Gosh, is that the time already? It's nearly 2005 and I haven't even got my shoes on yet. Or something.

In principle, I don't hold with New Year's resolutions. It doesn't seem sensible that you should wait for a particular time of year and then look around for suitable ways to change your behaviour; it seems far more sensible to me that you should be constantly in a frame of mind in which, when a need to change your behaviour does present itself, you're ready to recognise and act on it no matter what the time of year.

Given this attitude, it was probably a deliberate Act of Murphy that more than once in my past I have recognised just such a need during the second half of December, and hence ended up with a New Year's resolution in spite of my dislike of the concept. Murphy likes to show off his good aim, I've found.

But not this year; this year I am blissfully resolution-free. Unless, of course, something springs to mind in the next four and a half hours, which now I think about it would be just Murphy's style.

I am also eagerly awaiting the expiry of my resolution from last New Year, which was to avoid buying any expensive electronic gadgets in 2004 in order to plough lots of money into my savings to repair the dent made by changing cars. I'm delighted to report that the dent is almost entirely repaired, and I can therefore declare the resolution a success. Which means, of course, that if I last even three days into 2005 before ordering a gadget it will be quite a surprise :-) First on the list is a Mac, I think, and then possibly a colour laser printer…

I also feel a sudden urge to review the year, but I'm not entirely sure how. It seems to me that my life has been pretty much the same this year as it has been for the last several: I've been struggling to cram into only 24 hours a day a full-time job, a social life, free software, and sleep. So I suppose I could do worse than break it down into those components:

Job. Pretty good, I'd say. I've done some things at work this year that I'm really quite proud of. Particularly cool was a piece of work that happened in the last few months, which I suggested almost as a joke (in the sense of ‘if we did this it would solve lots of problems, but I don't seriously expect we'll have the time or the will’) and was surprised to find it leapt upon with great enthusiasm; colleagues pitched in and did their bit with terrifying willingness while I was still worrying about whether I'd got the design right or whether I was wasting all their time; but thankfully my fears proved to be groundless, and a startlingly short couple of months later the whole thing was working, apparently without problems, and even the colleague I normally argue with about everything is saying good things about it.

Social life. Same as ever, pretty much. Love life has been slightly more interesting this year than the last two, but since its natural state appears to be a flatline that isn't saying too much :-)

Free software. Lots of that. Three PuTTY releases (two of which were panic security fixes, which is still a new enough experience for me that I feel honest guilt rather than jaded acceptance that these things happen). Several brand new pieces of software, my desktop puzzle collection probably foremost among them. Another PuTTY release probably due soon, after we've given some reasonably serious testing to all the new features I've just finished writing. Definitely a good year there.

Sleep. Mediocre at best.

Right; that's quite enough waffling. It's New Year's Eve and getting perilously close to party time, so I'm off :-)