So here's where I promised to tell the world, or at least the microscopic percentage of it that might be reading this, how I plan to become a better me. Let's start with the relatively easy bit, becoming a better developer:

Developer related books to ingest :

• Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
• The Mythical Man Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering
• Joel on Software
• Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
• T.B.A.

Writing some code
As received wisdom goes, I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest practice makes, if not perfect surely at least better. So with this in mind, I shall :

• Develop and release one freeware application (and I don't mean another unit converter - something actually useful and reasonably bug-free!)
• Develop websites for 3 of the domains I own : XXxxXXXxxxxxxxxx.com, Xxxxxxxxxxx.com and XxxxxxxxxxxXxxxxxx.tv (I'll list the actual domain as I complete each)
• Resist the urge to believe small projects don't need formal source control.
• Thoroughly learn a new technology, either LINQ or WPF. (both would be nice)

The better Me bit...
Well it's pretty obvious, to me at least, that some improvements can be made to both my head and my waist :

• Prevaricating will be limited to a period of 8 hours (decision-making takes a little time, prevaricating wastes a lifetime!)
• Try to maintain better prespective, and not to obsess about things you can't control (know when to let go, and do so!).
• Try to be a better member of the community both online and offline (you can't complain about it if you're not part of it)
• Improve current fitness level and document accurately (and publically) the progress

So that's the short form of my goals, obviously there are gaps to be filled which I will do in due course. The web application, which is mostly complete, for tracking my fitness progress will be available by September 14 2007, and I'll post a link to it here.

There seems to have been a bit of a meme doing the rounds recently (Justice Gray gets the *blame* for starting it, and Scott Hanselman for highlighting it on his podcast), "Become a better developer in 6 months". Now that seems a laudable goal, and ineed one I could certainly subscribe to - so I'm going to throw my virtual headwear into the ring, but with some caveats.

Whilst becoming a better developer is certainly something I'd like to achieve, I think there are some additional "personal development" goals I'm going to throw in for good measure. If I'm going to the effort of actually documenting a task, might aswell make most use of it possible. So in addition to the developer goal, I'm adding a mental and a physical task too.

I'll flesh-out the more precise details of this campaign on Friday 7th September 2007 (... and in doing so I'm completing one goal, setting specific targets and acheiving them!!)