Yearnotes 2025

Moving

Moving house took up a good chunk of the first half of 2025. We’d decided to keep our kids at the same primary school - they’re happy there, it’s great - and look for a new place within a sensible journey.

We found a larger, older place in Archway. It’s a short overground train ride away from the school. We completed at the end of March. We came to a great arrangement with the person who bought our old flat allowing us to stay for a few weeks, and were able to get some decorating done in the new house before moving in. We moved in at the end of April.

It’s certainly started to feel like home for me - having family from Colombia come to stay in the summer and being able to make them comfortable made the whole process feel worth-while. We also spent Christmas here with my side of the family which was a special time.

Kids

The kids are happy and settled at school. N- is in year 4 and F- in year 1. Their teachers say positive things and I think they really enjoy being there. I often feel guilty that they have such long days (they go to the after school club most days until 6pm), but we don’t really have an option and they always seem to have fun “just playing” once the formal school day is over.

I volunteered for a couple of school trips with them this year, to London Zoo and the panto with F- and swimming lessons with N-.

I take F- on Saturday mornings to music centre in Camden. He seems to love it and is learning how to read music and clap our rhythms. He sings and makes up little songs all the time when we’re out-and-about.

N- loves games and puzzles. We sometimes play chess together but he’s also keen on Pandemic, Catan and card games. We’re enjoying playing Stardew Valley together, but I need to keep an eye on the amount of time we spend playing it - I find it addictive, and I can tell he does too.

We discovered a huge board game cafe near us, and N-‘s eyes lit up looking at some of the larger tabletop games. I picked up a PDF of some simpler tabletop gaming rules and we’ve played a couple of Star Wars skirmish-type games using a bunch of lego figures. N- asked for a box of Space Marines for Christmas which I “volunteered” to paint up. Another slippery slope, I think!

Health

I continue my visits to Royal Brompton as part of a long-term open label trial of a new medicine for my genetic heart condition. I only need to go there for a day every 6 months or so now and I look forward to the visits. I feel a lot better on the medicine and can mostly manage any symptoms I do have (occasional breathlessness and chest pain). I still can’t quite believe my luck that I’m a) alive to see the development of this medicine and b) have a clinical team that encouraged and helped me to sign up for the trial.

I stopped drinking in November (40 days today). There’s some backstory to this, but it feels a bit early in the journey to get into it in detail here (although I’m very happy to talk about it). In general I’m sleeping better, feel happier and have successfully tackled a few “firsts” without alcohol that I was worried about (trip to the pub with a friend after work, Christmas party, gig).

Work

We spent a large part of the year working with the Raspberry Pi Foundation buidling a new service called Experience CS. This includes a great curriculum of classroom activities to teach programming and an integrated, “classroom-safe” version of MIT Scratch.

I spent quite a lot of time on the front-end (particularly CSS) aspects of the project and really enjoyed that part of it. I feel like I learned a lot about structuring CSS, new (to me) features and working with a designer on a shared design system.

As with most post-pandemic work I wish more of the project could have been spent working together rather than remotely. A lot of technical aspects of project reminded me of my early days at FutureLearn and I think that made the remote/in-person working contrast starker for me.

After that project came to an end we decided to spend some time working together on jam.coop our co-op music store. I’ve really enjoyed getting half-formed ideas out of my head and seeing Chris and James run with them. We’ve been writing a bit about what we’re working on in a newsletter.

Hobbies

I’ve done some music-making this year but it’s been restricted by house-moving. I’m playing guitar more regularly and learning some fingerstyle jazz standards again. I’ve also enjoyed messing around with scripts on my monome norns in particular a sample-chopping granular thing with an amazing UI.

I’m trying to be disciplined with chess study, playing focussed rapid games on lichess and doing puzzles “properly” with a pencil and paper. I also play far too much 3+2 blitz. I really enjoy the chess nights at Coffee Zee and want to make it along more often in 2026.

I’m also sketching and painting. Watercolours are a battle, but I enjoy working with ink and markers a lot. I find the compendium of sketches in The Art of Urban Sketching endlessly inspiring. Most of these artists have instagram, YouTube or other accounts to help distract me from the absolute f–king state of things.

2026

Seeing people and doing things makes me feel loads better, so I’d like to do as much as that as I can fit in. If you’re reading this, I’m always up for gigs, lunch, walks, food, games, chats in the pub etc!

I might need to find a new office in the next few months. My current place has been amazing for keeping me connected so I’d like to stay nearby if I can.

And maybe this year will be the year I get fit and lose weight…