Whew. Sorry for the lack of no new blogs. Things have been so crazy lately.

Anyway, it’s the last day of 2011 today!

Blimey, that was fast. I’m not kidding. Where the hell did the year go?

Anyway, I think I’ve started a bit of a personal tradition here. Every New Year’s Eve, I like to make a list of all of of my personal achievements this year. Not only is this mainly so I don’t forget half of the crazy crap I’ve subjected myself to this year, but it’s also a nice way to set the benchmark on what I must do better at next year.

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Hahahaha… I was sort of dreading this day… in a way. But since you can’t really stop time. It’s finally here.

I’m officially a quarter of a century old.

As I always say when I write these blogs, I feel a bit weird. I’m mid-freaking-twenties now.

Anyway… as far as birthday celebrations go, this weekend could not have been more epic. It started off at an izakaya on Friday night, followed by karaoke afterwards.

Saturday was a trip to a Microsoft-sponsored Windows Phone development workshop (so… nothing but food and code for a day ), which was epic. And Sunday (birth day actual) culminated in a JET Alumni-sponsored Aussie hanami event followed by a quiet dinner with the family at a Japanese restaurant.

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Well now. Given recent events, I think it’s fair to say that I feel like I understand the intricacies of international copyright law a little more than I did a couple of months ago. After my communications with the TPCI lawyer, coupled with some readings from some other sites concerning similar copyright cases, I thought I’d write up a bit of a clarification of how this stuff appears to work.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, and the following text is my own supposition. It shouldn’t be taken as absolute truth, and if you see something you know is incorrect, please let me know.

So, the crux of the matter is that ‘fair use’ is a rather convoluted and complicated ‘convienience’ clause added to copyright law, with the original goal of (subjectively) ‘limited’ re-use of copyrighted material without needing to get the original holder’s permission primarily for purposes of  things like critical commentary or research. With the existence of the fair use clause, this basically means that most forms of unauthorized copyright usage go from ‘blatently’ illegal to ‘potentially’ illegal.

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Today marks the end of an era in the Oliver household. After more than a decade of keeping a clutch of budgerigars as pets, Tiggles, our last remaining survivor passed away.

It feels kind of weird. We’ve had budgies in the house since 1997, always chirping away, and now, everything seems so much more quiet.

Tiggles was without a doubt one of the most ‘unconventional’ budgies we’d had. We honestly did not expect her to survive 6 months, let alone 10 years after what she went through. She was a tough as nails bird.

Tiggles was born in a separate clutch from the rest of our birds. If I recall, she was from a clutch of 2, however we had to separate her from her mother after the mother killed the other one (Still not sure why ).

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I was thinking about not writing one of these this year. They’re a bit cheesy and maybe a slight bit of an ego-trip.
But I figured what the hell. It’s good to reflect on what you’ve done in a year and I’ll have forgotten this all by this time next year..

So… without a doubt, I think 2010 has been the most awesome year of my life, thus far.

A few things I’ve done this year included:

• Volunteering at 3 separate community events (Waicon, Supanova, RFLAN) and making a pile of new mates and contacts in the process.
• Released my first iPhone app and started work on two more.
• Went to my first ever developers conference and had an absolute blast
• Went to Japan, made more friends, and saw some parts I’d never seen before (Roppongi. 3AM. )
• Generally, gone out and partied way more than any other year.

Suffice it to say, I feel like I went and got out there a bit more than any other year thus far. And enjoyed every minute of it.

To all my mates, have a very Happy New Year. All the best for 2011, and have a safe, responsible and fun time tonight.

-Tim