What do I feel 2005 was all about? Was the good brilliant enough, was the bad bloody awful? Here's a half-baked, self-centered, luke-warm subjective list:

· Some great movies that I was able to see in the theatre and then keep looking at over and over again on DVD: Sideways, A Very Long Engagement, Closer (yes, I know these are 2004 releases but they arrived late in Romanian theaters, during 2005), and other I enjoyed only in theatre, like The 40 Years Old Virgin, A History Of Violence and some that I liked but at the same time left me somehow unsatisfied: Sin City, Dreamers, The House of Flying Daggers, Melinda and Melinda. But than again, for a designer's eye Sin City and A Very Long Engagement were feast-rich as well as Dreamers' opening titles were a nice surprise. On the opening titles' side could be more but I cannot remember anything else beside Dreamers right now.

I could not see the most successful Romanian feature, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. I'm like a person who once watched someone dying through the fence of concentration camp and refuses to see movies about the subject ever since.

Still, close to the top of the stack of DVD cases lie Blade Runner, Woody Allen's Annie Hall and New York and Rebel Without a Cause — these are the movies I happen to watch most often.

· I haven't follow the musical releases this year so the timeline will be heavily distorted. This is the year I first heard Damien Rice's "O" and I felt it even bigger than it may be (and it's big) both because it's link with Closer title sequence (The Blower's Daughter is a goddamn heart wrecker, I kid you not) and because this guy's dramatic story (yes, I know it's not a 2005 release). Add to the list Depeche Mode's Playing The Angel, of course, even if it failed to impress me as much as Exciter. What did impress me was Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang, a goddamn god album. I also like Tosca's J.A.C., My Morning Jacket's "Z" and Fischerspooner's Odyssey.

Still, my iTunes play-count is topped by older classics: Moloko's Statues, Cibelle's homonymous album and Björk's Vespertine. Then some Miles Davies, David Bowie, Radiohead and R.E.M.

· Talking about music, 2005 was the year A. G. Weinberger celebrated his 25th aniversary on stage. A. G. got a haircut and weights some more but he still got the big guitars sound, the wise words, the rock and the blues.

· The year of PSP, devious little device that's perfectly tuned to ruin one's sleep at night. And yes, it's true, it's a great device even if you're only going to own one game only: Grand Theft Auto - Liberty City Stories. Oh, man, I'm playing it for a month and I don't get tired of it. Yes, I get awful tired, but in a good way, you know what I mean.

· As technosexual as I found myself to be there was a thing I didn't crave having: 3G telephony. Why is that? Almost inexplicable. Few handsets to chose from, a lack of killer apps, I suppose, and an utter absence of evangelists. I look around: almost no one uses it. I'm mesmerized — what happens? The future is not what it used to be.

· 2005 was the year the podcast got into the mainstream, piggybacked by the ever-increasing iPod success. I browsed and tried a half a dozen general-interest shows until I finally understood I don't have the time to listen to zero shelf-life entertainment shows and I switched to design podcasts like AIGA's podcasts, The Prepared Mind, Be A Design Group's podcast, Lunar Design's Icon-O-Cast, KCRW's Design and Architecture Podcast, Speak Up's Design Dialog, Design Matters and Typeradio podcast. I do not listen to all this religiously, but once in a while I feel like listening to a podcast while walking to the office.

· In 2005 Romanian blogs became too many to read all. Just have a look at Carmen's collection and top.

· 2005 was the year of Gmail — everybody has it. And Yahoo! Messenger. Where's ICQ? Did that awful interface killed them? It was the year of Flickr and the year I unsubscribed from all social-networking services.

· Speaking of Flickr, this year my old-time friend Camil started posting his old B&W photos to Flickr. Sweet memories and beautiful (gorgeous sometimes) shots. Talking about photography, Cosmin Bumbut prepares a new web site, I hope he will get it on-line soon, in the meanwhile you can visit (again) his old one. This year I shot several photo sessions of epic proportions with Ionut Macri and his team this year - go check his web gallery, too.

· In design this year was the year when it became clear that the rock-and-roll classic graphic design will give way to electro-pop branding reinterpretations. See AT&T's case that shacked and shocked an unprepared global design community. Read Be a Design Group's eye-opening Get Busy Livin' or Get Busy Dyin'. But, um, that's a long story and we won't go there. No, no.

Here. I got tired. There's more white than black in the picture, not necessarily a bad thing after all. So — what was list-worthy in your 2005?