december in review

December was busy. Busier than expected I think. I had hoped to write more and keep up with my week notes but I didn't get any of those in.

The kids had end-of-semester events and clubs and tests and such. My wife had lots of work parties (they did a whole 12 days of Christmas thing) and my job was super busy with new feature launches. All of that coupled with already being low energy because of various stressors in the year meant less writing (although I got a few posts in!).

We also spent the holidays at my families house. The kids had too much fun playing with cousins and I did get some rest (although I was on call as well so didn't completely disconnect from work). Only 1 person got sick this year: our daughter got the flu but we caught it early enough that the new power pill worked like a charm and she was only really down for the count a couple of days.

what i wrote

• My songs of the year (2025)
• My albums of the year (2025)
• A bit about the new PKM system I've started using.

links worth reading

years in review worth checking out

• the dev of Journelly did one on their blog. Journelly was one of my favorite app finds of the year.
• Robb Knight did one too!
• And Damian Walsh...
• And Cory D who is always an inspiration.
• And I found several albums I didn't know about on Naz Hamid's review.
• And another good music-centered list.
• And another. I completely missed that Idlewild released a new album until seeing it on this list.
• Brett's Favorites of 2025

politics

• This piece on understanding far-right populism.
• There is a lot of work to be done in the US. This piece from the guardian highlights some of that re: the Supreme Court.
• USAID is no more and because of that several hundred thousand people have died. The New Yorker article hits really close to home because we lived in Kenya for 5 years and know people that were in and out of the refugee camp mentioned. Another look at it here. All of those deaths were preventable but the current administration intentionally chose their deaths.

culture

• Love this piece by Yordi about getting outside of our music bubble.
• Really lovely writing in this piece about how LLMs are colonizing our confidence. It focuses on writing but is applicable elsewhere.
• Some good folks decided to redo the color of the year. There choice is definitely better.

apps to check out

• Delphi tools: A cool collection of web based tools. Well worth a bookmark!
• isle.chat: A chat system over SSH - I wish I had people to use it with! I'd set it up in a heart beat. I live in a terminal and love things like this.
• bewcloud: This is really, really interesting. I want a good alternative to iCloud or dropbox that can be selfhosted. Nextcloud is a pain. Maybe this as it matures?
• IronCalc: A web based spreadsheet that I want to explore self hosting...
• Triton: A native mac app for omg.lol??? Definitely trying that!

what i heard

as seen on social media