January 1st, 2026

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.