📷 I managed to catch a full end-to-end rainbow coming out of the dentist office yesterday afternoon…
My RSS VibeReader project turned out pretty much how I wanted it to, and I learned a lot. I use it daily to read certain feeds. But, now that it’s done, I need a new “something” to put my energy into. I think I need to start a podcast and learn all about that now. Searching for a subject…
So I started a thing. Like I said, it was right around the corner…
A Dry Spell
I learned long ago that life is a series of ups and downs. There will be good times when things flow without effort. And there will be dark times when no matter how hard you try, it feels as if you’re sliding backwards down a muddy hill with each step.
I’m in one of those muddy hill valleys right now. It’s a time when nothing excites me and the creative juices won’t flow no matter how hard I try to force them. I feel as though I’m plodding along, one day after another, getting nowhere.
To put it plainly, I’m bored with life at the moment.
This is an exciting place to be, and I look forward to seasons like these. I know my mind is searching for something new to learn from. I’m bored with the status quo and I’m subconsciously looking for the next challenge. These have always been the times I’ve grown the most.
Until I land on it, I can only keep putting one muddy boot in front of the other and climb the hill, all the while keeping an eye out for the new thing that sparks passion.
Now that I’ve recognized the valley, the something will be right around the corner.
I spent some time away from Micro.blog, intentionally not viewing my own site. I did today and realized that mnml actually ended up being a pretty good looking theme…
I’ve been considering making a move from 1Password to a Bitwarden Enterprise subscription. Having been a 1P user for a very long time, I’m hesitant about making a change, but would like to save the $18 a year. Someone talk me off the ledge – one way or the other…
AI Slop is Easy Money
More than 20% of YouTube’s feed is now “AI slop,” report finds | TechSpot
Not only are more than half the articles on the web created by AI, but over 21% of YouTube videos being shown to new users is “AI Slop.” That’s according to a new report, which also found that the US is in third place when it comes to consumption of these low-quality generated videos.
I am not surprised by this. As a long-time YouTube viewer I’m seeing a good amount of AI slop myself. But this is what worries me most about the rise of AI; people and/or companies wanting to make a quick buck with the least amount of effort possible are going to increasingly generate low-quality content with AI-based tools…
It’s estimated that the Three Minutes Wisdom channel, which accounts for almost a quarter of the country’s view count, earns around $4 million annually from ad income.
That’s easy money…
I believe this will spill over into software development. I’m confident it already has. Companies that care more about the bottom line than they do bug-free applications will hire inexperienced developers to create enterprise apps using AI tools, leading to major security flaws.
I think we’ll start seeing more reports of data breaches as novice “developers” increasingly copy and paste AI-generated code without fully understanding what it does, much less vetting it for accuracy.
Lazy is as lazy does, and some developers I’ve known over the years have been very lazy…
Usually, I’ll leave the outside Christmas decor up until New Year’s Day. It’s been a tradition of my family since I was a kid. But since rain is forecast for SoCal from Wednesday through Sunday, I quickly took it all down yesterday. Surprisingly, I’m a little sore because of it today.
To go along with a simpler approach to life in 2026, I created a new Micro.blog theme based on the mnml framework, stripping out a lot of the features I added over the last year. This one will remain for my personal use.
One Simple Goal
As I look back on the lost year of 2025, I learned a lot about what’s important to me; health, family, and close friends. This led me to give serious thought about what I want 2026 to look like now that I’ve been given a new lease on life.
I want 2026 to be a year of renewal. Spending less time online and even more time present with those around me. Less time working crazy long hours and more time focused on my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical well being. Less money spent on frivolous things and more time investing that money into the future.
The break I took in October was liberating. I enjoyed not spending as much time online trying to be relevant in some way and just living a simple life, one day into the next.
That’s what I’m shooting for in the coming year. No pressure to do or be anything for anyone outside of my close circle. If it goes as planned, you’ll see less of me.
Why share this? No reason really. It’s more for my own benefit than anything else. I wanted to memorialize the goal on my blog, since that’s what a blog is supposed to be for. I feel I’m at a point in my life where it’s simply best to step back and slow down a little.
Thanks for reading. There will still be posts, but probably less noise.
Here’s to a simpler 2026 for all of us.
Sometimes you simply need to declare bankruptcy on your RSS feeds and just mark them as all read…
Speaking of Kagi; I’m a little late to the party, but I get it now. I didn’t think I’d have use for a paid search engine, but I think I’m sold on it. The only challenge is being mindful of the number of searches per day. If I stick with it, funding for other online things will need to take a hit.
