Tag: personalareanetwork

My new years resolutions for 2026

Me and Alison sat at a bar looking at the camers

Following my review of last year… here’s my New Years Resolutions for 2026 which follows on from 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 ones.

  1. Work smarter with the business
    With the new business, I’m getting to grips with the general running of it. However there is a load of things to learn including some of the possibilities had not considered before like the benefits of being a digital nomad.
  2. Finish my dating book
    Another throw back to 2025, As described in my review; Hannah is having one last review before it heads out to the list of agents and publishers I have found. I’ll give a bit of time but afterwards I’ll be self publishing it myself by the end of 2025. Alongside this, myself and Jess have started a currently unreleased but very related podcast. I would be foolish to not mention the online datingmanifesto.cc.
    Some of the pages from my own written book
  3. Do more with the scooter
    I recently MOT’ed my currently scooter but considering I should keep it or sell it? I have been looking around at buying another scooter. I recently spotted a Yamaha TMAX 650 in Barcelona which looks so great and a better choice than the Honda Forza 750, which has poor storage. The dreams of a electric maxi-scooter have all but gone however.
  4. Listen to 28 Audiobooks in a year
    Its surprising how many books I’m going through but this year I’m going to push a bit more. Next year is 30 which will be a leap but a good stretch goal, encouraging me to listen when I tend to just play some of my mixes.
  5. Create a DJ hackday
    It’s time for a DJ hackday, I just got a early alpha of the Drift DJ one and I just can’t help but think its time for change.in the DJ market. Especially reading this post about the Pacemaker device, which spurred me to look back through my old presentations about how ground breaking it is/was.
    Pacemaker DJ device sat next to a Drift DJ one on a table
  6. Spend more time with family
    My parents are getting older and I am quite far away from them. My dad has a degenerative disease and its weighed heavy on my actions and mind. Spending more time with them and the rest of my extended family is something I can do better in 2026. I still have a lot of time for friends and want to get a bit more serious about them, rather than leaving it to the last minute. Of course Alison is someone I think about a lot; now being engaged, I’m thinking a lot more about our future together and how to make this the best it can be together.
  7. Personal knowledge management and task re-managed
    I’m a little torn. Vikunja is good, so is Anytype.but the hard part is the initial capture. Something I started doing is using the notes to yourself in Signal to do the start of something I guess I should be using Anytype but I feel like I need to do the categorisation at the same time. I also wonder if I actually trust anytype? With Joplin, its all local and I can understand the model, anytype I find more tricky.
    Vikunja’s dependence on the UI does bug me, as one of the big selling points was the CALDav integration. Then I find the login a pain every single time, i reboot I’m going to try self hosting it again and find a way to do a 3 way sync if possible?
  8. Go to a new Rollercoaster park or ride a new ride
    A regular resolution but a good one with a twist. I recently went back to Helsinki and seriously enjoyed Taiga at Linnanmäki. Certainly in my top 10. I still haven’t been on Hyperia either, although waiting in the queue for a long time. 2026 has to be the year!

    Taiga rollercoaster inverted in action
    Copyright by Justin Garvanovic – https://rcdb.com/7722.htm
  9. Learn when to self-host and when to not
    Related to the one above, I am getting the message about self-hosting. I think its great but there are times when I need to be more thoughtful. With this, its likely a good idea to either considering owning a VPS (which I have done in the past) or shell out money for hosted solutions. To be fair my  Vikunja is exactly that and so is my Wallabag and even this blog. Both I could self-host but have decided to just pay the money and use the export to satisfy ownership needs.
  10. Get more experimental with my Sourdough bread
    I have quite enjoyed baking bread thanks to my friend Paul sharing his starter. I’m not planning to get super serious about it but listening to the chapter titled Air in Cooked, I feel I experiment a bit more. Its ben fun and playing with Spelt and other flours is just the start.
  11. Go to a new country
    As always this a good one and I’m looking at you Switzerland, Czechia and Austria again. Although I am also thinking South Korea after needing to cancel in the pandemic and part of me wants to head to Taiwan but maybe I’m going to be too late?
  12. Learn to drive a car
    I’m keeping this one alive, especially since seeing some of my god/page children driving now. I know its been in my new resolutions for ages but maybe 2026 is the year finally?

