Everyone loves lists.  Everyone.  So much so that entire music TV channels appear to exist solely to tell me what the top X of Y are.  So, to do the blogging equivalent of locking the stable after the horse has bolted, here are a few reasons why I enjoyed 2008.

Music

I really hate picking my favourite music of a period because there are never quite enough places to note everyone.  Below are the CDs I really remember enjoying this year.  They're in rough order and all of them albums below pleased me in very different ways.  Some of them are predictable choices for me, A Perfect Circle side projects, Porcupine Tree front-mans solo album, Opeth, Nine Inch Nails, but amongst them are a couple of bands who were both new to me and won a constant rotation.  Textures deserve a special mention for being by far my most enjoyed CD this year, while the Ashes Divide CD, whilst flawed in a few places, was my most played.

1. Textures - Silhouettes
2. Steven Wilson - Insurgentes
3. Ashes Divide - Keep Telling Myself It's Alright
4. Opeth - Watershed
5. Slipknot - All Hope Is Gone
6. Meshuggah - Obzen
7. Cult of Luna - Eternal Kingdom
8. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts & The Slip
9. Zimmers Hole - While You Were Shouting At The Devil... (We Were In League With Satan)
10. 3 - The End Is Begun

Honourable mentions:  Frost* - Experiments In Mass Appeal, Metallica - Death Magnetic, Made Out Of Babies - The Ruiner, Ayreon - 01011001, Cynic - Traced In Air
Biggest disappointment:  Tomahawk - Anonymous
Best live performance: Ministry

Games

I've had a big year of gaming.  I finally quit World of Warcraft in the latter half of 2008 which afforded me plenty of time to play just about everything that came out.  This year was slightly off balance with a most of the games that seemed to be worth playing arriving in the second half of the year.  Nothing this year grabbed me like Mass Effect did last year, but of the games I played this year, the following are worth a mention:

1. Fallout 3 (I enjoyed Fable 2, but I'm a Fallout kind of guy)
2. Left4Dead (my first online shooter for about 5 years, awesome coop fun)
3. Braid (the first ever XBLA game to convinced me to buy points)
4. World of Goo
5. Rock Band / 2 (for drunken fun and Christmas relief)
6. Dreamfall (The Longest Journey) (not all that gamey, but an excellent sequel)
7. Zack & Wiki - The Quest for Barbaros Treasure (the only reason to own a Wii this year)

Honourable mentions: WoW (for the good times), Gears 2, Fable 2, Mirrors Edge, Prince of Persia - all games that deserve their strong reputations, all second half of the year games.  I've probably forgotten the first half of the year now.
Biggest disappointment: That Sonic Unleashed was terrible, that Nights2 was mediocre.
Most anticipated for 2009: Heavy Rain (despite not owning a PS3), Mass Effect 2 (with any luck!)

Films

I somehow saw far fewer films this year than I normally tend to.  I'm not sure if that's indicative of the quality of the films or just my lack of attention.  I have an unlimited cinema pass yet seemingly I've just seen nothing at all.  That said, I remember really enjoying:

1. In Bruges - Not what you expect at all, and a really quite human story.
2. The Dark Knight - Lets face it, everyone loved it.  I still enjoy Nicholsons Joker equally however..
3. Sweeny Todd - Very standard Tim Burton, but stunning to look at regardless.
4. Be Kind Rewind - Utterly charming and out of character for Jack Black
5. Hellboy 2 - Just pure fun
6. Vexille - Exceptionally stylish, but I perhaps enjoyed it for the visuals alone.
7. Wall-E - Standard Pixar, but very endearing.

Honourable mention: Zack and Miri Make a Porno (oh so Kevin Smith, but very funny for it)

Technology

Surprisingly the software that's impressed me this year has all been very mainstream.  Certainly a year of lots of software maturing to a point where it's excessively stable and usable.

1. Microsoft Surface - Surface computing black magic
2. Opera 9 - Polished web browsing
3. ReSharper 4.0 - C# / Visual Studio refactoring tool.  I don't know what I'd do without R#.
4. NHibernate 2.0 - .NET port of the popular java ORM.
5. Windows Vista / Server 2008 (finally shaking off it's dubious reputation, at least with the informed)
6. Google Maps Mobile
7. Windows Live Mail
8. Notepad++ - Great alternative text editor that finally replaced context in my heart.
9. Google Reader - Upsettingly better than all t he other syndication services.
10. Wacom Bamboo (graphics tablet)
11. Windows Live Writer
12. XMBC going multi-platform with the Atlantis port - Hands down the best home theatre application.

TV

I've been watching less and less TV, and seemingly slipping towards more light comedy than anything over this past year.  Too many long evenings writing software leads to shutting off your brain eventually.  I have been watching a few shows religiously however.

1. South Park
2. Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles
3. How I Met Your Mother

Pretty much in that order.  South Park is the one piece of TV satire that's consistently on the mark and funny, the Terminator series is a lot more grown up than Fox would like you to believe and How I Met Your Mother, while stealing from Friends and Scrubs in an odd hybrid, is very entertaining and endearing.  Also an honourable mention goes to The Big Bang Theory for making me feel at home with television personalities.

I should really get around to catching up watching Heroes and Lost and Dexter, but they require a little more engagement than the above.

So there we have it.  I'd list books, but the books I've read this year have been all the "obvious" computer science books that people always say they'll get around to reading but never do (books like The Mythical Man Month and The Pragmatic Programmer) so I'll not bore you with yet another predictable list of the best programming and computer science books ever written.  I'm fairly certain you can find that list on CodingHorror.

I enjoyed those things in 2008, and I hope you check at least a few of them out.