Back in the tail end of 2010 I put a reading list together for 2011 with the intention of reading a book a month. Inevitably, it didn’t go well. I made some reasonable progress and added some more books to the list as 2011 progressed, but ultimately I didn’t achieve what I set out to do. What has surprised me, though, is that I do seem to be happy-ish with the changes reading some books has made to my life.

Of the original 12 books, I read three. That’s a one in every four. Poor show. I read an additional six books on top of the these original three, which sort of implies that my initial choices weren’t a good fit for the year, or the year brought things that I wasn’t expecting and it all got a bit derailed. I’ve read virtually nothing in the last few months, mostly down to to poor spare time planning on my part, but the mood hasn’t really been conducive to relaxing with a book. Perhaps that will change, soon.

A knock-on effect of this is that my 43 Things list is rather top-heavy with 13 books to read. This selection of 13 tomes represents a small part of the unread section of my bookshelf, but the point of a to-do list is that there’s some progress…there’s little to no logic (with my brain wiring, at least) of having things that are unlikely to get done in a reasonable time frame, so my plan is to shift the reading off the list until I can get my act together and start reading again.

Here’s the current list of the books I want to read before I cull the list back:

…and after some housekeeping:

That’s a single-figure reading list that represents about 1% of the total number of books in the house, so it’s unlikely I’m going to get bored. I’m not overwhelmed by the ‘in’ pile, or even the many books on the shelf that need to be read, but I would like to be a more practised reader of paper books.

This blog post has been a long time coming. Apart from the ever-so-slightly clichéd tack of a year-end update, I’ve had so many things whizzing through my mind that – frankly – I’m surprised I’ve even got this far. Truth is, I don’t know how it’s going to pan out and I know I’ll forget some stuff that I’ll have to tack on at a later time. This post focuses on websites.

It would be very remiss of me if I didn’t start by admitting I’ve neglected emmaandpete.com over the year. Being my own worst critic it’s easy for me to pinpoint a bunch of things that I want to change and improve across the site. With that in mind, here’s a sit-rep:

The Cooper Acres project is almost 500 days old and is, for the meantime, on long-term hiatus. The idea of a self-build project in the next few years is a pipe dream. It’s still something I want to pursue, but financial constraints are such that it’s not going to be soon. I’ll be taking the link down from the sidebar on the next website housekeeping run, likely in January. I’m in two minds about leaving the content orphaned or ditching it completely. With my SEO hat on, I’m very mindful of just killing content off without thinking about it, lest the Google robot be sad when it can no longer find my pearls of wisdom.

The two blogs (this one and Emma’s) are also up for the chop. One of the thoughts that’s been buzzing around in my head is to merge the two together into a single blog for the site. The sticking point is the numbers: excluding the Pragmatism podcast series, I’ve racked up a piffling 45 blog posts since the start of 2008, the majority of which aren’t worth the server power that’s required to get them on a screen. That’s poor to the point that it’s embarrassing. Emma’s managed about a hundred over the same time period. The other thought that’s getting more traction is to zap the blogs on this site and have them running on our own personal websites instead. That is to say, Emma’s stuff will migrate to emmacooper.org and my stuff will end up on the currently-shuttered petecooper.org – I’m even less attached to the content of my blog than the Cooper Acres project, so it’s more likely that old blog posts will be dumped. The podcast series, Pragmatism, will stay, as I’m cool with that. It’s possible it may be resurrected with the advent of a bit more focus on petecooper.org. Emma’s site has had a facelift this year and the results have been very encouraging. More on site construction and development later in this post. Gut feeling right now is to migrate both blogs away from this site and make more of our coupons and offers.

The coupons and offers we have associated with the show are saving many people a bunch of money, but so far I’ve not managed to capitalise in getting them out to a wider audience, which is a golden opportunity for some real game-changing things to happen. The presentation leaves a lot to be desired and that’s second highest priority for the next phase of the website.

…which leads me to the Emma and Pete Show, the top priority. While it’s not strictly a website thing, it’s the focus point of this site and things that aren’t associated with the show detract from the overall site experience, I feel. I still love doing the show (I’m sure Emma can say the same), and I want to do it more often. 2012 will be the year we get our act together and move away from the month-end squish catch-up session that always seems like we’re racing against the clock. Lots has changed in Cooper Towers over the last 12 months and, all being well, we’ll have lots to chat about in the coming years, too. I’m trying to move away from the self-imposed action plans of accomplishing something in a given (arbitrary) timeframe and I’ve done really well with this over the last year (see, even that sentence has some irony), so I see no harm in saying we’ll do more shows next year and not just the half dozen a month you’ve become accustomed to. It’s hard to put a number to it, but understand that I’m serious when I say I’m working on getting the things in place for more shows on a more reliable schedule.

Onto other websites, now. I mentioned petecooper.org earlier in this post, and it is my intention to have that as a personal website. In addition, I’ve also nabbed petecooper.co.uk which I’ve earmarked as a photography website, either as a straight up business site or a portfolio of sorts. The fine points of both are yet to be decided, but they’ll both be live, ready (and never completely finished) in 2012.

I rebuilt emmaandpete.com this year, then I built emmacooper.org, then I did a substantial e-commerce website job for a friend of mine that took over every working hour of my day and other things suffered as a result of my single-mindedness. And now, I’m pooped. My relationship with web design and construction is very love-hate; I am intrigued by the innards of how things work and the psychology of the browsing experience. I’m not good at it. I’m pernickety about how I make things and I have fundamental gaps in my knowledge (Javascript, PHP) and skill set (design) that prevent me from really enjoying it. The time involved with learning these things in a timely fashion is just not available or forthcoming. It’s a balance, for sure, but I have good feelings about what petecooper.co.uk and petecooper.org are going to look like. Every time I do a site build I learn new things, vow that I’ll never do it again, and occasionally threaten to get a proper job. Then something drags me back in and I’m hooked. The current wormhole that I’m getting deeply into is an unholy trinity of HTML5 Boilerplate, 960 Grid System and JQuery – wish me luck. I foresee many late nights in front a glowing Mac screen – which I think I’m OK with if I can balance ‘em with late nights away from my Mac.

More of 2011 in review soon.

Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: It’s all about balance and books. The last show for a while. Thanks for listening.

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Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: A good day was had by all. I know, you weren’t expecting that, were you?

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Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: What to do when the days are getting shorter and the nights are drawing in. College? Computer?

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You can also listen at Mevio if you prefer.

Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: Today was a struggle – this is take four.

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You can also listen at Mevio if you prefer.

Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: The day after our planned London trip – find out how it went.

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Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: It’s London D-Day – a short, pre-trip episode.

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Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: The blame game, and progress on the breadmaking task.

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Pragmatism is the candid audio diary of Pete Cooper. Stellar stuff, don’t you know. No ads. No swearies. No music.

In this episode: We’re annoying each other – and we’re really good at it.

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