Hello everyone, and Happy New Year! Unfortunately, I am contractually obligated (to myself, my standards, and nothing or no one else) to produce on this blog, on the first day of each month, a Best Of post featuring the best from the previous month. Unfortunately, Webmacster87.info was down for the majority of December, and so there were only eight posts on this blog during December, and two of them had to do with closing out the month of November! Anyway, this Best Of will be shorter than usual, probably, but here we go.

Personal Life (Yes, I simply copied this from yesterday’s post.)
December was both enjoyable but difficult at the same time. Courtesy of issues with my webhost, Webmacster87.info and phpBBWeekly.net were both down during December 4th-21st, and were also down intermittently during December 28th-30th as well. However, along with closing out the semester and studying for finals (including stressing over my oral and written finals for Spanish, the only one which would have a lasting impact on my semester grade), I was a busy little bee attending too many holiday events. There was the PTA Council holiday potluck on December 3rd and the PTA District holiday potluck on December 12th. Peace Club/Interact Club had a holiday party/card stuffing meeting on December 4th, and the orchestra concert (I am in orchestra this year) was the evening of December 4th, and ran until 10 PM. I went to the Downtown San Mateo Tree Lighting (their first annual) on December 7th, and the Caltrain Holiday Train at the San Mateo Transit Center on December 9th. On December 15th, I was one of the selected Aragon orchestra students to play with the Masterworks Chorale for their annual sing-along Messiah. On December 16th, Peace Action of San Mateo County awarded me with their first ever Student Peace Activist Scholarship, including a $1,000 scholarship that is going towards my Sojourn Trip in February. Finals were December 17-20, and after the last final on the 20th I did my annual holiday shopping bout.
After Christmas, on December 27th (Larry’s 18th birthday), I spent the day reorganizing and cleaning up the PreviewCast website.

Significant Blog Posts this Month

You Know Something? California Rocks!
Schwarzenegger is actually doing the right thing these days, even though the Gubernatorial election isn’t until 2010…

Politically Correct Santa
A Christmas message that takes an interesting look at the world we live in today.

My Official 2007 Year in Review
New Years is about looking back, and I spent a couple of hours looking back with this post.

Podcast Episodes

phpBB Weekly #041
Coverage of phpBB 3.0.RC8, the MOD Database Cleanup, plus a mini-tutorial on usergroups and registration settings in phpBB3.

phpBB Weekly #042
Rumors and other strange happenings are surrounding the possibility of an upcoming phpBB3 gold release, and I vent about how annoying it has gotten around here…

phpBB Weekly #043: Guest Johan Janssens of Joomla!
On this excellent episode, David and I celebrated the gold release of phpBB 3.0.0 “Olympus”. Plus, we welcomed guest Johan Janssens, Project Manager and Lead Developer of Joomla!, to tell us about RokBridge, the upcoming bridge between Joomla! and phpBB3.

PreviewCast #045SE: Returning Home for the Holidays
A special episode to wish everyone Happy Holidays and to prove to the world that PreviewCast is making a comeback.

phpBB Weekly #044: Best of 2007
A look back at 2007 featuring some of phpBB Weekly’s best moments from the year.

PreviewCast #046: Catching Up on Lost Time
A short post-holiday episode of PreviewCast featuring Larry and myself, with a cameo appearance from Skoker.

phpBB Weekly #045
I went solo on this episode and drove through all of phpBB’s major announcements from the year 2007, and also looked ahead into what we can expect from phpBB in the year 2008.

PreviewCast #047: A PreviewCasted Review of 2007
We look back at the funniest and most interesting moments of PreviewCast during the year 2007 with this special New Year’s Eve episode.

Elsewhere on the Internet
On December 21-22, I was on hour 23 of Tood Cochrane’s 24 Hour Podcast (on behalf of the Tech Podcast Network and Blubrry). I’ll be posting a special post on Webmacster87.info once that hour is made available by Todd.
On December 25, I appeared as a guest on Episode 15 of System Showdown, one of the members of the Tech Podcast Network.

What’s Up for January?
Ooh boy, is January going to be busy or is January going to be busy? It will probably only kick off the busiest year in my life thus far. Luckily the rest of this week is empty for a nice relaxing and hopefully productive remainder to Winter Break.
School starts up again on Tuesday, January 8th, and during January 10th-12th, I’ve got a State PTA Board Meeting in Riverside, CA. (Info about that will be forthcoming on W87.info.) Hopefully it will be better than the last State Board meeting.
The week of January 14-18 is Macworld, and it’s also the week that everything else in my life is happening. Monday the 14th will have a PTA Council meeting, Wednesday the 16th will have a 17th District PTA Board of Managers meeting.
I’m also planning to enter San Mateo’s 25th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Essay & Poetry Contest, and the judging for that is Thursday evening, the 17th (and the awards ceremony for that is Saturday, January 19th).
I am hoping to do a bit of Macworld activity this year, although probably mostly for my own enjoyment. Following my disaster last year relating to someone’s video camera, I’m not sure if I’ll be doing anything fancy for PreviewCast this year. However, I’m planning to be at Daniel’s live Apple Universe event on Tuesday the 15th. It’s also likely that the Aragon group may go to spend a day at Macworld again, which would be on Friday the 18th.
Finally, I am definitely planning to do the MLK Freedom Train once again on January 21st.
Add to all of that school work, podcasting, blogging, etc., and you get an idea of how this month will be.

Well, here’s to the beginning of a new month, and a new year!

Tags: archives, Articles, Best Of, blog, December, episodes, Podcasts, posts, Tech Podcast Network