Weekly Notes 2026.01

2026-01-04 4 min read

First weekly note of the new year! 🎉

I’m trying out a new format for my weekly notes this year; we’ll see how long it lasts. Instead of a giant run-on list mixing personal and professional, I’m splitting the two, and throwing in a “notable” section, which is for events, and may sometimes be omitted. Additionally, I think I’m going to try keeping track of my goal progress, though I may pull this into a monthly note in the future.

Goal Progress

Books: 0/18 📚
Photos digitized: 1/500 🖼️
Workouts: 2/7 💪
GTD reviews: 0/7 daily, weekly pending

Work

Only one day of work this week (Friday), mostly spent catching up on some remaining emails, Slack messages, and planning for the week and month ahead.
I’m still experimenting with useful ways to incorporate LLMs into my workflow. I found them helpful for cleaning up some emails I needed to send (effectively proofreading/editing), and for some meeting planning. I’ll see how they work out over the next few weeks.

Personal

I spent some time trying out gaming on Linux, since that’s a serious consideration instead of my aging Windows gaming rig in the future. Northgard worked relatively well, although there was more lag than I expected (which I’ve not narrowed down yet).
I haven’t completed any books yet this year, though I started two, and have been keeping up with my morning reading routine ever since Jan 1.
- Dr. Mutter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine (paperback)
- Silverthorn (audiobook)
As I already shared in a status update on New Year’s Day, the moon was particularly bright, and easily to photograph out of my office window. And so, since taking photos with my GH5 is on the list for 2026 (and I wanted to try out some old glass), I took photos with both an old Minolta 80-200mm lens, and my Panasonic 100-300mm lens. I had the best results editing the raw files, as the out-of-camera JPEGs looked okay, but not amazing.

Notable

Monday I returned from visiting family in Ohio. The trip was mostly uneventful (thankfully), although it was by far the windiest driving conditions I’ve ever made the trip in, and it took me an extra ~30 minutes, not counting stops.
I met some coworkers for lunch on New Year’s Eve at Casa Agave, which was a new locale for me. We all ended up having nearly the same meal, but it was delicious, and it was fun to meet up before the new year began.

Potpourri

I ran across an article on how poor sleep health is associated with an older brain age. TL;DR - getting healthy sleep (not just amounts, but good quality sleep) is good for your brain, as I think we all know.
I wrote up my own goals for 2026, and then shortly after read Matt’s post on the same topic. He was much more concise, and much more willing to put numbers/metrics to goals.
Speaking of 2026 - I ran across an interesting thread from Paul Fairie on predictions made in 1926 about 2026. I highly recommend a quick perusal if you have time!
I’d been putting off reading some blog posts by Cassidy Williams, as I was debating linking or writing a comment post… I’ve decided on the former. Her post entitled My inbox is so full hit close to home. I don’t deal with quite that amount of email yet, but email hygiene, shall we say, is something I’m focusing on in 2026.
And another post by Cassidy: influencing without authority. This is an area I find myself in frequently, and her commentary on tools at your disposal you can use in such a scenario was much needed encouragement.
Thanks to Slashdot, I ran across a post on how reading is a vice. A vice, you say? Really? I don’t know wether I fully agree with that premise, but viewing reading as something to do for pleasure, not a duty, is definitely beneficial, and the way I attempt to approach it.
Music ownership and not relying on Spotify seems to be a big topic of conversation in the blogosphere currently. I have been hosting my own music library for a while, and may have more commentary at some point. But interesting reads:
The Trekorama project on GitHub is cool, for the Trekkies among us. 🚀
Today’s Miniature Calendar post, Styrofoam Fight, is pretty cool. 🙂