible.
The Joy of Clojure by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser - I learned so much from this book.
Steampunk - kurz & geek by Alex Jahnke and Marcus Rauchfuß - A nice introduction to Steampunk and one of the few O'Reilly titles in my shelf
Dubliners by James Joyce - My first Joyce book, and I really liked it.
A Short History of Nearly Everything (German version) by Bill Bryson - Birthday present by my employer, loved every page of it.
Expert C Programming by Peter Van Der Linden - Reread it, not done much C coding, so probably didn't stick.
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - Awesome fun, picked it up in an airport bookstore after my boss had recommended it a lot earlier.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter - There was a new subreddit to have a guided readthrough, but not very far into the book I kind of lost interest :(
Fray, Vol.1 by Joss Whedeon - Buffy comic

Buffalo AirStation WZR-HP-G450H-EU - Blame Amazon Cyber Monday
Raspberry Pi - didn't do too much yet, but it looks really nice
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS16EG-K - cheap digicam for the big Asia trip, quite happy with it
Noppoo Choc Mini Cherry Mx-Black - I wanted to have a "real" mechanical keyboard. I actually have two of those now, but that's a different tale to tell...
Sennheiser PC 320 Gaming Headset - Finally replaced my old SpeedLink headset. I love this thing.
Soehnle 63750 electronic bathroom scales - Didn't help, still overweight :|
Roccat Kone - Replaced my dying Razer mouse after they discontinued the model I loved. Very happy with it.
A new main machine

The Hives - Lex Hives - Awesome.
Wintersun - Time I - OK.
Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites - Very good.
Deichkind - Befehl Von Ganz Unten - Good.
Amanda Palmer - Theatre is Evil - My third Kickstarter, and very happy to have done it.
Necrocomiccon - Mjölnir for Nothing - Awesome.
iGame Music Bundle - Very good.

Twitter - often, i.e. several times per day - responding to mentions and DMs asap
Facebook - once or twice daily, unless extremely bored or involved in a discussion, which doesn't happen often
soup.io - reading /friends maybe once or twice per month, for a few hours each - posting music videos every few days/weeks
App.net - see below
Tumblr - at times posting to special interest blogs (that no one reads), completely ignoring the community aspect
StudiVZ - did I cancel my account? Does that thing still work?
StayFriends - Oliver Thiel tries to get me back with his monthly? messages in vain.

IRC - nearly always connected, not much active usage, but very much passive, i.e. skimming logs or PMing people
Jabber - very often
Email - very often, but apparently much less than some other people - I don't know this "drowning in mails"
Twitter - often, see above
Facebook Messages - I usually respond to these 12-24h late :)
WhatsApp - got it installed and actually using it to communicate with about 3 people, yay

Joined the muCCC
Travelled a lot more by train than in any other year (if I'm not mistaken)
Started with Wing Chun
Tried using Mac OS X for the first time since 2001 - got a half-finished blog post prepared
Using TweetDeck (Chrome) as my main Twitter client nowadays
The Stack turned 1 year old in November
I only wrote 7 blog posts in 2012, and converted my old blog codeschmie.de to use telegr.am

Paid just shy of 10$ for pinboard.in - Absolutely happy
Joined app.net - I have no clue why. Let's pretend I was drunk?
Started using booking.com - excellent experience
Cancelled VPS at 2host.com - horrible service and performance
Cancelled VPS at prgmr.com - good experience, but didn't need it anymore
Got a VPS at de-punkt.de - excellent experience
Still got a low end box at proplay.biz - much better experience than 2011
For the first time in many years had problems with my primary hoster, Strato AG
Started using Evernote and Dropbox a lot more - Nothing important or secret there, but oh so handy sometimes
Light Table (Kickstarter) - Haven't had time to look at the previews :(

Readmill - hmm?
Streetspotr - I was terribly bored. Maybe this + Ingress = epic?
Adminium - some Heroku addon maybe?
New Relic - thanks for the shirt, but the product wasn't my cup of tea
Quote.FM - I got referred there but I don't see the point. Still using it a bit for The Stack
grove.io - looked nice, but I want a real application irc client
Wunderkit - it could have been useful, but not for me it seems
Spotify - annoying ads, wonky Facebook login, horrible UX, only when I really want to try a spotify link given by someone

PHP - mostly at work, hardly at home
Clojure - more learning, more using
JavaScript - after resisting for so long...
Python - trying not to get too rusty
Lua - Took over maintenance for a WoW Addon
Ruby - Started to dig a little deeper, mostly due to puppet, after a long aversion of several years
Java - Hardly used at all this year
Haskell - tried to give it another chance, the syntax is still irking me