Alex Chan in The Good, the Bad, and the Gutters:
To help me understand how this layout works, I’m going to step through it and explain how I built the new version of the page.
You won't find a clearer and more understandable walkthrough of how to set up and style a CSS grid than this one from Alex. Making a note of their trick for fixed height for the cover images for my reading log which is crying out for exactly that.
Update: Inspired by Alex, I've updated the reading log CSS to use fixed height instead of fixed width. Looks much better!
Came across Mole: 🐹 Deep clean and optimize your Mac. today. It is an open source, command line based utility for cleaning your Mac.
I generally don't install much, and try to be pretty diligent about keeping my Mac clean. Nevertheless, I was able to clear up a few gigabytes worth of junk that was lying around.
As you may recall, circa 2022-2023 I was working on a microkernel written in Hare named Helios. Helios was largely inspired by and modelled after the design of seL4 and was my first major foray into modern OS development that was serious enough to get to a somewhat useful state of functionality, with drives for some real hardware, filesystems, and an environment for running user programs of a reasonable level of sophistication.
Helios development went strong for a while but eventually it slowed and eventually halted in a state of design hell.
Except me. I'll never leave. Not ever. I'm here until it's lights out.
Rob Beschizza in Everyone hates OneDrive, Microsoft's cloud app that steals then deletes all your files for Boing Boing:
If you want control over your files (or simply like knowing where they are and be certain they still exist) use another operating system.
Sums up in a single sentence why I'll never again use Windows on a personal computer. The enshittification is unbelievably bad. Rob continues:
And it's such a mess: an operating system packed with ads, upsells and bloat. Something about Microsoft reminds me of oil companies in the southwest: risky environment, externalized costs, nauseating conditions, cunning alignments of liability and safety, no-one cares if it works so long as money is made.
Winter finally started in earnest these last few days. Got out for my first cross country skiing session of the year today.
Crossing an ice covered lake in an otherwise quiet landscape is eerie. The ice is constantly shifting, cracking and resettling, resulting in intermittently ominous sounds.
Steph Ango in File over app:
File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.
This philosophy is what I hinted at in footnote 9 in my recent post about my current tech stack.
Storing data in open and accessible file formats is the way to go. It minimises lock-in and gives you great portability and freedom of choice.
Socks have always been a problem for me. I remember my mother, back when I was a kid, lamenting that I wrecked my socks too quickly. And this has remained a problem all through my life. I don't know the cause. Perhaps I drag my feet when I walk. Maybe I mess around and slide slide too much, even as a middle aged man. All I know is that when I buy two ten packs of regular cotton socks, holes start appearing a month or two later.
As a forty year old man of means1 I've decided that enough is enough. No longer will I suffer the discomfort of walking around with holes in my socks. Instead, I will approach this problem methodically, with a twofold aim:
In my advanced age, I've come to prefer wool over cotton in many cases. After embarking on an exhaustive study of sock durability, I seem to be in luck. Wool blend socks appear, in general, to be more durable than cotton socks. Further, my extensive research efforts led me towards two particular brands2:
There seems to be a loose consensus in sock durability awareness communities that these two brands offer the most value of any socks on the market. Well, I'll find out.
My first experiment will be pitching Smartwool's Everyday Anchor Line Crew Socks against a Norwegian market generic brand wool-blend sock.3
Now, I fully expect the Smartwool socks to outlast its opponent. But, the thing is, they also cost five times as much. For the price of three pairs of Smartwool socks, I bought fifteen pairs of the generic brand wool-blend socks. Fifteen!
I've therefore devised the following experiment:
Will the three pairs of Smartwool socks outlast fifteen pairs of the generic brand wool socks? I have my doubts, but I will let you know. Naturally, I will also award extra points for comfort, if one or the other stands out in that regard. Like and subscribe to make sure you don't miss the results!4
The second phase of this experiment will be pitching the winner against Darn Tough socks to determine the ultimate winner. Whoever it is, they will, in all likelihood, gain my patronage for the remainder of my life. Well, if I can find a way to purchase Darn Tough's more anonymous colourways here in Norway. I'm just a plain socks kinda guy.
Ben Thompson in AI and the Human Condition:
Perhaps it follows, then, that the devaluing of labor Patel and Trammell warns about actually frees humans up to once again create beauty?
A person can dream. (Relevant link: The Youtube video Why is the modern world so ugly? by the Cultural Tutor.)
On the whole, I'm with Ben on his optimistic take. In a way, it would be posthumous vindication for J.M. Keynes, who thought that the eventual outcome of technological progress would be that we'd all essentially spend our days with close to endless leisure time.1
It's been a while since my economic history studies, so take this claim with a pinch of salt. ↩
Thanks to Robb I came across this teaser trailer confirming that Malcolm in the Middle is coming back.
I loved the original series. Can't wait for this! Hope the full cast is coming back. Looks promising based on the trailer.
Nicolas Solerieu in On wearables:
The marketing is a mishmash of sport, lifestyle, health value propositions fading in a goodness mush, rarely delivering much beyond a wrist-mounted stream of numbers.
Couldn't agree more. After a few years of wearing my sports watch 24/7, I realised that the data and the way it was presented did my head in, and had no positive effect on my health and fitness. For the past couple of years I've worn an analogue watch, only switching to my sports watch to track my actual workouts.
I am unreasonably proud of getting this right in the workout log before actually getting there and seeing that something was off.
Calendar years and ISO weeks don't really intermingle. Can't wait for the scramble at work on Monday as people start trying to figure out what's what because of this fact.
Hey all,
I'm not dropping this on the actual newsletter feed because it's a little self-indulgent and I'm not sure 88,000 or so people want an email about it.
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The last day of the year is coming to a close. As I begin drafting this post, four more hours remain until the year of our lord twenty twenty five is but a memory.
