2010. Did we make contact? I have no idea, but a hell of a lot happened, I know that much. What was going on around here? Let’s see. I celebrated five years of marriage to my lovely wife, Marsha; we took a nice vacation to Vieques, Puerto Rico; we welcomed our 2nd daughter, Mila, into the world; I grew a beard; I wrote some music; I got better at JavaScript; I got promoted to lead front end developer at work; I built a modular synth; I bought a new audio interface; I bought some new headphones; I bought Max 4 Live; I built a pretty cool online scrapbook; I drank some beer. Some other things probably occurred that I can’t recall.  I spent the month of August by myself. I grew a beard back in January. You know, important stuff.

The big goal for 2010 I had set for myself was to write a song a month. Well, I didn’t quite get there, but I didn’t totally fail. I had a 50% success rate, which isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s not a passing grade or anything (I had a second child for god’s sake!), but I made progress. Progress is good. Carving away. Little by little. I learned some things, which is key. Constraints are a very good thing. Deadlines are a very good thing (sometimes). Song writing and song creation is not so easy. Continuous practice and repetition are the keys to creativity and improving your craft. It may not seem you like you’re improving day by day, but rest assured, over a period of time, you sure as hell are.

So what does 2011 have in store? I actually don’t know, believe it or not. What I aim to do though is continue writing music and learning my way around my modular synth and figuring out synthesis more. I believe I will stick with the song per month goal. It is not an overly ambitious goal, but it is not an afterthought either. I want to get better at song arrangement and composition. I’d like to create a song I feel good enough about to get it out on SoundCloud and pass around to friends.

I want to do a little more field recording. I was disappointed that the Blue Mikey 2 mic for iPhone turned out to not get such great reviews. I was hoping to use iPhone, along with the excellent FiRe recording app, as my field recording setup of choice since I always have my iPhone with me anyway. Wondering if I should try that mic anyway?

I also hope to spend some time digging into Max 4 Live. This is like opening Pandora’s box, but I am curious about sound design, the Live API, Processing.js, messing with video in an Ableton context, and other things I’m not even aware of yet.

I want to spend more time just listening to music. I know that sounds whacky, but it’s difficult to make time to just listen to music these days. I mean actively listen, not passively while doing something else (like work). I miss it.

From a web development standpoint, I’d like to iterate on my scrapbook project. I have a few ideas as to how to turn it into a more interactive “app” that people may enjoy. The iPad platform seems like it could be a good fit. But the desktop browser will work just as well.

I’d like to get a bit better at application design and object-oriented coding, at least as it applies to JavaScript. Well, PHP too, but that’s another matter. I’ve been working on a JavaScript-based media framework to support a handful of media players, such as a dynamic lead, carousel, photo galleries, audio and video players. It’s powered by jQuery and Ben Nadel’s excellent corMVC framework. I hope to begin rolling it out at work in the next month or so.

I also plan on taking a swing at design. I started a new design for my blog over the holidays, but the file got corrupted somehow, which made me sad, so I took a break. I intend on getting started back to that shortly. Once the design is complete I plan on building a new WordPress theme from scratch.

My other goal for 2011 is to take my family camping. Marsha and I love camping and we’re ready to introduce our daughters. We want to start them as soon as possible, so why not this year?

We also try to travel somewhere new each year. It may be Spain this time around.

I should probably exercise a little bit too. Time to get the bicycle out.

Well that’s enough about that, I could go on forever about things I’d like to do or get into, but ya gotta pick a few. I have some specific goals in mind for the year, and some more wide open areas I’d like to spend time exploring. Time to get out the project management software and prioritize.

Happy New Year.

Having a child is a wonderful gift, but it is no small task. Needless to say, my 12 songs project was temporarily interrupted, but I hope to get back on track for July.

Meet Mila Estrin Smith, born June 22, 2010 at 12:03AM