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.
Thoughts
Quick notes, scattered ideas, and candid updates from whatever’s on my mind.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025 →
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.
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?
Today is the first day in 30 years, apart from the one year we didn’t host, that I will not cook a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. This year it’s just my wife, youngest son and me for the holiday. Instead, we’ll just do a single breast. The rest of my famous side dishes are still on the menu though…
If you’ve been waiting to buy that Micro.blog t-shirt, or any other Cotton Bureau merch, now is the time to do it. CB is waiving shipping (international 50% off) when you use discount code THANKYOU25 at checkout. Hurry though. This offer expires Monday, 12/1.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025 →
I love the process of setting up a new workstation from scratch as I slowly figure out which apps I rely on for my day to day workflows.
I had check-ins with two different doctors today who both pronounced me in fantastic shape. It’s only been five months since my heart surgery, but I can barely remember it now. I think clouding memories like that is the mind’s way of healing from the trauma.
There is someone, or some bot out of Singapore that’s hitting URLs on my site from a very old index (we’re talking 10 years ago) nearly every day. I wish there was a way to block this behavior on Micro.blog.
My wife and I are heading to Houston, TX for a nephew’s wedding. I’m more excited about going to a blues club tonight than anything else. It’ll be great to see what the scene is like there as opposed to the west coast “LBZ”.
With the recent update to NetNewsWire, I thought I might move my RSS feed syncing from BazQux to iCloud. So far it’s been impressively responsive and always seems to be up to date when browsing feeds on my four different devices. That’s $30 saved a year.
I’ve begun reading the next installment in the Bosch universe: Trunk Music by Michael Connelly 📚. I think I remember this episode from the Amazon series. We’ll see how well they align.
One of the many paradoxes of San Francisco: Homeless drug addicts curled up on sidewalks while tech bros whiz by them in autonomous Waymo ride service cars…
Finished: The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly 📚 This one had a lot of twists… I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now to wait for the next installment to become available.
As a reference for future me, I learned of a great font resource for nerds watching YouTube last night: www.nerdfonts.com
I find myself using the Raycast AI features (or AI in general) to perform web searches far more often than I use regular search engines like DDG anymore. I like that I can ask follow up questions on the results to refine what I’m looking for versus scrolling through search results. Anyone else?
I’m looking at a new note taking app called Capacities. It’s an interesting idea. I like the idea of no folders.
I’ve found both the Seiko and Casio subreddits on Reddit. This could quickly become a problem for both my wallet and my wife…
I began reading The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly today. 📚
I’m at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week, averaging eight miles of walking per day. Team members half my age are having a hard time keeping up with me. 💪🏻
There’s still some more work to do on my mnml updates, so they’re going to have to wait until next week.
I put in some good work today for a couple of cool new mnml features. One to make using images a little more flexible and the ability to copy code blocks directly from the web page. I hope to release them by tomorrow.
It’s been quite the week after returning to work. Tons of meetings to get debriefed on all that’s gone down and prepping for the Dreamforce conference next week. I won’t lie, I’m tired, and was yesterday.
A proper post on the week to come soon. And yes, my apex domain is back on Micro.blog again.
It’s hard to believe it, but today is my last day of medical leave. I return to the office on Monday. I’m both excited by it, and kind of dreading it. I’ve grown accustomed to the slower pace. If this is what retirement will be like, I’ll take it.
Finished: The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly 📚
Having watched the series on Amazon, I didn’t see the plot of this one coming. Well worth the read.