I've been doing these posts ending my years, aiming to publish on the 31st, so I'm pleased that I've managed to get this post out the door. Mostly for my own reading, but perhaps yours too.

Reflecting and comparing

I've just read through my opening to the end of 2024 and wow, it doesn't feel better (to me). Though I do appreciate two things that factor into this: 1. I'm a glass half empty fella, 2. the coverage (I follow) of events doesn't often highlight the positive things happening.

The world is on fire. Still.

With this particular phrase in mind, I saw The Holdovers last week for the first time, and this quote struck me, for a movie set in 1970:

the world doesn't make sense anymore. I mean, it's on fire. The rich don't give a shit. Poor kids are cannon fodder. Integrity is a punch line. Trust is just a name on a bank.

The response to which is:

…if that's all true, then now is when they most need someone like you.

I think that's why we need to still feel like it's burning so that we can find that fire and help as do what we/I can.

Two particular legal cases that I'm trying to follow (though struggling because I suspect these legal things are slow):

  • Palatine Action having been proscribed, and the legal challenge, at time of writing, "Judgment is awaited".
  • The ECHR "interim guidance" (quoted due to the lack-thereof) on "woman" and "sex" refer to the biological sex - and the resulting challenge showing that it's transphobic and legally wrong.

A few other highlights being Labour did not swoop in and do what I had hoped (i.e. do right by people) and instead has spent a lot of their time trying to out-Reform Reform. The Giant Cheese Puff across the pond is tearing apart democracy, literally and figuratively and the genocide continues even after a "ceasefire" and the far right continue to raise it's ugly head in the UK. Oh, an AI eating the world and people actually dying from the companies pushing engagement (CW: suicide).

So… with that floating around in the background, I have found it hard to muster the motivation to care about the web, about bits of code and about writing on my blog.

I will say that I've found a little light in the political sphere. I regularly watch Pod Save the UK on YouTube, and found Zack Polanski's campaign to lead the greens - and a lot of what I believed. I've joined the Greens specifically to cast a vote and not only did he win, but the Greens have seen a huge surge adding over 120,000 new members (me included).

In a similar vein to doom scrolling, I found myself watching Polanski's videos and interviews online to drop a pipette's worth of hope back into my system. This was a particular highlight for me earlier this year.

With that out of the way, what have I been up to?

Work

Work-work (or as most people know it: paid work) has really been two main items: working with Oak National and working on FFConf 2025.

I first started working for Oak in early 2021 and have worked with them for just over 3 years in total. Ranging from rebuilding their question and answer system, to designing and building their public facing content API (where you, Jo Public, can access any part of their curriculum).

I really like working with the people at Oak, and it's the first place I encountered the concept of working in squads (which I see as like mini movie production crews - ask me in person what I mean!).

My last contract ended in mid-August this year, but I'm looking forward to returning to work with them at the start of 2026.

Then onto FFConf, and with my Oak contract ending, allowed me much more time to focus on the event, planning and new software.

FFConf

This year's lead up to FFconf was very, very different to 2024's lead up.

In 2024, the stress of trying to sell tickets, trying to find sponsors, and feeling like we were spinning our tyres and getting no-where was bad. Very, very bad. Like "I want to throw this all in"-bad.

When Julie and I returned to FFConf's planning for 2025 we knew this wasn't the last one, but we also knew we needed to do something different at the very least for my own mental health (and so Julie wasn't worried about me the whole year).

The relatively small and simple change we made was that we decided we would send a newsletter every week. The same structure, but weekly on Thursday.

This seemingly obvious change, completely changed the experience for me. There was none of the stress and terror that I experienced in 2024.

Weirdly, tickets sold mostly similarly to 2024, but it felt completely different.

As for the day. It was wonderful. I had a smile throughout the day, and I felt full of love from the people who attended. The talks were amazing and inspiring and fun. I wrote about the day too.

Projects

As I mentioned earlier, I've gone through a lot of the year not entirely excited about web stuff. I want to be, but… I'm just not right now.

A side effect of that feeling is that I've not really put much out into the world. I know I don't have to, but I also know that it's my creative outlet, and it's a nice thing for me to do (for me).

