Welcome to White’s of Henry Lane, successor to my better known Apeshallnotkillape.org, which did me good duty for some five years. Unlike my previous site, I’m going to actually write long articles for this one. For links to interesting stuff, I think we can all agree that the del.icio.us community has that covered.

This is a terribly long first post.

I want to start off with a look back at 2004. I know I’m a month late with this, but it took me longer to get up and running with my new host than I’d anticipated. (That was my fault, not theirs. They’ve been fantastic.) So the single most important thing that happened to me in 2004 was my marriage to my wonderful wife, Michelle. I don’t really get why its so popular to be so down on marriage. I heard an unbelievable number of negative things in the year I was engaged about what I had gotten myself into. If you’re considering marriage, and are feeling apprehensive because your buddies are cracking “your funeral” and incarceration jokes, tell your buddies to stuff it. Nothing in this life is truly perfect, but marriage comes pretty close. To paraphrase PG Wodehouse: “Get Married. Its the only life.”

This was also the year that I became serious about my Lose Weight Exercise. I was a health fanatic in high school, and was pretty active through much of university. I could eat pretty seriously, since I was doing things like biking home from school via a route that went up and down the Niagara Escarpment, or walk from Waterloo to Kitchener to go to work. When I started working full time at one single desk job, most of that went out the window. One day I looked at myself in the mirror and was shocked to discover I was fat. That is what happens when you work 80 hours a week, and eat nothing but restaurant food. I went from a 36- to a 42-inch waist in three years, and stayed between 38 and 42 for three years.

Now I’m under a 38, and trending downwards. I tell you this: its both harder and easier than you think to make this happen. Look, this isn’t Extreme Makeover-scale Lose Weight Exerciseloss, but its part of an improved lifestyle. The journey of a thousand miles, and so forth. I’m going to post on my methods later.

I also got a real grown up bag this year. Its a lovely leather and nylon messenger bag that I dropped serious and clear hints about around Christmas time. There comes a point in a man’s life when he really needs to ditch the promotional giveaway $5 cases and get something grown up. This seems to go hand-in-hand with shoes that need polishing, shirts that have buttons, and swapping Goretex for wool in the winter wardrobe.

Rock was a lovely rediscovery for me. Back about my first year of university I turned my back on all things guitar for electronic music, especially the artists on the Ninja Tune label. I was sick of the pretentious brooding in rock, and wanted something a bit more positive. I also needed something less distracting to listen to while I worked. This year, though, thanks to a post on Boing Boing, I discovered Grandaddy. I ended up buying several albums. Then I bought some pop cheap from AllOfMP3.com. And the Matador 15 year anniversary album. Rock has its place. There’s something about the drive that can really get me juiced up in the morning, and I really enjoy walking while listening to it. While 90% of my music collection remains electronic, and classical and jazz still outnumber my rock CDs, it was great to realize there’s a guitar-playing world out there past what you hear on the Mix. If you’re even remotely interested, go buy “Matador at Fifteen.”

I moved into a co-op (on Henry Lane Terrace, if you’re wondering about the site name) this past year. Michelle had been living here since the summer, and I became a member just before we married. I moved my stuff in while she was staying with her parents in the days before the wedding. While a co-op isn’t for everybody, I really like it. For one thing, the rent is very affordable, and our area is great. What’s really nice is feeling like you have neighbours, not just people next door. Michelle and I both sit on committees, and we’ve got to know some of the inner workings of our building, which gives you a sense of belonging. Most off all, I bid farewell to my jerk landlords and their thuggish sons. No more spotchecks to make sure I’m keeping up with the dishes, and no more drunken teens urinating on my door and speculating as to how much they could fence my stuff for if they burglarized the place. And really: can you put a price tag on that?

Finally, what retrospective would be complete without a list of favourites?

Favourite movie of 2004: The Incredibles. There was an interview with a Pixar animator who said he finds it amazing what people take away from their movies. He said something about how it often acts as a mirror of individuals’ personalities. In addition to being one of the most visually appealing movies I’ve seen in a long time, The Incredibles stood out for me as a tale about the power of having a vocation. Life was bland and a bother for Mr. Incredilbe and his family while they were ignoring their calling. When they accepted that they are called to be superheroes, things weren’t easy but man: did they turn their lives around. So I guess Pixar guy would be able to peg me as someone who’s casting around a bit to find his life’s work.

