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I'm running a little late with this so I'll post it briefly now before it's too out of date. My favourite films of 2009 were:

1. Synecdoche, New York – currently my favourite film ever.
2. Antichrist – although I had my eyes closed for a couple of bits
3. Morris: A Life with Bells On – I had a great time seeing this at the Duke of York's, surrounded by real-life morris dancers
4. Up – although mostly for the first five minutes.
5. The Wrestler
   – I was underwhelmed when I watched this, because the ending seemed a
   disappointment, but I found myself thinking about it a lot afterwards.

I didn't see as many movies last year as in 2008, and I missed a few
that looked amazing. I was underwhelmed by both Moon and
District 9, which seemed illogical and obvious. I'm not sure why they
received the acclaim they did.

Today has an end-of-term feel as it's my last day at my current job. It's been a fun role, maintaining and developing a mature product. I've learned a lot (maintenance coding is a challenging and often neglected skill) and done some fascinating optimisation work, but it's time to move on.

I'm taking some time out at the start of 2010, after which I will be working as a freelancer, providing database and java consultancy – but I'll talk about that next year. At the moment I'm winding down, looking forward to Christmas and some time relaxing in the Midlands.

The snow, and lunch with a couple of old friends have provided a magical feeling to the day. I've also received some good news about some writing work for January, which I'll take as an auspcious sign for the coming year.

My inbox is empty, my last commits are in subversion, which means I have one task left in the new job: tonight's office party!

Every morning, on his way to work, my boss buys an espresso from the Red Roaster. They serve it in two paper cups, presumably so he doesn't burn his fingers. In the afternoon, about three, he wanders off to buy another coffee.

When each drink is finished, he adds the cup to the stack on his desk. When the stack becomes large enough, he transfers the cups to a larger stack behind his desk. Four cups a day, twenty cups a week. That's about a thousand a year. He's been in the office over three years – you can imagine how many cups we have in the office.

The cups sit in a corner and I sometimes wonder what we should do with them. Should we return them to the red roaster? Put them on freecycle? Hold a Burning of the Cups Ceremony on the beach? Someone suggested making a sculpture and donating it to Fabrica.

The boss was late in on Friday. We decided to build a tower of cups, to see if we could reach the roof. We could. The column contains about 800 cups. For a day or so I felt satisfied that we'd finally done something with some of the cups. This morning, it doesn't seem enough.

What do you do with over 3000 paper cups?

The remains of an earlier tower. Look on my works, ye mighty, and all that.

• My new Argus marathon blog post is 633 miles to go, in which I discuss being a human Jesus Lizard.
• I like Alan Coren's advice to Caitlin Moran: "The first idea that occurs to you, will have
  occurred to everyone. The second idea that occurs to you, will have
  already also occurred to the clever people. But your third idea – only
  you will have had that one.”
• After Swindon Orbital, Richard Willis is now working on Blake's Road, which promises "a more ambitious project, tackling a number of subjects simultaneously: Blake, England & the English, Morality, my own psychology, and a couple of other topics I’m afraid I must keep to myself for now". I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of this.
• A interesting post from Ian Hocking about Workshops, following on from my recent one
• My friend Bill Jones has made a book

On December 13th I'm taking a day-trip to Hastings. Despite living there for 6 months, I never explored the Old Town. On Sunday I will put this right. In the evening I will then read my new horror story The Other Child at Short Fuse:

"Sarah and I broke up a year back and we’ve both seen other people since, but she still calls me when there’s a problem. A few months after we split she phoned one Sunday morning because there was a spider in the bath.  That time, with the spider, I thought it was an excuse, that she was too embarrassed to say what she really wanted. I flushed the spider, followed her to the kitchen and put my arm around her. It was fairly awkward when Sarah explained that it was just about the spider. I apologised and went back home to bed."

I've been writing a few horror stories lately. Reading horror stories as a teenager, particularly the Best New Horror anthologies, was what made me fall in love with short stories. Most of what I read was disposable, but I also read some truly amazing works.

Short Fuse Hastings takes place at the Jenny Lind, Hastings (TN34 3EW) and starts at 7pm.