Last week I started making one final editing pass on my book, trimming some sections and adding new text for Bluesky and other recent social web developments. I’ll publish all the changes soon. This will really be the last time I touch the text.

Can’t believe I’m just now learning that the people mover in the Houston airport was built by Disney (WED, now Imagineering).

A short video with some clips from driving to Lake Brownwood this weekend. Apparently I say “stopped real quick” frequently.

Driving back into Austin there was an incredible view of the huge moon low over downtown, just touching the UT tower. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Almost pulled over to take a photo, but instead I snapped this from the car. Kind of neat in its own way.

Longhorn Cavern State Park.

Wind power, rail power.

Hiking at Lake Brownwood State Park, came up on this red cardinal.

Stopped for a view of the sunset along the road to Brownwood, with Honda Element micro-camper.

Joan Westenberg’s blog post this week is such a perfect start to 2026. It sets the tone for what we should keep working on throughout the year. Just picking out a few things to quote… On the value of exploring ideas through longer blog posts: You can write a post working th...

While traveling last week, I found myself thinking back to when Kindles came with free cellular connectivity. It’s a minor problem, but it’s not worth the trouble of connecting a Kindle to hotel wi-fi, so if juggling multiple devices you miss sync. I’ll sometimes read on both a Kindle and my iPhone.

Working on support for standard.site in Micro.blog. I had blogged earlier this year about potential AT Proto lexicons for long-form posts, but I didn’t get much feedback, so I’m happy to follow the work that has already been done here by Leaflet and others.

Watched: Down Cemetery Road S1E1, Almost True. I haven’t been able to get into the other new shows that everyone seems to love. I thought this was a very strong start, though. 📺

Ben Werdmuller on LLMs for coding:

I also think we’re going to see a real split in the tech industry (and everywhere code is written) between people who are outcome-driven and are excited to get to the part where they can test their work with users faster, and people who are process-driven and get their meaning from the engineering itself and are upset about having that taken away.

I’ve been saying some variation on this too. Is the art the engineering work or the final product? Tech generalists are going to be very successful.

Starting the new year with some Micro.blog home page tweaks for signed-out users. Added a new Atmosphere page with an overview of Bluesky and AT Protocol features.

Watched: LotR: The Return of the King, Extended Edition. I always forget that it’s actually four hours long. Still a few nitpicks but not enough to overshadow some amazing sequences. What I blogged in 2002 generally about the film adaptation also still feels right. 🍿

Meghana Indurti writing for The New Yorker on our optimized, convenient lives:

During the drive, I instruct my A.I. assistant to send custom responses to all my friends’ and family members’ text messages. Some of them text back right away with laughing emojis. I guess my A.I. has learned to emulate my sense of humor. I smile, knowing how much time I must have saved today, unlike my ancestors who had to engage in the hours-long, monotonous task of corresponding with their loved ones.

🙂

In 2026 we’re going to see incredible advances in AI and also incredible pushback.

Jason Snell has some good predictions for Apple at Macworld:

I doubt any new-and-improved Siri will be as good as we dream it might be, but I think it’ll be appreciably better than it is today. (And the arrival of a better Siri will unlock Apple’s ability to ship new smart home products, which the company has been itching to do for at least a year.)

I still think Apple’s whole AI approach works against having a universal Siri across devices. Hoping for some surprises in 2026.

Watching LotR: The Two Towers and started looking through old Hobbit history and revisions. I don’t think I had ever read the 1937 version. This website has the original and updated text for chapter 5.

Paul Frazee blogs about AT Protocol and building different kinds of apps on the same underlying architecture and storage:

Connected clouds solve a lot of problems. You still have the always-on convenience, but you can also store your own data and run your own programs.

Nice post from Allan Pike examining how AI-enabled web browsers attempt to route queries to web search or answers. I like Dia but still prefer using a dedicated chat app when I actually want AI.

Had to redo my 2025 reading post because there was a comically wrong cached book cover. Guess it’s a reminder that I need to figure out a better way to preview Hugo shortcodes.

Parker Ortolani blogs five takes on 2025. On OpenAI:

OpenAI does its best work when it focuses on the models and the core app, which I fear it is getting slightly distracted away from.

I agree they are distracted, but I think the products are just as important as the models. Pulse could be built with any model, but only OpenAI has done it.

Parker also has a defense of Alan Dye:

iOS 7, watchOS, tvOS, the iPhone X experience, the Big Sur redesign, the Dynamic Island, visionOS, Liquid Glass and so much more have all defined his time at the company.

I was short of my goal for the year, but still read a lot of books that I enjoyed. Hope to read more in 2026! Just started Ship of Magic and I got Will of the Many for Christmas to read after that.

Spurs. 🏀

Lights on the San Antonio River Walk.

Universal driving directions: Go straight. Turn left or right whenever you need to.

Seriously, I’m trying to use turn-by-turn directions less often. I can’t decide if it introduces some subconscious extra stress with or without it.

King William River Park. 🌳

A few months ago I turned off fediverse publishing for my blog. Some of my posts still trickle out to the fediverse, via conversations, which is fine. I haven’t missed it. I still get replies on Micro.blog and from Bluesky. I’m going to turn the fediverse back on and see how things are in 2026. 👋

Screenshot teaser for something I’ve been working on over the holidays, for launch next year. I think this could be a big deal. Can’t share the details yet! Perfectly fits with the Micro.blog and IndieWeb principle of pluralism: multiple protocols, platforms, anything that makes the open web better.

I’ve been testing some new features with Ghost. I can see the appeal of it, it’s robust and beautiful, but personally I could never use Ghost for my own blog. I would feel trapped in its design. Trying to articulate part of this, I wrote a new help page: Why Micro.blog uses Markdown.