retrospective

In 2020, I got serious about my YouTube channel after seeing explosive growth from a series on the Turing Pi Raspberry Pi cluster. Early in 2021, the success of my books and the YouTube channel resulted in me quitting my last paid consulting gig, and focusing all my time on Hosted Apache Solr, writing, and making videos.

In 2021 the channel went from just under 100,000 subscribers to 253,000 (and counting!):

Video views went from about 6 million to 21 million, as a few of my Raspberry Pi-related videos took off (though I wouldn't consider any of my videos 'viral'—most get a slow 'wave' of growth if they get popular).

This is old news to some, but my wife and I are expecting a baby early in this new year. Please say a prayer that everything goes well! (No, we don't know the gender; and no, we will not be sharing pictures or other info publicly at this time, Mr. Zuckerberg's thoughts on privacy notwithstanding!)

On another note, I have at least five large bits of writing that I'm still working on—a photography book, a few articles and tutorials for this site, and some other things. Hopefully I'll be able to find some time to get thoughts on paperscreen soon!

For now, check out some of these popular bits from 2012 you may have missed: