As 2012 opens its eyes to the world, resolutions are made and pens are firmly put to the parchment of the human spirit. Naturally, this is a time of year where thoughts that were recently full of darkness and despair may also feel the birth pains of new possibilities and the chance to look towards the surface of that great ocean that is the human condition and wonder if it is not too late to thrust oneself onto the nearest archipelago and try new things.

So it was that on January 1st i awoke with a mild hangover. Luce was already awake and within minutes of me opening my eyes she started badgering me for breakfast user her feminine wiles in the form of threats to castrate me if she wasn't fed soon. I obliged and went to do a special new year's breakfast which started with american pancakes, bacon and hash browns, and ended on an english note with lincolnshire sausages, tomatoes and black pudding. I had secured the pancake mix from a supermarket in primrose hill that had a surprising array of american foodstuff. The box contained a photo of uhura from star trek which was supposed to be a sign of quality therein.

As i was assembling the victuals i decided to take stock of my life and try to conjure up some kind of furtherfication of my career. My current job is "in flux" at the moment, the fallout of which has resulted in me being given a stipend to do some training. And here's the thing - it can be in anything, not just related to my current role. When i heard the news i immediately requested that i bit put on a course that enabled me to train as an assassin. I was then told by HR that careers involving the execution of individuals for financial gain were not covered by The Program. I then downgraded my strategy and requested to be trained up as a thief-taker.

"You don't really get what The Program is all about, do you?" said the girl from HR.

"All i know is that i want a career that is daring, yet lucrative. I want adventure. And lucre."

The HR girl wrinkled her brow in thought and then tapped some codes into the computer.

"How about a 3-week course learning Prince2?" she said. "Your colleague Geoff went to the seminars over in Guilford. He said it was 'refreshing'. They give out free customised coffee cups and at the end of the course you get a special web address where you can print out your certificate."

"Oh for fucks sake. Prince2 is for pussies and people who like OneFTE. Let me tell about my One Golden Rule-"

"-please don't-"

"-which is this: Jobs That Involve Firing A Pistol While Mounted On A Galloping Horse Are Better That Those That Involve Going To Fucking Guilford For Three Weeks."

Eventually a combination of narrow mindedness and bureaucratic small-print forced me to opt for something more academical. By now the HR rep was three disposable cups of coffee down and was threaten to put me on citation for "being a dick".

"John, listen to me: The Company will not pay for you to do a masters in Backwoods Appalachian Music and nor will they subsidise your travel to Kurdistan to study Islamic Alchemy - "

"But Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi discovered alcohol! He's a hero of mine!"

"- but you can go on a course based in, or around, London. Preferably in the realms of Information Technology"

After further research i decided to compromise. I would apply to do a course in 3D modelling. Not that i want to be some damn vertex jockey, no, i want to understand and apply the discipline to create web sites that harness all three dimensions. This may sound ridiculous (and something that was milked by hollywood back in the 90s) but actually it makes perfect sense: The World Wide Web started out as a wild west for new ideas and although it has started to become civilised over the last decade or so, the willing prospector will always discover new treasures just waiting to be exploited. I yielded a particular lodestone recently in the form of three.js - the javascript implementation if OpenGL. In a nutshell, it allows you to import 3D models into web pages, assuming your browser and graphics card are new enough (which shouldn't be a problem in a couple of years as WebGL is becoming standardised across most browsers).

The possibilities are endless and for the first time in a decade i felt my interest piqued by such a technology. The only thing left to do is to find a worthy institute to teach me how to think in 3D. If you're good at 3D modelling, you never teach it as you can earn more as a lead designer, so i need to find someone who gets paid enough to want to teach it. That's going to be the easy part. The hard part is trying something new.