The year that was 2012.

2012 was a year of transition. In two bullet points, the transition was this:

• I sat my PhD viva on January 11th. I passed with minor corrections, basically the best outcome one would ever hope for from their viva. (A pass without corrections is possible, but implies a perfect dissertation. A dissertation is so complex that perfection is usually unattainable.)
• I started working with Boundary on March 4th. This involved a slow transition while waiting for visa approval, initially involving working remotely in Glasgow, to ultimately moving to San Francisco on November 11th.

In terms of travel, most of my travel time was spent in San Francisco, for work. So that’s not real travel. The only other places I really went to were:

• Orlando, albeit primarily the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista for INFOCOM 2012 to present a paper. While I was there, I made sure to hire a car and drive the 60 miles to visit the Kennedy Space Center, which was pretty amazing.
• Helsinki, for SIGCOMM 2012, which was such an amazing city to revisit for a week.
• Istanbul, for some actual vacation time. This was the best trip, which involved a hop from Glasgow to San Francisco, then straight to Istanbul, then flying in to London the day before my appointment with the US embassy to get authorisation for my visa. Everything went amazingly smoothly.

Additionally, 2012 included the best photograph I think I’ve ever taken:

Finally, I kept on running and hit some of my best times into August, but faltered toward the end of September with vacation, then moving country, then the festive season. 2013 marks a return to fitness!