New Year's Resolutions...from last year

I was poking around the folders of stuff on my computer and found my list of resolutions for 2012. Which, ironically, was made in April 2012 rather than January. Let's see if I met any of them, shall we?

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS 2012

Personal Life Resolutions

1. Grow closer to God through increased Bible study & prayer.

2. Be independent or closer to it by the end of the year.

3. Do something about my weight.

I don't think I fulfilled any of these last year. Maybe #1, but I'm not sure.

Writing Resolutions

1. Finally revise Darkly Bound

2. Update my writing website

3. Work on my craft in general.

4. Work on networking & possibly submission

I definitely did NOT do number 1. Darkly Bound remains unrevised. I hope to remedy that in March by doing National Novel Editing Month. 4 I didn't really fulfill either. 2 I sort of fulfilled; I did update my site minorly, but not the way I know I was thinking of when I wrote this list. 3 is the only one I truly fulfilled, since I did NaNoWriMo and stuff.

Web Design Resolutions

1. Finish my Web Design & Development certificate

2. Become more well-versed in CSS & PHP.

3. Launch Sparkle Moon on the web

4. Finish missing sections of Myu Corner

5. Change Myu Corner layout, blog theme & incorporate blog RSS feed

6. Work on Anime Guide Database

7. Work on Starry-Dreamer Galaxy (Liquid Mercury, Ayeka's Palace, etc)

8. Learn more graphic design

2012 was the year I finished my web design certificate and was hoping to find a job in web design, which is why this list is longer than the others. So obviously I fulfilled #1. #3 I planned on doing but ultimately gave up on as a lost cause. #4 did not get completely done in 2012, though I am working on it to this day. #5 didn't happen; I had to re-start the blog and have not yet incorporated its RSS feed into the site (I'm still trying to figure out how to do that), and I haven't changed the layout from the original one, a very pink one with an iframe - one that was ok for what code I knew in 2009, but which is no longer acceptable to me (or probably to any web design-savvy person).

#8 did not happen on any consistent basis. #7 did happen to an extent; like Sparkle Moon, I ultimately gave the resurrection of Ayeka's Palace up as a lost cause, but Liquid Mercury and Come Fly With Me (a fanlisting for the TV show Pan Am), the other two sites planned at the time for "The Starry-Dreamer Galaxy" (my name for the collective umbrella of my starry-dreamer.net subdomains), did happen. Eventually I closed Come Fly With Me due to lack of interest from the net and declining interest from myself. But Liquid Mercury is still up: http://mercury.starry-dreamer.net. I need to edit the home page for the Galaxy to reflect these changes (and make it visible in mobile browsers; it's not fully visible now in mobile browsers cause the main part was done in Flash).

#6 refers to an ongoing anime/manga episode guide wiki project I am working on. I did not get much work done on that in 2012, other than starting guides for two shows I was watching in early 2012: Futari wa Pretty Cure MAX HEART and Inuyasha. My intent was to finish some guides to start the database off with, and then add guides as necessary. I still haven't tried "working" for some wikis to learn the ropes of them yet, though, like I'd planned, so the wiki is far from prime time yet.

#2 didn't really happen either, but then it was a pretty vague goal. Although in 2012 I launched my first full-blown site that included PHP elements (PokéSideGames).

Other Resolutions

1. Learn to draw manga-style.

2. Improve my French.

3. Explore other video-making programs.

4. Explore careers at Career Center & pin down one.

#1 refers to a challenge where I was going to go through the "learn to draw manga" books I have and post my drawings from them every day on my Tumblr. Yeah, that didn't happen. But I have done drawings from those books, and you can see some of them on my DeviantArt, which I launched in July 2012. I have more drawn than are posted on there; I just need to scan them.

#2 didn't happen. At least not in an active way.

#3 was another sort of vague goal. I did learn a little of Final Cut Pro in my Interactive Media Production class in Spring 2012, but unfortunately, I can't use it on my laptop because it's a Mac-only program and I have Windows. I tried to install Adobe Premiere (the closest Windows equivalent) on my computer, but it requires a 64-bit OS, which I don't have, so it didn't work. Actually I haven't made videos for a long time; I've actually been more or less boycotting YouTube since their one update that made it impossible for you to delete videos from your subscriptions after watching them (you used to be able to click a little x in the corner of the preview image for the video in your feed, but you can't do this anymore, and despite how many people have complained about this, Google has not provided any help or tried to fix the problem).

I'm not sure what #4 was about. I've done career research before at MiraCosta, and as an Alumni Association member I think I still have access to the career resources at Cal State's Career Center. So I'm not sure what I was thinking with that one.

As for my resolutions for this year, they're in the previous post.

Good night!

P.S. I fiddled around with my template to make the blog title and description prettier and more readable. Enjoy!