Blogging in 2026

The previous post looked back at 2025; this post looks forward to 2026. As each new year begins, I typically don’t have specific plans for it. This year, though, I am planning three series: two here, one on my programming blog.

Logos con Carne celebrates its fifteenth anniversary in six months. Anniversary years ending with a “5” (other than the fifth and twenty-fifth) don’t seem as big of a deal as ones ending with a “0”, so I’m not planning anything major.

If I make it to 20 years here (2031), that will be a big deal.

Famous Last Words in These Parts: This post should be short. Because it feels like there isn’t much to say. But I’ve started off thinking that before, so we’ll see how it goes.

I think for many there is a sense of bated breath waiting to see if this ship of state rights itself or continues to sink. It occurred to me the other day that the acceleration of the breakdown of traditional social and political values is yet another example of an exponential growth curve. Nothing physical can survive unlimited growth, so unless things change, we’re unavoidably headed for disaster.

Which makes anything I have to say in a blog post seem awfully trivial.

No doubt I’ll post about this culture war, but we seem to have reached the point where there’s little more to be said. Really, now it’s just venting (which, according to some studies, can in moderation be mentally helpful). Words now only signal our allegiance or attack our opponents — no one is being persuaded; we’re too polarized for that.

That said, the transgressive nature of the current administration in contrast to our long-espoused American and Christian values cannot help but be polarizing. (It seems weirdly on point that a once-common epitome of transgressive behavior was child molestation.) Unfortunately, we seem to have come to the end of a long unraveling of the social rope. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

So, yeah, there’ll be some venting. (One reason for even having a blog.)

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I’ll continue with Friday Notes. I enjoy writing them, and a few readers have indicated they enjoy them. It’s a nice place to put little bits and pieces that aren’t enough for a whole post.

No doubt I’ll also continue TV Tuesday posts to record what I’ve been watching. Don’t know how many Book Reviews or Movie Reviews there’ll be. I’ve tapered off on those over the years. Maybe when something strikes me — one way or the other — as especially worth recording.

Not sure if Mystery Monday has much future. I seem, at least for now, through my phase of exploring different (mostly British) murder mystery authors. Lately, though, as a kind of palette cleanser between heavier SF books, I’ve been reading the Miss Silver novels, by Patricia Wentworth (1877-1961). I’ve only mentioned her in passing here, so I might devote a post to her.

Almost certainly there will be Sci-Fi Saturday posts. Science fiction is one of my oldest and most enduring interests. I’ve been reading it since I began picking my own reading material (over 60 years ago).

As to the rest, when the mood strikes me.

I have decided to keep WordPress as my blogging platform and this blog as my main blog. My “home” blog, so to speak. This spring marks two years on Substack, and I’ve decided that I’m “not that into” it.

The social media component (Substack Notes and Substack Chat and now Live Videos) is a central part of the platform but of no interest to me. Their subscription model is aggressive, and that’s not for me, either. Anything and everything I put on the internet is freely available. I am, in fact, opposed to monetized social media. I’m not opposed to sites that sell things, sites one visits explicitly for buying something, but subscription models, no thank you.

It’s basic economics, really. There is a wealth of free reading and interesting information available, so why would I pay for it? Just doesn’t make sense to me. I have yet to find any blog or media outlet I couldn’t (easily) live without.

I’m tempted to disconnect completely, focus all my efforts here (and on the programming blog), but I’ll see how it goes.

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I’ve been putting off starting my planned series about the telephone company crossbar switching system for a long time. At first, it was because I needed to complete my 3D model of a 10×10 crossbar switch for images and diagrams. (Then, it was because I needed to redo it.) That part is done:

I also needed a bunch of wiring illustrations, and that’s done, too:

I’m working on a software simulation of a crossbar switch system, and while I have a version that works well enough to prove the concepts, I want to redo that one, too. (Ancient Fred Brooks advice: “Be prepared to throw the first one away. You will anyway.”) However, it’s not really part of the intended post series, so completing the simulation isn’t required for writing the posts.

What seems now the impediment is trying to organize my thoughts. And trying to find the right cut between explaining and assuming knowledge. For example, how much can I assume the interested reader — one curious about the topic — already knows about electromechanical relays? In part it’s about picking an audience. I try to write for my younger self, the one who hasn’t learned whatever topic I’m writing about but does have my general background.

Which, based on a number of contemporary authors I’ve read (fiction and non), isn’t unique. (Atypical, but far from unique.) This series most likely will appeal only to fans of electromechanical telephone switching gear, many of whom likely know the material better than I do. Perhaps due to having worked with such systems.

Regardless, the Number Five Crossbar Switch is one of the cooler things I’ve encountered. They are possibly the most complex electromechanical machine we’ve created (rocket ships might outdo them but they tend to use computers).

The next step in the evolution of telephone switching was computer control, so the #5 X-Bar switch is the pinnacle of purely electromechanical switching. Everything is accomplished with relay logic (involving thousands of relays).

In particular, the way the actual crosspoint switches work is delightfully clever:

So, I want to write about it. I’ve wanted to for a long time but knew I needed some good visuals. To make things clear, I might even need to animate the 3D model and make a short YouTube video.

In any event, it’s time to get going on this.

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Speaking of making YouTube videos, I’ve been wanting to get back to that. There are some I made long ago that have poor quality, and I’d like to redo those. I’d like to do more Life videos, especially 3D ones. And I have a few other ideas.

On the other hand, animation is a tedious process with the tools I have. I use Python to generate images as well as transitions and titles and ffmpeg to stitch the images into a YouTube video (mpeg file).

Sometimes I consider migrating to more sophisticated tools despite my simplest tools possible bias. Doing that involves a learning curve, and I balance that loss of productivity against what’s possible with the simple tools I have. Simple graphics have sufficed, so the urge to upgrade isn’t strong.

[I’m definitely not one of those people who constantly seeks the best price or deal or who needs things to be perfect. For me, good enough is often good enough. At least not when it comes to material things. When it comes to my work, perfect is always the (ever unattainable) goal.]

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One thing I definitely won’t try to animate is Mandelbrot zooms. For one, that space has been well covered. For two, I don’t have the gear.

I am planning a series explaining and exploring the Mandelbrot set, though:

It’s one of my all-time favorite abstract things, and there is a lot that can be unpacked. One tidbit: each point on the 2D complex plane the Mandelbrot inhabits is a Turing Halting problem. Which means the Mandelbrot set is a well-defined computational object that can never be fully computed.

I’m thinking March or May could be Mandelbrot Month. For this one, my intended audience is those who find the Mandelbrot images fascinating and/or beautiful but don’t know anything about how they’re created and who don’t have much math background. The Mandelbrot set a computational (i.e. mathematical) object, so some math is unavoidable, but nothing requires a deep dive down a mathematical rabbit hole (though I may point to some).

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Lastly, as far as definite plans go, I’m starting an introductory series about Python over on my programming blog. The audience is those who have used a programming language before but are not familiar with Python and are curious about it.

The assumption is knowledge of basic programming language concepts — such as one might get from using BASIC, Pascal, or other simple programming language.

Python supports some fairly sophisticated programming concepts that I’ll explain in detail in later posts, but the first few will be a general overview of the language.

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I guess it turned out to be an almost short post after all.

Stay unbated, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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