A short, probably sensible-only-to-me list of goals. Timeboxed. I’ll also add other things as I go.

Guiding principles:

• Meet good people. Do good work.
• Keep in touch with folks.
• Focus on a goal: file distractions away for later.

Timeboxed:

• 1 month:
  • Finish Rusty Boat (return application results)
    • Write about it (slightly late: travel + sickness)
  • Paint regular Gamorrean Guards (slightly late: travel + sickness)
  • Clean up notepad, notebook
  • Outline Luddite essay
  • sent the final few versions of Julia Evans’s documentation improvements for git-reset(1)
  • submitted patch for equery(1) manual
  • submitted patch for git-replay(1) manual
  • submitted patch for mhash documentation build
  • learned the basics of the reverse-engineering and debugging tool radare2
  • wrote some not-quite-fast-enough big file crunching code in Rust
• 3 months:
  • Finish Cabin Mixer, show to NCCJ
  • Paint remaining Weequay Pirates
  • Draft section or 2 of Luddite essay
  • Test for 2nd Dan
  • Finally found a workaround for a gnarly Vim bug
  • Improved copy-range-diff to teach others about range-diff
  • Configured vim-ledger for use with hledger, which I’m using to track money and budgets this year
  • Filed a stabilization bug for OpenRC so I can pick up a fix to Alacritty
  • Sent patches to Git for stash import/export completion and a meson build oddity
  • Contributed several reviews to Git patches
  • Filed and fixed an fcron bug
  • Filed a few git-pkgs issues
  • Reviewed Dracula contributions for Vim
  • Sent patches to Vim for a bash syntax bug
  • Packaged git-pkgs for Gentoo in my overlay
  • Added alucard support to dracula/vim
• 2 months:
  • Explore verhaal in Rust
  • Paint another squad
  • Draft section or 2 of Luddite essay
• 4 months:
  • Rewrite mosaic program
  • Paint another squad
  • Draft section or 2 of Luddite essay
• 2 months:
  • Publish Luddite essay?

Generally:

• actively look for local folks: meetups, community groups, unions, etc. (wiki: 2025)
• write more
  • Git: collected resources and my workflow
  • Critical thinking (wiki: todo/critique)
  • write about our experience reshaping our digital lives
  • share our general personal computing expertise/experience
  • start my book on GUI applications in Racket
• make time for board games (say, 1 big one per month? We play lots of little ones already)
• go to USK 2–3 times/week
• keep writing fun, useful programs.
  • think about where to direct open-source energy
• decrease household food waste

Areas I want to learn more about this year:

• Linux
  • Keyboard configuration
  • Productivity tools: controlling Firefox tabs, dunst/rofi/etc., manipulating my monitor’s settings, …
  • Email client (aerc) for open source work
  • Setup LSP for ebuilds
  • Networking (wiki: linux-concepts/tcp; Rootless pings claims you need root for ping? FasterThanLime has a DIY ping series if memory serves)
• Alternative technology
  • Euro Stack
  • sourcehut
  • Email server, domain, etc. (wiki: 2025)
  • VPN?
  • VPS or colocated hosting if needed?
  • Browsers (wiki: linux) if Firefox truly gets unbearable?

Political ways I can get involved:

• book access and general literacy
• digital/mathematical literacy
• LGBTQIA+ support
• local reporting
• digital control/privacy; personal computing
• de-toxifying masculinity

Last Changed: 2026 Apr 19

Categories: Blog

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