AI has been a dominant feature of the tech industries in 2025 - unavoidable in a lot of cases - but I have been dabbling in lots of little personal tools and toys using (effectively) vibe coding.

I find myself using this vibe coding method to create personal items that make something really specific to me, like: a tracker to help me and Julie to remember who chose the movie last week and what the hell we watched, or, a command line tool to scan my network and try to work out where my esphome devices are, or, a percentage calculate (because I keep forgetting how it works), or, a tool to modify subtitle files to offset the timing, or, a stupid toy that let's me upload a photo, cut out a mouth, then it uses speech API to sing whatever you type in.

But these are personal toys. Prototypes. Things that are not meant for more than one user.

I'd like to list and screenshot some of these in the future to preserve them a little better.

Donations

Each year, since 2021, I've been trying to look at donating at least 10% of the business profits to charities.

I put a call out on socials for anyone's lived experience with any trans support charities and the replies grew and grew (as much as I wanted to give to them all, I simply couldn't).

When reviewing which charities to donate to, we always check their income and want to see that they're also using their funds.

Separately, I also donated to these companies (which aren't charities) from my personal donations:

I hope to continue this "tradition" while I can.

Personal

Having touched on it already in the opening of this post, a lot of my personal headspace is in politics right now.

Outside of that particular stress, I've got my Gameboy and retro hardware that I restore (though much less often these days).

I also regularly tinker with my Home Assistant set up (something I've been meaning to write a little more about - there's some fun and dumb automations I have set up). A few of my favourites are: when I go to the gym, the bathroom radiator starts heating up (whereby my undies start getting warm in lieu of my shower when I return), or perhaps the increasingly aggro announcement to remind me to empty the washing machine.

The family keep growing (physically, thankfully the numbers have levelled off now!). The pets (3 cats and 1 dog) are happy, and the kids (one teenager and one pre-teen) keep sprouting and amazing (and testing us) each day.

The best books I read this year were both non-fiction (and thusly took me ages to read), but I highly recommend both:

  1. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
  2. Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War

I'll see if I can rustle up my reading summary in the new year - though at 14 books, it's rather brief!

Next bits - the retrospective

Last year I said I wanted to:

  • Increase my reading ✅ - in 2024 I read 13 books, this year I've read 14 (highly unlikely I'll finish the 15th in time!)
  • Find the motivation to blog some more ❌ - I didn't find the motivation, though I did actually manage to blog more than 2024 (though still not my target of twice a month, every month)
  • Hopefully some journalling will help 🤔 - I started strong, then slowed down to when I needed to put thoughts somewhere, to now… I can't remember the last time I wrote (and writing by pen is a slow process ofr me, my fingers can't keep up with the thoughts) - this one is a semi-fail
  • Keep an eye on my health ✅ - this is a mixed bag really. The MS support here in Brighton is really good, so they regularly meet me to check things are okay (MRI scans, drugs, etc). I have managed to return to the gym on a 2/3 times a week schedule. I had some physio that actually helped with some of my finger tip nerve issues (from MS) and it's improved the sensitivity for the first time in probably a decade. My diet…isn't terrible, but it's a far cry from dry chicken every day - I just think age is a reality I can't just ignore. On the other hand, my hearing aids are superb and I love them.

But hell, like I read somewhere on the web in the last week: 2026 is probably going to be a shitshow too, so don't be too hard on yourself.

This year, I'd like it if I found some way to get myself to write some more. I do wonder what software development is going to look like for me (particularly after how little code I've written from the ground up in the last 3 months). I'd like to keep up the reading and gym'ing. I'd like to get to bed earlier, and perhaps be a bit kinder inside my own head (to myself primarily). I want to ask "can I help" a lot more (if only to Julie) - it seems like a good mantra. I want to have fun with some stupid home assistant things. I want to design and build more PCBs and electronics projects (and perhaps improve my understanding).

And I'd really like to go to the cinema more. I miss the cinema. Maybe that'll be my thing in 2026 🤔

If you made it this far, thanks. If you're Remy reading this from the future - I hope things are looking up.

I'm now looking forward to reading your year-in-review blog posts, and I'll see you in The Future / 2026 💜

The family, growing up(wards)!