It's a new year

Well... I woke up this morning to a new year. It doesn't feel much different to the last one tho:) I didn't really go out last night, I have too much happening in the way of web development, and I replaced all the image nav buttons with text-link ones on the main site. This makes the page load much faster, no preload images, and I think it looks a bit cleaner aswell. Someone even said that text links are given more relevance by Google, than graphic links, even on internal links, although I can't imagine the difference to be that great. Loading faster, less bandwidth, Im loving it already tho. In many ways, web design is going back to basics. People are realizing that making a page fast and efficient is much more important that making it visually striking. I loved the old ANSI BBS days, those graphics were so simple, and yet so functional, and used to be usable over a 9600bps connection.
Web surfers are unforgiving, fickle and critical, they will give your web page the flick in less than a second if it just doesn't suit them, and once they're gone, they're gone.
Mmmmmmm coffee.
Geez it's great not to have to go into the office for a few days. I have been working 6 days a week this year, and it's great to get a few days in a row to myself. I normally end up doing web pages anyway, from home, but it's totally different to having to go into work. I find I'm more creative aswell. It's easy to operate on the edge of burnout, and not realise your creativity is suffering. Designing web pages requires a good creative intuition, to come up with new ideas that are functional and look good, and are competitive. I'm going to work on not being so buggered all the time this year, I think the quality of work will impropve. Also to sort out this year is a decent car. I'm driving an old heap at the moment and can't wait to get into something a bit more fun. It's just a case of getting around to it. Im thinking a V8 Commodore station wagon, manual or something similar, just something big, powerful, and practical. I love sports cars, but I'll wait until I can afford to get one as a second car and take it out on weekends and race and things. After having one stolen, it's just not worth having one as a daily driver. As they say, nothing attracts dickheads like nice cars.
I watched the Sydney new year's eve celebrations on the Sydney harbour and fireworks on television last night. I thought it was great, I might try to get a hotel room in the city with a balcony overlooking the harbour for next year. The fireworks just get bigger and bigger each year. The mirrorball didn't seem to do much on TV, which was dissapointing, I love mirrorballs, I don't know why. The national anthem at the end wasn't as bad as the version they've been playing on the radio over the last couple of weeks. I don't know if they jazzed it up, or if the version that came out before was incomplete. I'm kinda surprised they still played it, they would have been better off not saying anything, and just playing the damn thing. The whole show all put togeather was absolutely magnificent as it is every year though.
Wishing you all happiness, healty, prosperity, and success for all your prusuits in 2005. I'ts going to be a hectic year for me I can see already. Hectic but good.