2025 Year in Review
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And we come to the end of another year and I always try to reflect on the previous year and look at what stuff has impacted me across the last twelve months.
Generative AI
AI continues to drive forward with more enhancements over the year, and I feel my mindset has slowly evolved over time. We started the year with everyone basically only looking at ChatGPT. Now, we have powerful models from Google and Anthropic, as well as a bunch of open-weight models from China. The other two things I'd push is agents and AI browsers. All of the companies have started working to start with coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, among others. Not could it just generate code but access your system hands free (to a questionable result) and against what I think is useful, these tools could run for longer without as much supervision. As well, every browser either added AI capabilites or the AI labs made agents in the browsers or their own browsers completely with things like Atlas, Comet, Dia, and others.
Turning to where I feel about the state of AI is yes it is getting better, but I continue to want to be skeptical of the capabilities. Just cause you can give it a prompt to go write some complex feature in a project and it spits out a bunch of code, that doesn't mean that it is maintainable in the long run and who is to say which is faster betweeen writing code manually vs AI code gen + possible time needed to fix the gaps that these models still have. Personally I'm not touching any of the AI browser stuff just cause of the prompt injection nightmares that could happen if someone got access to account credentials. I have been trying to use the agents more in development spaces like using Cursor or Claude Code, but if I want to give it a full try, I want to have the safety guard rails of sandboxes like docker containers such that I don't mess my computers up.
Homelab
Over the past year I have not specifically updated any hardware around my homelab, but I have continued looking into the transition from deploying to the cloud as a default to deploying to a local machine as a default as I develop personal applications. I've been using Tailscale more and more this year and I appreciate the convienence of being able to develop web applications that are hosted internally to my home network but still be able to access them wherever I am via my phone or laptop.
In terms of programming projects, I have worked on 4 personal software projects throughout this year and have a few ideas of some new ones going into the new year. I do appreciate being able to flex my muscles with software dev in this case as my role at work has shifted over the years into a more management and leadership focus.
Intentional Computing / Consumption
One of my core themes about 2024, 2025, and likely 2026 is around this concept I've coined for myself about intentional computing & consumption. Rather than being at the whim of social media feeds and algorithms, I've been trying to seek out content and curate stuff that drives me rather than pushes me down or ragebaits me.
To do this, I've continued to use a RSS reader, specifically Readwise Reader to collect either news publications or indie creators and be able to have the content aggregated for me. Also I do watch a lot of YouTube, but I try to either watch creators I have subscribed to or that are closely related to the topic areas I am interested in. I do have to click the "Don't reccomend this channel to me" button quite often as well as occasionally check if all of the creators I sub to is what I still watch or if I want to clean things up, but I feel even when you are making your own algorithm, it is not a constant thing and evolves over time.
As well, a thing I've been trying to do when sharing content with others is take a few seconds and try to think if I should share it. Sometimes I do get an article or post that is ragebait and my mentality is to share it with a friend and vent of how I feel, but as well I do ponder the questions "Do I think they'll care about this?" or "Will this drag them down as well?" Venting for venting sake can be useful every so often, but I am trying to not let stuff that is coming from the places I curate that may anger me to completely take over and go down a negative spiral.
Media consumption
That said, in terms of media that I did consume over the year, there was a lot of good content and games. On the Games front, Hades 2 and Expedition 33 were my highlights as the former is a game that I can pick up and play for short sessions and have a good time while the latter was a really fun RPG with a great story from a new indie studio.
I also got a good amount into consuming Marvel Comics over the year. The 2023 run of the Ultimate Universe was a major part of that of trying to flip the script on characters and franchises people know and love and it had a good stories. As well, I have been enjoying the various Fantastic Four runs that I've been reading, between the current runs by Ryan North as well as some older runs from writers such as Johnathan Hickman.
Finally, I want to highlight the success out of Apple TV specifically around the Sci-Fi / Drama genre. Severance and Foundation both had new seasons and I really been enjoying the stories they've been telling. Also, at the end of this year, Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul fame released Pluribus, which was a very fun character case study with sci-fi themes around it.
Journalling and Weeknotes
In terms of writing and content curation I have gone between two main methods with physical journalling as well as digital curation through my Weeknotes. I wrote about physical journalling earlier this year here: Daily Journalling with Pen and Paper in 2025. The majority of what I wrote then still holds of trying to focus in and not be completely distracted by notifications or other distractions on my phone or other devices. I am not personally picking up any new journals or notebooks for the new year and just continuing into the new year with the existing ones I am using today. Also it is going to be interesting to now go into year 2 of my 5 year journal which I note down a few highlights or things I want to remember about a given day and be able to see where my mind was one year ago.
As well on the flipside, I have officially written as of this past Saturday 52 Weeknotes. I wrote 8 back in 2024 when I kickstarted this and it was fun to do a flipthrough of week by week recently and to see the trajectory of things I consumed and worked on over the year. Similar to my 5 year journal, it would be interesting to see if I could line up the weeks year by year and see where I was on a given part of the year, but I definitely think it was a good process to get myself to write stuff down and share what I was into every single week this year.
Hanging with friends
As I commented last year, I wanted to continue keep up with relationships with my friends. Digitally we kept up with this and started doing scheduled game nights or movie nights as our time gets more hectic. As well, a good chunk of my friends alongside me all met up for a weekend away this Summer and it was good to meet up face to face again. We have already booked tickets and accommodations for an event this upcoming Spring and I have a few more ideas for IRL meetups for us to get together.
Conclusion
The world at large definitely crunched and there were a lot of bad things, but I at least tried to focus on how I can manage my own life and not be overburdened by the weight of the world. Was it perfect, definitely not, but I feel it is at least worth trying where I can in the places that matter to me, and I am going to be doing such next year as well.