Out with the old, in with the new; updates, plans and aspirations

  • Well, 2025 ends with this ageing epidemiologist still endlessly curious and in love with life and the human race (yes, all of you, you beautiful complex bastards), maybe a bit tired/bored at work but looking forward to a refreshing short sabbatical later in the year and thinking about how I can keep my job interesting for another 5-10 years when I’ve already done everything I wanted to do
  • Resolutions for 2026? Learn Rust (particularly for data engineering)! Get back to the me who did pull-ups every day and could always run 10 miles without noticeably training. Learn to improvise jazz guitar without sounding like Kraftwerk. That’s plenty. Reading for pleasure only this year and no Anki.
  • I am going to experiment with alternative blog formats - I like the look of Zola (maybe with Typst?) but there are so many options. Tiddlywiki is a great personal knowledge dump but a bit lacking as a blog. I want to structure things a bit better, consolidate my thousands of other notes (still looking for a good AI option), and have a cleaner look, quick to load with a faff-free RSS feed.
  • Other things I hope to do this year: try Pangolin | Remote Access Platform instead of Cloudflare Tunnels (the maximum upload file size for CT is stopping me uploading large PDFs); do more AI-assisted/vibe coding (Poe is a good place to dabble with the latest and best), particularly in terms of making better analytical methods more accessible; play with Jujutsu and n8n - AI Workflow Automation Platform & Tools and Forgejo – Beyond coding. We forge. and jamovi - open statistical software for the desktop and cloud; also do more journal reviewing, more teaching if anyone is interested, finish off (or get free of) some big pieces of work that are dragging me down and get my deafness sorted one way or another
  • Didn’t do Advent of Code this year (relearnt skiing instead) but will do it in Rust next year
  • Deleted my Facebook account finally and have revived my interest in Bluesky/Mastodon by following them as a combined feed in Flare - All your social feeds, unified (Rust learners are my people), though I am still more of a Karakeep kinda guy
  • Running a home server has been tricky recently due to Docker/LXC issues, Cloudflare outages and an undiagnosed issue with one plug circuit in my house (RCD keeps tripping), which led to much interesting learning about uninterruptible power supplies, Network UPS Tools, Healthchecks.io and Pushover: Simple Notifications for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Desktop; I also realised UptimeRobot: Free Website Monitoring Service is not great for monitoring services using Cloudflare Tunnels so switched to Uptime Kuma - A Fancy Self-Hosted Monitoring Tool for my remaining VPS-hosted services
  • Finally, I would like to wish a happy, healthy and meaningful 2026 to both of my readers.