Favourite album of 2004: Bebel Gilberto’s self-titled album. I was lucky enough to snag an import copy with the bonus track “Up and Away”. I could probably dump everything else off my iPod and get along quite well for a while. I hesitate to describe this album as “perky” or “up-tempo”; these words don’t seem mature enough about it. This is good, happy music from someone who seems really in love with music. I find this is pretty charactersitic of a lot of these bossa nova/electronic artists that are coming into vogue, but no one can touch Gilberto. Put her CDs on, and feel good.

Favourite game of 2004: Halo. The box for my XBox version of Halo says it was the “Game of the Year” in 2002, but I played it for the first time in 2004. And I think the PC version came out in 2004 … so there.

There are a lot of people who call this game overhyped. Granted, there are some pretty lame parts. I hate the library. I knew it was coming when I replayed it on my XBox, so I set aside a chunk of time to do it. It was like a chore. Those bits just fill in time between fun and challenging firefights, and really great scenery. The people who are down on this game have conveniently forgotten how cool it was when you drove a Warthog into Halo’s interior for the first time. Or how incredibly cinematic the feel is of the level where you need to take the gravity lift to get into the moored Convenant frigate. Or coming in across an enemy beachhead from the open personnel bay of a dropship. No game has made me feel more like the hero of a good action movie than Halo. If you haven’t played it, you’re not doing yourself any favours. Its “value priced” now: hit Staples and buy it.

Favourite book of 2004: David Allen, Getting Things Done. I don’t care if you call me a bandwagon jumper. This is a system that works, and really helps you get things done. I ordered it from Amazon when I saw in mentioned in Cory Doctrow’s notes from NotCon. Danny O’Brien spoke on “Lifehacks”, the systems that super-productive geeks put into place to keep themselves super productive. I liked the techniques O’Brien’s subjects used, and figured if they were cribbed from this book, maybe it could work for me. I got an abridged version of “gtd” in place just before my wedding, and everyone could tell the difference. I went from having to ask my then-fiancee for reminders as to what I was supposed to be doing to someone who had everything organized as miniprojects. I blew those projects out of the water even while maintaining a stupid-busy work schedule.

I’ve fallen off a little bit, but am progressively bringing organizational elements back into my life. Its already making a difference.

Favourite site of 2004: Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders. My venerable B&W G3 shuffled off this mortal coil this year, and I really didn’t have the scratch to replace it. I’m almost all Windows, now, and was getting along okay until Mann opened this site. He ties gtd, serious productivity, analogue and Mac hacks together so well its enough to make me go buy a Mac mini. One project I’m considering is making a 43 Folders Mac-to-Windows translation site, but some stuff — like a Windows Quicksilver equivalent — just isn’t out there.

Favourite web app of 2004: Gmail, Bloglines and Del.icio.us. Three way tie. Gmail is still sort of a closed beta, but I think everyone who wants an account has one by now. I was lucky to get in pretty early, and was so impressed I redirected all my mail there. I know some privacy nuts will say “hey, I’m never mailing you again”, but the whole privacy invasion thing is way overblown. If you’re not encrypting everything you email, I don’t want to hear a word out of you. I haven’t really got too far into the advanced features of Gmail, but just being able to save everything and search it is a real time saver. Of course, this is a bit less of an issue with all the desktop search apps out there, but they only live on one computer at a time.

Bloglines is the best web-based RSS reader I’ve found. It was what got me into reading the web via newsfeeds. I didn’t like having to import and export OPMLs, and try to guess what I have or haven’t read already. Using a web app keeps you from all that bother, and I can scan the sites I read in a dramatically shorter stretch of time now.

Del.icio.us is a bookmark manager. You post bookmarks to it instead of saving them in your bookmarks file. We’ve had these for a while. What makes Del.icio.us different is the “social” aspect. Its easy to see what other people have bookmarked, and how their bookmarks relate to yours. You can do it in search, through hand-editing the URL, or by clicking on links that take you to different views of the data that’s been added to the site. Its rather like having access to a massive “editors choice” of web sites.

This has been a long post. I’m surprised you’ve got this far. Comments are open; I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve posted.