12 KiB
title, date, draft, tags, references
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| Dispatch #35 (January 2026) | 2026-01-08T00:27:32-05:00 | false |
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Happy new year! Big month. My girl turned four, which is somehow both shockingly old and young. Sometimes I look at her and think, I can't believe you're not still two. Other times she says things and I think, I can't believe you're not, like, twelve. We threw her a party at Hyper Kidz, then my folks took her to Asheville for a few days.
{{<dither IMG_2327.jpeg "782x600">}}Curly‑haired kid at a birthday table, eyes wide as balloons float overhead.{{}} {{<dither IMG_3491.jpeg "782x600">}}Standing with a giant wooden troll—whimsical roadside art and a family moment.{{}}
We spent Christmas in Greensboro with Claire's family. In addition to all the good family time, the highlight was Winter Wonderlights at the Greensboro Science Center (and so many presents). Then we spent a few days down at Lake Norman with Claire's grandmother. We went to a Gabby's Dollhouse interactive experience, which is pretty big in our house these days.
{{<dither IMG_9572.jpeg "782x600">}}A child caught in a flurry of snow, wide‑eyed amid glowing holiday lights and a shiny sculpture.{{}} {{<dither IMG_9574.jpeg "782x600">}}Toddler in a patterned sweater with a pacifier, surrounded by toy bowls of strawberries and a blue mixing bowl in a play kitchen.{{}}
Music
Here's a track I made in December, called "Signal Drift":
I'm pretty happy with the last few things I've recorded. I can hear a real progression from the stuff I was making a year ago. Getting comfortable in Ableton has been a big boost, having discrete creation and refinement phases.
I also made this little medley for a company event:
I tracked everything out on my synths, but then, rather than recording the audio, I just sent the MIDI data into Ableton and played it through this Magical 8bit Plug which really nails the Nintendo sound from my childhood.
I have a bass guitar I'm borrowing from my father-in-law, but I've never done much with it. I picked up a cheap bass multi-effect pedal so I can at least get some decent sounds out of it. I hope to incorporate it into my music -- there's a level of subtlety and expression that's hard to replicate with synths. It's a whole new thing, though, and whatever guitar skills I have (i.e. strumming bar chords) don't really transfer.
3D Printing
My lovely wife got me a Bambu Lab P1S 3D printer for Christmas, and it's basically been running non-stop since I got it set up. This thing is amazing! It's whirring away making a pink fox as I type this.
{{<dither IMG_2849.jpeg "782x600">}}Bright 3D‑printed toys—pink segmented dragon pieces and a tiny dragon beside a red jeep—on a tabletop in soft window light.{{}} {{<dither IMG_9648.jpeg "782x600">}}Two tiny pink, horned dinos stand on a cutting mat, lit warmly like fresh desk-bound creations.{{}}
I've started dabbling a bit with Blender to design and print custom stuff. Here's my first project -- the, ahem, "crap catcher" -- designed to keep Claire's fancy kitchen knives free of parrot detritus:
{{<dither crap-catcher.jpg "782x600">}}A 3D model of a long rectangular tray or catch basin in Blender, shown in wireframe-style shading with the scene axes visible.{{}} {{<dither IMG_9650.jpeg "782x600">}}A refrigerator with a 3D printed shelf above a strip of knives.{{}}
Print-on-demand toys are awesome, but there is something really cool about watching a thing you designed enter the real world, layer by layer. I'm keen to try out OpenSCAD (via), which lets you design models with code instead of visually.
Misc.
I found this post (via), "Home is where my stuff is," deeply resonant:
Here’s what I’ve realized: every object I own is a fossil. A little sediment left by a past version of myself.
This is why decluttering is so hard. It’s not really about tidiness. It’s about deciding which past selves get to stay.
Pairs nicely with another one of my favorites from 2025.
I gave a talk at work about my use of ChatGPT Codex over the last six months. The big takeaways:
- These tools don’t replace thinking (and in fact reward good & clear thinking)
- Good software development practices still apply (and you need to be able to describe them rather than just having an intuitive sense)
- Abundance mindset over zero-sum (these tools aren't taking work from software developers, they're letting us do more)
Finally, I'd like to take health and exercise a bit more seriously in 2026, and plan to do a separate blog series about it. Look out for that in the next week or so.
That's all for now. I hope 2026 treats you well, from my adorable family to yours.
{{<dither IMG_9467.jpeg "782x600">}}Big sister in a purple puffer hugs her giggling little brother on the playground, both in bright blue shoes and grinning wide.{{}} {{<dither IMG_2575.jpeg "782x600">}}Dad in a gray robe laughing as he hauls two giggling kids through a leaf-covered yard.{{}}
This Month
- Adventure: up to DC for a friend's baby shower and some family time
- Project: custom shelving unit for our kitchen
- Skill: 3D modeling; slappin' the bass
Reading & Listening
- Fiction: The Will of the Many, James Islington (via)
- Non-fiction: The Magic of Code, Samuel Arbesman (via)
- Music: Septet, John Carroll Kirby (via, though one track is on my Lisbon playlist)
Links
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My 2026 Q1 Planning and Moving to a New Planner – Writing at Large
That’s it. There are no stickers in my planner, no highlighters, illustrations and such. It’s a practical tool for me. I won’t photograph it for the blog or social media because it’s so personal, and that’s its job – to work for me, not to generate content or likes. It isn’t pretty, but boy is it functional. I reference it at least one or two time a day every day. From it stems my daily to-do list, my weekly review, my long and short term plans. It’s an investment that’s paid dividends over the years, and from what I can tell my new format promises to pay me back even more.
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Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life (via)
The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package.
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A blog is a biography | Dries Buytaert (via)
If that idea feels compelling, this might be a good time to start a blog or a website. Not to build a large audience, but just to leave a trail. Future you may be grateful you began.
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This life gives you nothing - Blackbird Spyplane (via)
When we do this, we don’t just find ourselves with more time on our hands, but with more life on our hands, too. Because we set things back in motion. The world remains the same, but the way we see it changes.