I thought why not upgrade the WordPress since I was a lot of versions behind. I first looked at the different steps that are required to upgrade to the new version. Just four steps:

1. Delete your old WP files, saving ones you've modified.
2. Upload the new files.
3. Point your browser to /wp-admin/upgrade.php.
4. You wanted more, perhaps? That's it!

Yes just four steps. You didn't even need to make a backup first it seams. I'm glad I did make a backup, specially of the database. So which are the troubles I had to overcome. The white page I just went to the blog's homepage, but saw nothing, yes just nothing. The management interface did work though. So when I went to the Design section I found out the theme doesn't work anymore. Not only this, it was also removed from the blog. Very strange, so I selected the WordPress default theme to have at least something online. The categories I though a not supported theme, that can happen. But when looking at the default page I saw a list of empty categories, yes empty categories only the amount of posts in each category was shown. This did make me feel a little bit angry, where are categories gone to? After some Googling I found out people who have the same people including this by hand solution. Beside the missing of the category names also the hierarchy is lost. I didn't fix the hierarchy because my new theme doesn't support hierarchical categories. The theme transition Because the failure of my old theme I got looking into a new one. So goodbye Connections Reloaded. Welcome Dreamplace.

During the Microsoft DevDays in May 2008 I found the book Blogging Heroes and bought it. Since I'm a blogger myself I thought I could learn a lot from the best appreciated bloggers in the world.
And yes this book is about the worlds finest bloggers. Bloggers like Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, Peter Rojas of Engadget and Eric T. of Internet Duct Tape have told their story.

The interviews covers things like monetizing, getting traffic and the enthusiasm in blogging. Although the blogs are very large with tens of thousands readers and a crew of 4 or maybe 10 people that can make a living of the blog, things I have got no ambition to. Still things like "Think every once in a while about you goals for blogging" or "Before blogging think about at least half a dozen articles before even considering blogging". Just a very good read for everyone involved in blogging.

My blog

I restarted blogging on the first of July. Since that day I posted 72 articles, this is actually the 1st one of the new year.  I wanted my blog to consist partly of posts about Life and partly about Technology. I think I have succeeded in this.

 

After all I've made a lot of posts in the first months and stabilized the amount of posts in the last three months.

Life

2007 was also the year of Lifehacking for me. As this hype already exists for some years now, I just got into Lifehacking for the first this year. I blogged about topics like the Law of Attraction and Time Management.

Technology

This year I learned a lot about Inversion of Control and besides this I studied some on the new technologies by Microsoft like WCF, WPF, WF, but also Astoria (now know as the ADO.NET Data Services) and MOSS 2007. But everything still was very basic, but there are too many new technologies released by Microsoft to be an expert in everything. But some basic understanding on these technologies is interesting for me to know.

Also this year was the year of publications. In September this year an article from my hand about Dependency Injection was published in the Dutch .NET Magazine. I also wrote two other articles with a former college.

This year I also completed my MCPD Enterprise Application's certification. I'm not sure about what to do next year, but more on that in a different post.

My private projects

As I did in the past, I also started some small private projects this year. And the same as in the past no project did really make it to web. Like the Personal Performance Indicators project and the Local History project. I haven't had much time to work on those projects, but they aren't dead.

My private life

This year I moved from The Hague in The Netherlands to Zoetermeer in The Netherlands. Besides this I also changed jobs and now work for Rubicon. I still love working for Rubicon every day, haven't found anything negative! Also this year I married my lovely wife Yvonne.

A lot of changes this year. And ahead a new year, the year 2008. More about 2008 in a post next year.

Note: I made all the charts using Google Chart API.

I just read an article on lifehacker.com about Translation in Google Talk. It works very good. Only the last translation should have been "Do you speak Dutch?", very strange the translation was actually a change in language even in the text.

This feature from Google could really help me since English isn't my mother language. You can just invite the bot to your Google Talk account. Use language codes. For example Dutch to English is done by the bot nl2en@bot.talk.google.com and English to French is done by en2fr@bot.talk.google.com.

Bizner bank has published some Podcasts about Entrepreneurship. They are in dutch and Ben Tiggelaar speaks on those Podcasts. The podcasts have the book "Dromen, Durven, Doen" (or translated: Dream, Dare, Do) in mind. An overview of those podcasts in dutch:

1. Voor de starters: Ondernemen...?
2. Voor de ondernemers: Ondernemen...?
3. Wat heb je als ondernemer aan je oude schoolrapporten?
4. Hoe weet je welke keuzes je moet maken als je binnenkort wilt gaan starten?
5. Durf jij je dromen over een eigen onderneming ook echt uit te voeren?
6. Doen! De belangrijkste stap voor een nieuwe onderneming.