2026 Goals

I don't usually do goals, since I think I won't succeed in them anyway. But what the heck, let's list some off this time. And we'll list a bunch of stuff which I know for sure I won't do all of, but maybe I'll complete some of.

Programming related:

* Do the rewrite I've been talking about for years away from PHP in favor of Lisp, for this site and another site I run for nostalgia's sake. I updated my OVH debian server from 12 to 13 today, it wasn't bad but had a couple hiccups. PHP got updated from 8.2 to 8.4, had to manually reinstall php8.4-gd and php8.4-fpm, then copy over a few ini settings, then change my timezone declaration, then wrap my old session handler callbacks into a class implementing an interface. Pretty painless all in all, but still, annoying. As LLMs have gotten better, they could probably help with the rewrite? I still use them through the generic chat interface, not really any of the local tooling options. I don't really trust those tools.

* While I'm at it, reduce the small amount of JS on this blog even further. Throw in HTMX, remove the ancient ExtJS. I guess MathJax can stay, and the code syntax highlighter script. (There are probably more popular versions of both these days but I don't care, they work fine.)

* While I'm at it, migrate from MySQL/MariaDB to just use a sqlite DB. Once I thought about migrating to postgres. But all this is on a single machine, the slight increase in operational complexity isn't really worth it. The goal is also to eventually be able to deploy everything in more secure containers. That would also let me move away from Apache. I'll always love the LAMP server approach but I don't really want to deal with it anymore.

* Start and finish a few GH projects -- my SolarWolf port, my replacement for my jenkins subdomain (would also let me remove Java from this machine), a GUI test runner...

* Finish the tinyrenderer tutorial

* Finish the learn opengl tutorial (C++), port some of it to CL at the end

* Finish going through my godot book

* Finish going through my F# book

Non-programming related goals

* Write a poem. There's still technically time to write one this year, but I don't think I'll make it. I wrote 4 in 2022, 1 in 2023, 1 in 2024.

* Finish reading 12+ books. Some time to increase my count by one or two more still, but I didn't reach 12 this year...

* Get back to the 240s before the family cruise. I successfully did the stronglifts routine again (last mentioned -- and typoed -- here -- man that post is kind of sad, I'm basically the same after 9 years), finished last month, but I gained weight in the last month of it and basically since Thanksgiving I've been letting myself go with horrible diet and no exercise. I can do only one of those at a time it seems, even if commonly it's 0, though, so focus on diet for the next while... then do some more strength training again.

* Be more diligent in studying Japanese. I don't know how successful this will be, I haven't really studied at all in months, I have an emotional block now that I haven't resolved. But in theory I'd still like to get better at the language, and possibly visit Japan again during cherry blossom season. Maybe get to have a meal with a certain someone again, but I don't know, I'm split about her. I still really like her and wish I could help her out more and get her more things but I'm also sick of her shit, and my memory has distorted my last interaction with her in person to be something hurtful towards me. My brain doesn't like itself very much so this isn't unusual, I don't like me so I tend to assume others don't either and just tolerate me.

* Consider moving out of this stupid state again. I'm tired of Washington. But I hate how the prices are for real estate even in fly-over locations. And my housemate friend, though I'm sure unintentionally, has done a lot of stuff with the house this year that would in a sense be wasteful if I up and moved next year since he'd have to move too. I've associated it with a feeling of being kept 'hostage', which is mostly more craziness from my brain, but it's another factor that makes me less motivated to seek change even if change would be good for me. It could also be bad for me -- if I get my idyllic mountain cabin I might become even more secluded and hermit-like.

* Continue to live and not go real crazy

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Posted on 2025-12-31 by Jach

Tags: fodder, personal

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