wrapping it up
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Strict Standards: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /homepages/8/d91492417/htdocs/cattywampus/wp-includes/functions.php on line 52
Strict Standards: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /homepages/8/d91492417/htdocs/cattywampus/wp-includes/functions.php on line 54
Strict Standards: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/New_York' for 'EDT/-4.0/DST' instead in /homepages/8/d91492417/htdocs/cattywampus/wp-includes/functions.php on line 55
December 31st, 2008
I’ve had a pretty eventful year, all-told. Not least of which was due to my gigantic road-trip, and all of the fascinating people I met and recorded. I hope that I’ll be able to record more people in the future–I know there’s several characters right here in Portland that I’d love to get on the mic.
This year I also implemented a budget for my spending, and it has been successful beyond anything I had hoped. After setting it up in Excel, I tracked my spending every single day and made sure that I didn’t exceed what I was budgeted for any given month. I was able to get out of credit card debt, start saving money, and even learned about IRA’s, stock investments, and other good financial stuff largely thanks to Get Rich Slowly.
In February of 2008, my friends Aja and Mark asked me to help them out with The 11 Second Club, which offers a monthly animation competition for anyone and everyone who is willing to enter. I was given the responsibility of interviewing each month’s winner and publishing the interview on the site. It’s been a lot of fun and I look forward to more and more interviews in the months and years to come.
I have also begun to contribute to a part of the 11 Second Club called “Helpful Hints.” The “Helpful Hints” section offers thoughts and ideas for how to improve your animation and garner better results when showing it to peers whether offline or in the 11SC’s forums. I am honored to hear that people find my advice useful, especially since I know how much I struggled at the beginning–and I haven’t lost sight of how much of a beginner I still am. 
Some of you have seen the animation posts I’ve written on this blog in the past year or two. I plan to migrate (and in come cases, update) these posts over to the “Helpful Hints” section at the 11 Second Club. I will also be providing new content there as well–there are plenty more thoughts and ideas about animation than only what I’ve covered. In doing so, I will effectively stop writing for the Midnight Diaries. Oh, I may pop in now and again for teeny tiny updates, but for the moment I feel like this blog is one of those shoulder-weights that could bear to be jettisoned.
Thank you to all of my friends for reading, and to all of my readers who have become friends, as well as anyone who has been quietly amused by anything I’ve scribbled down since the blog began. It is time to move on.
Happy Two-Thousand-and-Nine everybody! May you have a brilliant year ahead of you!
- Eric
P.S. The Helpful Hints, as well as winners’ interviews, can all be found in the Resources section of the 11 Second Club. See you over there!