The ActivityPub Ecosystem talk, some quick thoughts

I was watching Evan Prodromou giving a talk at the ActivityPub conference and jotted down a few rough thoughts along the way.

Slide 3 – We don’t need to do things the way commercial social networks do.
He’s right theres an opportunity for different types of business models but everybody keeps comparing it to the commercial business models. Heck even myself, I have been writing a presentation and have a slide with number of users.

Slide 5 – What kind of experience would you have with the provider of the software if it was trusted?
This is a good question, my experience with different software and systems is quite different because its under my control or is more trusted. It does change the way you use and what kind of data I’m willing to share?

Slide 8 – What kind of client apps? Evan talks a lot about the fun type of client events which would benefit from a good client API. Reminds me what ever happened to the poking or the old twitter nudge

Slide 9 – More free accounts.
Evan talks about many different local and small groups which could do with something more smaller and local. For example churches, neighbourhoods, cities, families, schools and universities. I would add teams, leagues, local committees, residents committees.. This is something which drives me bananas that we have to use facebook groups for a local residents group. Then have to protect it from external others. Most of the residents are sitting on high speed fiber. It should be super easy to run a local system. Slide 10 – Talking of running a local system, Evan is right, there is something good and powerful about simple self contained devices. I would happily buy a raspberry pi like system where I plug it into my network and I get a activitypub/fediverse server. Add the ability for zeroconf and zero-maintenance and you got something which could have a great user experience and that would be very welcomed. Its why I use Xbian for Kodi on my raspberry pi. Right now I’d happily install Funkwhale on a Raspberry Pi because trying to use docker has been a endless battle.

Slide 11 – Federation of things not internet of things.
Its something I’ve been thinking about a lot, in a recent project with Lancaster and Edinburgh University, I described a system which sucks up your personal data and just makes a copy of it but under your control.. That device (we ended up calling the pebble) is pretty much what Evan is talking about but at a larger scale and static within the home.
The pebble device was meant to copy your personal area network (PAN) communication like your phone, headphones, smartwatch, smart ring, steps, etc.

Slide 12 – Quantified Self
Perfectly timed Evan describes the project for the pebble system I just mentioned. Capturing, runs, food, heartbeats, etc.. But what for? Slide 13 – Lifestreaming! One of the reasons for is because of lifestreaming. If you haven’t heard this term for a long while, its something I and others use to talk about a lot. Iys lost its meaning a bit but also fell out of favour.I do collect a lot of data and maybe for the same reasons as Evan, some kind of digital legacy? The last 3 slides make this much more possible than currently requesting data or scraping it.

Slide 14 – We don’t have to get people hooked!
This goes without saying right?

Slide 15 – Optimize for happy
I like where this is going, always thought there is something in the long time de-funked happiest network. The network seemed to fail because of the weight of investors and the need for a business model. but if we take some examples from slide 16, like helping people, making things, getting enough sleep and wrap them up in a network which doesn’t need business model as such. Now that could be something.

Seeing feel gratitude, also got me thinking about a simple gratitude client which posts in activitypub. Feels like something I could write but surprised no one hasn’t already done it? Been also thinking about a mashup of happiest, gratitude status, google’s defunked schemer and the BBC R&D human values.

Slide 17 – Optimize for connection.
Yes indeed, right on the  human values train. The deepening of friendships and relationships can be massively powerful. And likewise…

Slide 18 – Optimize for meaning
Love the idea of Awesomescrolling oppose to doomscrolling! Not like Tiktok but something with substance which isn’t about entertaining you or being popular (what ever else the tiktok algorithm is optimised for).
Something which aids you in finding purpose and finding out whats really important to you, not just what advertisers want to put in front of you. Also love the idea of walking away with a sense of accomplishment not just happiness (not that this alone wouldn’t be enough of course).

Lastly Evan makes a good point about scaring people into the network. Important point made well…