I feel like I write this every year, but how is it December already again? Time moves so fast, I could’ve sworn I was sitting in a cinema lobby all sweaty after a horrible train ride just last week, but that was back in August. Now, it’s freezing outside and the nights are long and dark.
I really don’t deal with the winter months too well, perhaps that’s why the summers always feel too short. Then again, looking back at this year, taking the time to really reflect on things and remember everything that’s already half forgotten, usually shows me that a lot more happened in this time span than I would initially have guessed. So let’s dive in.
Memento Mori
2025 was the year I lost both my grandfather and my uncle. Death is part of life, and I feel like I’ve always been able to handle it well, but it hurts nonetheless. Hearing my father say he’s now the only one left of his branch of the family tree made me realise he’s not going to be around forever, either. I can’t imagine a world without him in it, and so I feel strongly for my cousins which have lost their father far too early.
The second reminder of (eventual) death came in the form of the situation with my hands. I don’t think I’ve seen so many doctors in a single year since maybe 2017. My hands (wrists and thumbs, really) still hurt, but on some days it’s been better than on others and so far—also thanks to some more ergonomic additions to my workspace—it hasn’t had the negative impact I feared it would have. Nonetheless, it serves as a constant reminder that I keep getting older and my time (and abilities) in this life are limited.
There’s so much I still want to do, but I’m realising that I’ll have to prioritise (and compromise). Throwing more and more time at problems in order to solve them won’t work any longer, and perhaps I should finally face that sometimes it might be better to go with something pre-existing (or accepting help) instead of doing everything myself.
Then again, I love re-inventing wheels. It’s the only way to get wheels that work exactly the way I want them to, but more than that, it’s simply fun for me.
New Projects, New Software
Speaking of which, this year I continued my work on Mattrbld, my decentralised content management system, and finally published a completely new app as a companion to and tool for the introductory web development class I teach at UAS in Munich.
Quadrants is my take on a code playground for the web. It is local-first, so it doesn’t require any accounts or backend servers to create and save code snippets—but it still allows for peer to peer sharing of these snippets. I have successfully used it in my class this semester and enjoyed the chance to work with some new technologies.
I’m especially proud of the flexible layout engine and the linting and custom snippet extensions I wrote for the excellent Prism Code Editor, which serves as the basis for the code sections.
Most of the work on the app happened in my new code editor of choice, Zed. The switch was gradual, but I wouldn’t want to go back to VS Codium anytime soon. Zed feels like a true spiritual successor to Atom—I just hope it won’t end up the same way the latter did.
Other than Mattrbld and Quadrants, I also spent a little time working on Magistan, my card game, which was a delight. I have never built a procedural creature generator before, so this too was something new for me.
Struggling with Ideals (because of LLMs)
Yeah, yeah, 2025 was (yet another) year of “AI”. I won’t get into it, others have put excellent words to this complicated and upsetting issue. All I want to say is that of the twelve blog posts I published this year, I’ll likely remember “Loss of Ideals” the most. I still struggle to properly articulate my feelings about all of this change introduced by these new products, but that post was a valiant attempt.
Some days, all the marketing, hype and controversy (and hypocrisy and exploitation and commoditisation and and and) are overwhelming me. I think this year might’ve been the first where news and social feeds started to really affect my mood. I needed to take steps back.
Still, I’ll try not to let it dishearten me. I’ll keep doing the things I love because I love doing them, not because it may be the most efficient or profitable way of doing them.
Content Consumption
The pain in my hands made it difficult to play many games this year—and no shows or movies come to mind as having struck a chord or having been particularly memorable. If pressed, I’d say my favourite game was Dispatch, and my favourite show the (sadly) final season of The Wheel of Time. The Mighty Nein is a worthy contender, but I haven’t finished that one yet.
However, I’m glad to report that I have kept up my reading habit and managed to get through quite a few books in 2025.
Here’s a chronological list of what I’ve read (and tried to give a mini book review for over on Mastodon):
- The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (9/10)
- Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson (7/10)
- Edgedancer, Brandon Sanderson (6/10)
- Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (6/10)
- Dawnshard, Brandon Sanderson (7/10)
- Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson (4/10)
- Wind and Truth, Brandon Sanderson (5/10)
- A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles (7/10)
- The Jasmin Throne, Tasha Suri (6/10)
- The Oleander Sword, Tasha Suri (5/10)
- The Lotus Empire, Tasha Suri (3/10)
- Artificial Intelligence and the Meaning of Life, Richard David Precht (1/10)
- Crossroads of Ravens, Andrzej Sapkowski (6/10)
- Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (7/10)
- Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (7/10)
- Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (6/10)
- SEO for Authors, Estelle Van de Velde (no rating because I know the author)
- Garen First Shield, Anthony Reynolds (2/10)
- The Unbroken, C. L. Clark (7/10)
- It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, Paul Arden (5/10)
As should be evident from the high rating, The Way of Kings was awesome. I am not a big Sanderson fan, but that book (briefly) made me doubt my stance. Unfortunately, the rest of the series couldn’t match the quality of that first book. I also loved The Locked Tomb series for its originality, and generally this was a good year for fantasy books. Not so much for non-fiction, but perhaps am I am biased.
Onwards Toward 2026
In a week from now, it’ll be a brand-new year, and I’ll still have a few more days off to get started on some long-planned projects. After playing around with some analytics services and settling on Umami again, I’ve grown disgruntled with it once more. So I am going to build my own. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share more about it soon.
After that, I want to get to the long overdue rebuild of my personal website and then tackle privacy preserving sync for local-first apps again so I can finally work on the next version of Qami, my creative writing app.
Reading this back, that already sounds like more than I’ll realistically be able to do, but I enjoy my evening projects and if it takes more than a year to accomplish those goals, so be it.
For now, however, let me thank you for the time you spend on reading my articles and the kind words you’ve sent me via email and Mastodon. I hope you, too, have the chance to relax and spend some time with your loved ones—or on projects you love.
Happy 2026, everyone!