The years start coming and they don’t stop coming, once said a wise man, and sure enough here we are in a new year. Twenty Twenty-Six, they’re calling it. An apt name. And it’s supposed to be a big year for AI. That is practically all anyone is talking about. Well, I’m nobody special, so I expect that I will spend a lot of this year learning about, thinking about and writing about AI. I am right now in the process of writing a post on just that subject. Of course, I’ll have ChatGPT give it a look before I post it. It is 2026, after all.
When I started Commented Out, the rarely updated blog you are reading now, I had a vague idea that I wanted to write about programming. As it turned out, starting with the first post, instead I found I was more interested in writing about books I’d read, movies I’ve watched and just things I enjoy. And that is what I want to continue doing here, for this to be my place to write about whatever I think interesting enough to put into words.
But I do still want to do more technical writing, focused on a technology I am really interested in exploring. Emacs is like a vast cave system that you can explore endlessly, and so one day a few months ago I got inspired, registered a domain name, learned enough about Hugo and Github Actions to publish a site, and started Exploring Emacs. I have an aspiration to add a post every other week, but not much confidence in my ability to stick to that schedule. It doesn’t look like much right now, but check back in later in the year, maybe it will have developed into something more impressive.
Of course, I am starting this blog at a time when it seems that AI is poised to take on much of the responsibility for all this computer stuff. I will put my thoughts about that into a firmer shape in the upcoming post. Maybe by the end of the year writing about code will be considered retro-computing. Sure, some people like tinkering with their Commodore 64 decades after the last one was sold. Its a harmless hobby. It may be that over the next year, much of what we are currently doing in the computing industry will be relegated to harmless hobby status. We shall see. My plan for this year is just to keep learning, much the same as any other year, and to keep my eyes open as things unfold.