I don't recall if Google Photos did a Year In Review last year (I suppose I could look that up), but this past December I was greeted with a "here are all the photos you took in 2025" short movie.  I think this year I started naming some of the personalities in my photos (mostly my dog and my cats), so....very predictably, I ended up taking a lot of photos of my cats and dog. It's interesting

GoodReads went all out this year (at least when compared to previous years), and gave me not only my large catalog of books read in 2025, but it also provided me with some summary cards in December about the books I read, and various comparisons with others users in the system. This year I guess I managed to read something that was popular with other people too (Careless People). And yes, the trend

My Flickr Year In Review isn't a lot to phone home about. I am actually surprised that I had over 1800 views of my photos.  I basically use Flickr as another backup for my phone's photo roll.  Maybe next year I should spend a bit more time seeing what friends and acquaintances post on Flickr and what else exists on this platform.  I think the initial concept of a photo-based social network

OK, so no one asked OpenAI for a Year In Review, but I guess now is as good of a time as any for a guessing machine to take past prompts to  see if it can guess something new.  I played a bit with OpenAI's Year In Review because it's about as much fun as reading my horoscope or discussing my MBTI style 😅.I have two free accounts on OpenAI, on one of them I am one of the 0.1% of early adopters.

I think this was the first year I really dove into Discord. I've had an account for ages, but it wasn't really until the exodus from Twitter when I started looking at different spaces. I don't remember how much Discording I did in 2024, but I must have done enough to pique my interest to use it for class.While I've joined many communities, my top three were no surprise.  I think the fact that

My Swarm Year In Review is rather bland and uninteresting. I didn't really travel all that much in 2025, so my major destinations were the dog park (at least my dog isn't unhappy 😂), super markets, work, and places that I went to for walks, runs, and just to touch grass. I think the farthest I went was to Maine to drop off a laptop to a colleague who couldn't make it to campus... Maybe 2026 will

Another one of those Year in Reviews, this time it's the Year in Beer from Untappd. Admittedly, I am not a huge beer drinker.  I did go through a phase just before COVID where I tried a lot of different types of brews, but over the years I've cut back.  Untappd is soft of like my "Goodreads" for beers, in other words it's what I use to keep track of what I've tried and what I like in case

I guess I'll kick off this year's parade of "Year in Reviews" with PocketCast's Year in Podcasts.As per usual, I discovered a new podcast this year (I think it was this year) and I ended up binging a lot of their back catalog (can you guess which podcast that was? 😂). Last year it was the Delta Flyers, where two cast members from Star Trek Voyager (Tom and Harry) went through a rewatch and commentary

Since it's the first day of my winter break, I thought I'd post a short note to wish anyone still reading a happy holiday season.  I hope you get an opportunity to rest, recharge your batteries, and greet 2026 with optimism and a renewed energy for doing good in this world. Here's to hoping for some snow in the next three weeks 🌲☃️❄️

Another smartwatch bites the dust....  About three years ago I replaced my Sony Smartwatch 3 with a TicWatch Pro 3.  I would have loved to have kept onto the Sony smartwatch, but the band had rotted away after 5 years of daily use, and the MacGyver method of 3D printing a holder to get a generic band only worked so long (the holder itself broke after a while).  The battery also barely