I didn't plan on writing a "year in review" for this year. Don't get me wrong, I love it when those posts pop up in my feed reader and I wish more people would write them. This was just a particularly ordinary year on my end. There isn't all that much to report.
But with the four year old in bed and asleep, and the seven year old upstairs playing Minecraft with his mother in an attempt to stay awake until the new year rolls around, I'm suddenly sat in the living room. Alone and with time to spare. So I thought I'd give myself a small challenge. Write and publish a post. Right here, right now, before the year ends. I don't know what it will become. Call it a "word vomit" inspired by Meadow and let's see what comes out.
There was absolutely nothing of particular note to report from my 2025. It was a year without big stories, inspirational turnarounds, remarkable comings of age and uncomfortable upheavals. A good thing, in most respects.
Both children continued to prosper and grow. At seven and four, we're now reaching that phase of their lives where they might begin to encounter problems outside the little bubble of the world their mother and I can influence. Parental duties so far have been challenging, yes, but rewarding. When their challenges are "small"1 and manageable, you come a long way by just showing up and being there. At the same time, I know that as they continue to expand their contact surface with the world, they will begin to face challenges beyond our immediate control.
I can't help but feel ill equipped to guide them through these situations.
Watching my kids apply themselves to an activity is my favourite thing. Both are active and participate in several activities. The boy plays football and handball, while the girl (despite my continued lobbying that she should start playing football) loves dancing. To see them practice with passion and make headway gives me great joy. I have no aspirations on their behalves, I'm just there for the ups and downs and all that'll teach them.
After battling cancer for over a year, my grandmother passed this fall. It was sad and I miss her. Given she'd been living with cancer for so long, I thought it would lessen the impact of her parting. It didn't. Her passing was also the oldest kid's first real experience with mortality. He was absolutely devastated at her funeral. It was a hard day.
Savne deg, mor.
As shown in my reading log for 2025, I read 18 books this year.2 Eight of them I read aloud to one of my children. Of those, the Narnia books (which I had been wanting to read for many years) were my favourites. I wrote a post with my thoughts on the series.
Of the books I read on my own, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was a particular highlight. In a post about the book I shared some of my thoughts and my favourite excerpts.
What I did not write about was the Liveship Traders books. Late last year, I read Ship of Magic before setting aside the trilogy for Wind and Truth (which left me a bit disappointed). I though Ship of Magic was OK, but it really set the scene for the rest of the story. And what a story it was! The Mad Ship was excellent before the trilogy concluded with the even better Ship of Destiny. I think these three books combined is perhaps my favourite work of fantasy writing. If you haven't read them yet, you should! Although they work fine as a stand-alone trilogy, they are part of Robin Hobb's Elderling universe. You'll probably appreciate them even more if you begin with Hobb's Farseer trilogy.
I only managed to finish two non-fiction books this year. Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing (thoughts) and Ceasar by Adrian Goldsworthy. I want to double that next year.
Going through my workout log for 2025 I was surprised to find that I had the most active days in a year since I began tracking my workouts in 2017. 312 active days is nine up from the previous high in 2021. My sessions are shorter on average than back then, and total active time of 323 hours is not near the 379 hours of my peak years of 2023 and 2018.
Although it was a good year of physical activity, I am not quite satisfied. I "only" managed 55 hours of strength training. Now in my forties, I think working a wide range of muscles to reduce age-induced decay will only become more important. An hour a week is a little less than where I want to be.
I caught the running bug again earlier this year. It should therefore come as no surprise that running, at 244 hours, made up the bulk of my active time. Going out for a run in quiet surroundings, on trails or a back country road, gives me great joy. I'm also acutely aware of the fact that window of opportunity for bettering my personal bests is closing quickly. Realistically, I have three to five years to do it.
That in mind, I am gearing up for giving improving my personal bests one last go. This year was all about getting back to it. I got back to regular workouts, and increased my volume significantly compared to 2024. However, I'm still around 1500 kilometres behind for the year compared to where I need to be to get close to my PBs. In 2026 I will attempt to get back to that training volume and positioning myself to run a (hopefully) fast marathon in 2027.
In 2024 I transitioned to a new role internally. This year was all about fully settling and coming to grips with the expectations and deliverables of this role. It's taken longer than I'd expected, but after a year and a half, I believe I'm starting to get there. The role is quite different to what I'd expected. And, to be frank, it doesn't exactly play to my strengths. The responsibilities are less direct deliverables, and more mediation, meeting room influencing and stakeholder management than I'm comfortable with
There's a lot to learn and plenty of room to grow in a situation like this. The upside is that the team around me is great. My colleagues keep inspiring me to do my best and evolve my skills to better handle the role. That said, I find it hard to see myself in this role for the long term. If an opportunity that better matches my skill set presents itself, I will consider it. That might happen in 2026, or beyond.
The new year is still two hours away. But I'm ready to go to bed. What next year brings will have to wait until tomorrow.
Happy new year!
As a parent, and a human being in general, I think it's important to remember that what might seem small to you can be mountainous and incomprehensible to a child. Or any other person, for that matter. ↩
I've also spent more than half the year working my way through Letters from a Stoic. I still have a few letters left. Because I count all books as read in the year that I finish them, it'll show up as read in 2026. ↩
Soundtrack: Lynyrd Skynyrd — Free Bird
This piece is over 19,000 words, and took me a great deal of writing and research.
Ruslan Osipov in Home is where my stuff is:
Some of these versions of myself are still relevant. Some aren’t. The hard part isn’t identifying which is which - it’s accepting that letting go of the object means letting go of that version of me. Admitting that I’m not that person anymore. Or that I never became the person I bought that thing for.
I never became the guitarist I thought that fancy guitar would make me. But I'll never, ever let it go.