234 North

Hey hey here we are in a new year! Welcome 2026!

I rang in the New Year doing two things, one of which I normally loathe if I’m even awake when the clock strikes midnight: watching “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”. Why this year? Because it’s the first time since that show first appeared on TV (NBC on 12/31/1971) that Chicago was included in the national broadcast for the Central Time Zone. Not sure how the hell that was possible given that Chicago is the third largest metro in the US but there it is. Love my home town and we represented well.

Before and after that I was watching “One Battle After Another”.

I kept reading great things about this movie and loved it. Strange, hilarious in parts, with a chase scene at the end that was absolutely fantastic.

2026: The Year of Re-Big-Teching

I say that tongue-in-cheek but I’ll be frank and say I’m tired of the “Indieweb”. 2026 is going to be the year of enjoying myself on the Internet again like normal people and my first action? Reinstalling Instagram on my phone.

I always loved Instagram, still love Instagram, and will continue using Instagram and I don’t care who owns it or any of the other stuff that the Anointed of the Internet say about it. Feel free to use your Pixelfed or whatever. I’ll enjoy my Instagram feed.

Handwritten notes app of choice: Noteshelf 3

I’m a long time user of handwritten notes apps on the iPad and I used the big two, Notability and GoodNotes, for years. GoodNotes switched their handwriting OCR to their own “AI-based” thing which has been, and still is, terrible at handwriting OCR. Notability is OK but it just isn’t fun to use for me so when I was looking for another option I came across Noteshelf 3. The team behind this product has been kicking ass since the release of version 3. It’s gorgeous, it has gorgeous notebook covers, and the feature set is great and keeps expanding. Oh, and the OCR is powered both by Google OCR and MyScript’s library (which GoodNotes used to use). Really good OCR stuff here, not just for block letters, but longhand as well.

The funny thing about it is that not only did I forget how long it’s been around but I forgot that I bought version 1 back in 2011. The neat thing is that version 1 still works on the iPad. I downloaded it today for fun to try it out and found out why I didn’t like it back then and looked elsewhere: the shelf metaphor (hence the name Noteshelf). It just didn’t work and frankly looked stupid. People store notes in folders or notebooks, not on shelves. I never used Noteshelf 2 so it may have ditched the shelf thing but Noteshelf 3 definitely did — it uses folders and notebooks now like any sane notes app 😁

Highly recommended.

Hoping everyone has a wonderful 2026!

This year has been…quite something, for the world as a whole, and of course for me as one person in it. I’m not going to dwell on the stuff in the world everyone knows about, I have nothing to add there that hasn’t been said many times over. But 2025 brought quite a few big personal changes, most of them not easy for various reasons.

The most significant change was having to move my mom into long-term care after her stroke in late 2024, and having to sell her house. Nobody can adequately describe watching a loved one decline in this way, and I don’t think there is any way to truly be ready. It’s brutal. Knowing you can’t do anything about it, especially when you’ve already been a caregiver for a long time, is really, really tough. That said, she’s in a good spot, getting good care from people who are truly wonderful. I can’t say enough good things about them. The process to get there is far too hard, but we got there and for that I am grateful.

Not coincidentally, about 2 months before her stroke, I had started up on Zoloft hoping it would help curb anxiety as the situation before that was already unbearable. I know that it made the goings-on in 2025 much more bearable, and I’m grateful for it. Not sure where I’d be without it.

I’ve also learned, the hard way, that vast swaths of the Internet are just not for me. It’s taken me a long time to realize that but realize it I have, and I’ve already started making some changes over the last month in how I am approaching things. I’ll likely write more on that later.

The other big change was a very nice promotion at work, the first I’ve ever had. I am grateful to work with a great team of people for a company that does actually seem to care about their employees and what they think. I work from home and don’t have a commute. I work for a place that is family-first which, needless to say, has been extremely helpful over the last several years in the situation with my mom. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I have no intent on leaving. Yes, there are things I’d love to be different. Yes, some things could be better. That is the case for any company though, so my plan is to stay put.

Where does that leave us? A lot of shit in 2025, but some highlights as well. But the old maxim “this too shall pass” has never been truer than of this year. Goodbye 2025. If anything, I’m grateful, and grateful that you’re on the way out.

However you celebrate I hope you’re having a good evening. I’ve tucked in with a favorite movie.

Harvard’s New Health Bombshell: It’s Not Sleep Loss or No Exercise—It’s These 15 Daily Habits Silently Destroying You

Some serious problems with this article not the least of which is that the author doesn’t actually provide a link to the “groundbreaking Harvard health study”.

Problem areas:

4: Drinking Coffee Before Water

Harvard’s hydration research warns:

Waking up dehydrated + caffeine = compounded fatigue, headaches, and cortisol dysregulation.

You think coffee wakes you up.
It actually worsens the crash.

You get a lot of water from a cup of coffee. And for people who drink it regularly caffeine isn’t really a diuretic:

According to multiple studies, ranging from a 2003 review of research dating back to 1966 to a 2014 clinical trial that compared coffee to water ingestion in 50 men, caffeine can be a mild diuretic in large amounts for people who aren't accustomed to it. But caffeinated drinks consumed in moderation provide the same hydration as non-caffeinated drinks.

Then we’ve got:

13: Not Drinking Enough Water Until You’re Thirsty

Thirst = already dehydrated.

Harvard’s hydration studies link this habit to fatigue, overeating, headaches, and mood instability.

Myth-busters 1 and 7 here say enough about that. It is only in very modern times that normal people who aren’t doing much are walking around with bottles of water out of fear of “dehydration”. Somehow humankind has made it this far without that.

I’ve been messing with Google Chrome again. I’ve found the AdGuard AdBlocker browser extension to be about as good with the Manifest Version 3 version as the older, now unsupported by Chrome, Manifest Version 2 version. Given the limitations the folks at AdGuard have done a fabulous job.

The “Year of Analog” incoming. I’ll write more about that later in a separate post but today I picked up a new entry-level (well, not too entry level) Audio-Technica turntable and have a small tube phono pre-amp on the way. Excited to try them out tomorrow after the pre-amp shows up!

It’s amusing to me that the tech bros are talking about how we’re going to have AGI in two months and Claude can’t do simple email searches (well, simple for a person) yet and our “smart homes” have gotten dumber.