Two years ago today, on December 24th 2011, I was sat at my computer at my families house, putting the finishing touches on the very first version of my very first Minecraft Mod, ComputerCraft. At the time, I didn’t know anybody in the Minecraft community (I didn’t have a forum account, and I’d never been on IRC or Twitter), so I registered, uploaded the first version to mediafire, wrote a quick blurb and clicked “post”. Unsure of what the response would be, I went to sleep. By the end of the next day, it had been downloaded 50,000 times. By the end of 2012, it had been used by millions, and my future had been irrevocably changed.

This year saw new features, 3D Printed Turtles, Minecraft Expo UK, Minecon 2013, multiple media appearances, and the opportunity to work on other Mods like Billund, qCraft and ComputerCraftEdu (more on that soon!). In June, inspired by my success in modding, I quit my job to work on Minecraft stuff and my indie games full time, and so far I’ve been lucky enough to keep paying the bills!

I’d like to thank everyone who plays my mods for making everything I’ve achieved this year possible. Special shoutouts are due to everyone in the ForgeCraft community (in particular, direwolf20 and Slowpoke101) for being great friends and giving exposure to what I do, my friends at TeacherGaming, for giving me so many fun projects to collaborate on and cheerleading me at every opportunity, and to Mojang, for letting me be part of Minecon this year, and for always working hard making Minecraft the best game it can be. May they long continue to do so!

So Merry Christmas, and remember to play ComputerCraft before December 31st; if you do, you’ll find your Turtles will be dressed rather more festively than normal! And keep watching this site or my twitter in the the new year: I’m back to working on the mod full time, and my mind is buzzing with plans and designs for new features to implement. It’s gonna be fun!