So it’s been nearly a month. I had intended to write a review of 2013 over the Christmas break but between travel and family I decided it better to just let that slide and ease into the new year.

We were in Chicago for Christmas and Nashville for New Year, arriving home about a week ago. After a year that involved quite a few trips across the atlantic I’d become fairly blasé about jet lag, but repeating the journey with small children has been a reminder of how bad it can be. Which led to a heavily caffeine-dependent week.

I got my daughter one of the science museum’s “brush robot” kits for Christmas and she got me a Makey Makey kit. Since she had Monday off school and I was able to take it off work, that was the ideal time to experiment with them both. Both kids are quite smitten with the new toys, and the nearly-two-year-old has figured out how to switch the brush robot on and off. Hopefully there’ll be a lot more fun to come with those.

On the work front it was a week of yet more interviews. We’ve just wrapped up a round of interviews for junior developers and were delighted with a great group of candidates. There are some tough decisions to make but we should be making some offers this week. (We’re currently advertising a developer job if anyone reading this is interested).

We also had a great visit from the Estonian government demonstrating their X-Road software. It’s really exciting seeing the appetite for collaboration from people in a whole variety of governments and always good to learn from others’ experiences. Another thing I hope 2014 will bring more of.