OK, so new year as kinda gone but so much happened last year I guess it has spilled over in to 2014.

The Big Move

The start of the was dominated by my family's preparations for moving over to Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire.

This picture was taken one morning on my regular walk down to my office in the town centre. Slightly nicer commute than Streatham to London commuter train :o)

We were very excited about the move with only one main worry in my mind and that was that it would be a bit sleepy for us. On the contrary it seems it's quite a happening place. I've met some really great people and been involved in some fun creative and techy meet-ups.

It is quite a drastic change to London but it's ok, we haven't changed too much ... Tobi's love of chocolate cake is still going strong

Projects

I've been involved in some really great projects in 2013 for the likes of Premier Inn, Colgate, National Theatre, Jaguar and Land Rover.

HTML5 native apps

The National Theatre project was especially interesting, working with the amazing team at Play Nicely we built this media heavy iPad app using Cordova which is a cross platform HTML5 native app wrapper.

Writing

I was also able to finish my article for .net magazine's opinion column in August.

3D in the browser

I enjoyed working with United Studios Live and later Aqueduct on their music visualiser projects. I built two very different 3D audio visualisers utilising Three.js and the new WebGL/HTML5 Audio browser capabilities.

HTML5 MV* and Node.js

I have spent a so much time in 2013 working with client-side MV* frameworks (especially Backbone.js) and Node.js on the server. Being able to use these technologies together to build API's, websites and native apps has been very exciting and I really want to do more of it in 2014.

Giving back

This year has seen a little bit of a turning of the tides. I have been so blessed in the past with people mentoring me and teaching me how to progress in my career. Now I've begun reinvesting. I had the pleasure of having Robin Stanley with me for a week's work experience in October and have had the privilege of being able to run a JavaScript workshop and three meetup talks at AKQA, Bristol Skillswap and Bristech.

GigStamp

October saw the start of a new side project of mine GigStamp which is the check-in app for music fans. It's a little different to the other check-in apps out there because you get a something a little more personal back in the form of personally selected artwork stamping your checkin.

Here are some screen shots to give you a feel.

And here's an example of what a stamp could look like:

You can sign up to our mailing list to get news on it's release or follow @gigstamp on twitter or Facebook.

What I'm looking for in 2014

It's been a great start to the year already with loads happening. I'm keen to invest more in the new clients I picked up last year. Working remotely has been a change and I've really valued meeting new people who are passionate about producing great work. I'm also excited about doing more mentoring, training and am hoping GigStamp will continue to be a great source of creative freedom to play with.