I’m taking a look at the Orion web browser this morning. I like it so far, though I know I’ll probably end up sticking with one of the well established browsers for my day to day. I like that Kagi is the default search engine.
Failure
You’ve no doubt heard at some point in your life that failure is not an option. There are times this holds true; definitely when someone’s life is on the line, or maybe – but only maybe – if there’s a large sum of money at stake.
But I think there are times failure should be the only option.
Failure can be one of the best teachers we have – as long as we’re willing to listen to her lessons.
Failure always shows us the truth. Sometimes gently, other times brutally.
We need to openly welcome failure’s lessons into our lives in order to grow.
Failure will never lie to us. She shows us where we are wrong about our belief systems and how they may need to change.
If we’re willing to fail in the most spectacular ways, failure will bless us with wisdom and humility in return.
But, if you think you have nothing to learn from failure and that you already have it all figured out, well then my friend, you’ve already failed in the biggest way you possibly could.
Old Habits
Old habits are sneaky little monkeys. They work every angle they know to quietly slip back into the circus of our lives without us noticing.
What they rely on most is us caving in to their idea of “just this once” a time or two in order to become the norm once again.
Before we know it, we find ourselves right back where we started.
We need to keep a watchful eye out for these conniving monkeys. When we feel the temptation to trade their convenience or comfort for the new and better habits we’re trying to build, we need to get tough and say “Bad monkey! It’s not going to happen this time.”
Building new habits adds friction to our lives. It’s easier to just “go with the flow” than it is to put in the extra work of sticking to our guns.
But if we do stick with them long enough, the friction eventually fades and the old monkey will have left our circus for good.
I’ve decided to move my wife and me from iCloud mail with custom domain over to Fastmail. Both are pretty secure, but Fastmail does better in the privacy department overall, plus it has a whole bunch of other benefits. I think that’s worth $96/year.
If you’re a mnml user and you’ve tried adding the new PageFind action to a search page, but got nothing, well, it’s because some of mnml’s existing search styles conflict. I’ll work on fixing this soon. Sorry if this has tripped anyone up.
App Defaults 2025
It’s that time of year where I and others look back at the macOS tools that made us productive over the last 52 weeks.
I stayed relatively consistent this time around with the biggest change being my task management solution.
| Category | App |
|---|---|
| Mail Client | Apple Mail |
| Mail Server | iCloud Mail with custom domains |
| Notes | Obsidian (with sync) |
| To-Do | OmniFocus 1 |
| Photo Shooting | Apple Camera |
| Photo Management | Apple Photos |
| Photo Editing | Pixelmator Pro |
| Calendar | Apple Calendar |
| Cloud File Storage | iCloud & OneDrive |
| RSS | NetNewsWire (iCloud sync) |
| Contacts | Apple Contacts |
| Browser | Chrome 2 |
| Chat | Apple Messages |
| Bookmarks | Raindrop.io 3 |
| Read It Later | Raindrop.io 4 |
| Word Processing | MS Word / BBEdit |
| Spreadsheets | MS Excel |
| Presentations | MS Powerpoint |
| Shopping Lists | Obsidian (with sync) |
| Budgeting & Personal Finance | MS Excel/Bank Mobile App |
| News | NetNewsWire (iCloud sync) |
| Music | Apple Music |
| Podcasts | Overcast |
| Mastodon | Mona |
| Password Management | 1Password |
| Code Editor | BBEdit / VS Code |
| App Launcher | Raycast |
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I’ve returned to my first love productivity app on the Mac. ↩︎
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Yes, I know… Evil. It’s still the best browser for web development work. I am, however, giving Safari another try for personal browsing. ↩︎
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I’ve built up a pretty impressive list of links with this web app. ↩︎
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Ditto on things to read later that I may never get to… ↩︎
After eating more than just a little bad over the Thanksgiving holiday, I somehow managed to weigh in at the exact same number this morning as last Wednesday. How I managed to pull that one off I’ll never know. I’ll just take the win on this one…
I’m considering running a FreshRSS server instead of iCloud sync for RSS feeds. The options are spinning up a Pika Pod, or a low-power VPS on Hetzner. Two questions: Do you have experience with Pika Pods? And do you, or have you, run your own FreshRSS instance? What are your thoughts if so?