The tradition of making a wrapup blog post continues… so what did I do in 2011 as reflected by my blog posts? Well, I…

• Foolishly made a list of 7 resolutions, the 3 easiest of which I completed… (I’ll let you decide which one those were) – hence learning not to do such a thing again
• Made a web-based tool to help glaucoma researchers compute AGIS visual field scores
• First ever trip to China and first ever trip to Tokyo
• Watched a movie about a certain social network which made me somewhat nostalgic for college
• Visited 1800s London, bought a new hat, and found out about my savage ancestors
• Made an impassioned plea to capital-seekers to stop sending horrible pitches to my inbox
• Continued my paper a month streak
• Was very thankful that nobody I knew personally was injured seriously during or immediately after the massive earthquake in Japan
• Changed web browsers (it’s a big deal!)
• Helped my firm kick off our Android focused A-Fund
• Found out I wasn’t the only one who adapted Hamlet into another format
• Said goodbye to a TV show that has kept me company since high school
• Bought a Android Honeycomb tablet and became a tablet convert
• Did some “serious thinking” at the De Young
• Made some recommendations for newbie comic book readers
• Started watching a new cartoon which scratched a certain superhero itch
• Bid farewell to Steve Jobs
• Mourned the loss of Google Reader’s social functionality and thus began using Tumblr (http://tumblr.benjamintseng.com/) as my poor man’s Google Reader substitute
• Read a military biography of one of my childhood heroes

All in all, a good year .

Happy New Year everybody! Here’s to a great 2012 and thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading (and continuing to read) my little corner on the internet!

(Image credit – Nassau Happening))

While at least one of my good friends is going to be appalled by my opinion here, I actually liked the movie. Does it paint an unrealistically evil/status-obsessed/backstabbing-prone portrayal of Harvard students and hence is kind of an insult to me? Yes. Was it a truthful account that can be used as a historical document one day? Probably not. Was it a action thriller which kept me at the edge of my seat? No. Do I enjoy the weird undertone that implies successful entrepreneurs are all geeks, antisocial, socially awkward, vengeful, jealous, addicted to drugs, paranoid, or some combination of the above? No.

So why did I enjoy it? Two reasons.

The first is purely nostalgia. It takes me back to my Freshman year, when the site had just started. I attended the Bill Gates presentation that was referenced there. I had friends in Kirkland house (where Zuckerberg built FaceMash and Facebook). I’ve looked over the Harvard student code of conduct that the Winklevoss twins tried to use with the Harvard President (who’s office I’ve walked by). Heck, after college, two of my friends went to work for Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who put money into Facebook in the movie. So the story, in its own weird way, is an odd re-telling of a world I inhabited – and so I can’t help but be drawn to it if only for that.

The second reason is that the portrayal of Zuckerberg just felt very natural. I don’t mean that I felt it was accurate – but Jesse Eisenberg delivered a performance of Zuckerberg which seemed human and believable. Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg was arrogant, vulnerable, brilliant, hard-working, misunderstood, misled, and eager – all at once – and that’s something which is hard to write and hard to portray. I personally could’ve done without the excessive stereotyping of geeks and Harvard, but if I view this as a purely fictional piece about the flawed people who put together something bigger than themselves, I think I can call myself a fan.

(Image credit)

I did it last year, the year before that, and the year before that. So, here’s another post dedicated to the past year of my life:

• Publically made a list of New Year’s resolutions and even did a mid-year check-in. So, how did I finally do?
  • Finish rev 1 of Benchside: incomplete, this resolution I have no excuse for as our team had made a fair amount of progress even at the mid-year point, but unfortunately we didn’t progress far enough for me to consider this even remotely in the green.
  • Read and blog one scientific paper a month: (mostly) complete, I have one last paper left to blog for the month of December (which will be posted soon), but so far I’ve kept it up.
  • Read Pawn in Frankincense and Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett: success, I was able to finish this at the mid-year point, courtesy of audiobooks and long commutes.
  • Meet at least 3 new people per conference I attend: (mostly) complete, I didn’t quite hit this target at every conference I attended (especially the one-day events where, for work reasons, I may have showed up late), but I will consider my foray into networking a relative success. I’m no social butterfly, but I’m no longer completely petrified in social settings.

  Not too bad, if I do say so myself. There are definitely areas for improvement, but I think I did all right for 2010

• I joined a petition to bring a little Northern California lingo to the scientific community
• I began a subscription to the Economist.
• I met a cute robotic seal at the Northern California Cherry Blossom festival.
• I bought a shirt to fight for at Forever 21
• I experienced the power of combining wifi-on-a-plane with Google Voice
• I visited and “participated” in the gorgeous Grounds for Sculpture museum in New Jersey
• I started the final season of Smallville with wide-eyed optimism
• I finally watched Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly series and Serenity movie and became a browncoat
• I did my first job change, moving from the world of consulting to the world of venture capital
• I found out about a very cute homage from an old Batman comic to Snoopy
• I was very flattered to make the acknowledgements list on my good friend Mike Lee’s policy paper on healthcare policy. Who knew blogging and chatting about healthcare when I should be doing other things at work could be so rewarding?
• I finally joined the smartphone generation and did a deep comparison of the DROID2 and Apple’s iPhone 4
• I found out I had something in common with Calvin & Hobbes
• I started listening to podcasts on my commute
• I disassembled an Apple TV just to see if I could
• I moved – into a place with internet connectivity issues which … eventually… sorted themselves out

What a year! Here’s to next year being as awesome as this past one. Happy new year everybody! And thank you for reading my little corner on the internet!

(Image credit)

As I did with 2008 and 2007, a couple of highlights from this blog for the past year:

• I made quite a few changes to my blog, including updating my Feedburner feed, installing Disqus and ShareThis, and moving the blog over to my own hosted site and making the jump from Blogger to WordPress
• Ended an extended >1 year stint on a major client
• Reviewed a video game designed to teach students immunology [Bench Press]
• Upgraded my Blackberry’s operating system
• Read quite a few books on business strategy, including: The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Race for a New Game Machine, and The Essays of Warren Buffett
• Was blown away by the new Star Trek movie
• Attended the 2009 Hot Chips conference on advanced chip technology
• Said goodbye to one of my favorite shows, Scrubs
• Learned the hard way that I should always be chained to my Blackberry
• Wished my favorite browser a happy 5th birthday
• Attended an international, week-long training program that my company holds for third year associates and got a new song stuck in my head
• Bid a sad farewell to Sheldon Dorf, the founder of the San Diego Comic Con
• Gave a belated birthday blog shout-out to my lovely girlfriend
• Had some fun with a camera in the de Young museum observation tower and courtyard
• Learned that music videos are the best way to sell PCR machines
• Checked out the new mummy exhibit at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
• Really enjoyed the new Sherlock Holmes movie

Happy new year, everybody!
(Image credit)