macOS 26 (Tahoe) was forcibly installed on my work laptop and I have to say… it’s just not great. I knew that would probably be my reaction, but to have it confirmed is another thing entirely.

The menus are particularly awful — Everything looks misaligned with smatterings of poorly conceived icons. The floating/nested sidebar concept should have been a style option for developers, not something forced upon every, single, app. It’s a bit ironic that many apps I need for work are electron-based, and are not beholden to the design whims of Apple.

It is very likely that I’ll keep Sequoia on my personal laptop and skip Tahoe entirely.

Rock wa Lady no Tashinami Deshite

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The music in shows like this (Bocchi the Rock, Ya Boy Kongming, etc) really elevate them far beyond the original source material. These are made to be anime, and the fact that they gained a successful audience as a manga speaks to the quality of the writing and characters. Loved the conceit and the CG for the performances was excellent.

8/10

I used the React TUI library ink for the first time to build a simple TUI for cross posting these micro posts to Mastodon and Bluesky and loved the experience. The one gap in the framework is the lack of a multi-line editor (a vim-like experience is probably too much to ask for). I might try forking to nvim as the editor (similar to how git launches $EDITOR for editing the commit message)

I’ve taken some time over the holiday break get my last 2025 update of anilime out to the store. There was quite a bit of scope creep in this one:

• Expo Upgrade with a bunch of iOS 26 updates
• Moving the navigation stack to @react-navigation’s “native” implementations of stack and bottom tabs
• A whole host of screen refactoring, mostly due to the new iOS 26 primitives, including support for the iPad’s new window management

Overall, a worth while update. I don’t collect any analytics in the app and I’ve never bothered to dive too deeply into the store analytics that Apple provides. I have no idea how many people still use the app – it’s mainly an app for me that I happen to share. That being said, I do want to invest in it a bit more in 2026. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like, but I have a few ideas.

I have a backlog of completed anime that I need to post here. I was absolutely going to get around to it between Christmas and New Years, but

checks calendar

we all see how that turned out.

Happy New Years! Catch you on the flip side.

Hazbin Hotel - Season 2

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Once again, a musical theater masterpiece with spectacular animation and character designs. Loved every second.

10/10

PS. Gravity is an absolute fucking banger.

Managed to upgrade hugo and my blowfish theme in one fell swoop. It doesn’t help that I have customized branches for both (and for hugo I need to produce an ARM binary for local development and x86-64 binary for CI deployment). I almost gave up a few times, but glad I pushed through to the end.

Having to use a custom build of your static blogging engine always has me eyeing the greener grass on the other side of the fence. If I were to start from scratch at this point, eleventy would probably be my first choice, but that requires a huge amount of work at this point. It would be less daunting if I was starting something from square one, but having a back catalog using at least three different file structures and frontmatter conventions… just, ugh.

And if I’m being honest, if I truly was starting from square one I would probably go with a self-hosted ghost setup, so I could keep using Ulysses for writing.

Look Back

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How bad do you want it? Will you do what it takes? What does art mean to you?

This film is a love letter to what it means to create. The animation is raw, visceral, and incredibly moving. Highly recommended, but give yourself some extra time to sit with the experience after it’s over (you will definitely need it).

9/10

Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai

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After a quick detour through three movies, Bunny Girl Senpai is back for a cour (before diving right back into another movie). I enjoyed the mysteries in this season, as well as the new university setting. The links back to Sakuta’s elementary school days felt a bit tenuous (let’s explore new friends and relationships) but the formula works for me.

8/10

Ruri no Houseki

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The folks at Studio Bind are just flexing at this point — this show felt like an animation showcase. Ernest and interesting, this quintessential slice-of-life story was a fantastic show for the summer season.

8/10