Technology of 2025

A couple of words about gear and technology I used this year. This isn’t a top 10 list of things I liked, but just a few thoughts about artifacts that resonated with me in one way or another.

Smartphones

This might seem counterintuitive. I know that these days everyone wants to “be more offline” or “stop doomscrolling”. But in my travels and in my daily life, this is such an invaluable tool. Navigating and finding accommodation, having basically infinite entertainment while waiting 6 hours in an airport for your connecting flight, staying in touch with friends and family, getting information about a place, taking pictures or recording sounds etc. It is convenient as heck while traveling. Don’t get me wrong: I do think the current state of enshittified iOS and Android is awful. And planned obsolescence of the hardware is even worse. I hope we do better in the future. But don’t get it twisted: miniaturized all-purpose computers with all kinds of sensors and interfaces that fit in our pockets are an absolutely great thing.

AWK

I tried to use AWK a lot more and really get a feel for the language. Reading the book helped a ton. I already had tons of applications for it. It feels to me like a real boost to my shell fu.

Obsidian

This is still one of my absolute favorite tools for note-taking. Linking thoughts and notes is very much how I think. It’s also a real good WYSIWYG Markdown editor. The abundant ecosystem provides high quality plugins, and you can customize your vault into oblivion. I did set up a couple of global shortcuts like CMD/CTRL+Shift+B to open a quick note. I also used it for writing my blog posts. The browser extension is awesome to save quotes from pages. All in all - I wish this was around when I was studying in university. It is such a great tool. And even if one day I get tired of Obsidian itself: it’s just markdown and I could port it to vimwiki, Org Mode or Zed easily.

Speaking of …

Zed

This one is a bit more nuanced. I tried this code editor late in 2024 and loved it immediately. It’s superfast and felt just right. I used VSCode and Vim before, but I always felt that VSCode was slow, especially when used with lots of plugins. And Vim/NeoVim has problems with some systems clipboards when run in the terminal. I still use vim for shorter editing of code almost every day. But for bigger projects I began to use Zed heavily in the first half of 2025. I ran in a lot of issues this last half year with Zed and at this point I am looking for an alternative. Issues I experienced were related to the Agentic/AI Integrations, the Git integration and sometimes even with saving files to different file systems or symlinked files. Maybe I just need a fresh install, but it seems that this editor is struggling a little bit.

Steam Deck

Kind of late to the party, I bought this around September 2025. There has only been a couple of days since then where I did not use it. What else is there to say that hasn’t been said already? It’s a great linux based handheld.

Circuit Tracks

It’s just such a great and intuitive little portable groovebox. Can’t wait to use it for a gig. Thinking about getting the Rhythm as well.

Travelers Notebook

I have yet to use it at work but I really like the refillable notebooks from Travelers Company.

Codeberg

Similar to Zed: I am not sure If I will stay on CB or if I will finally move away from it. It works great as a Githoster, but my experience with the workflows has been hit-and-miss. I might need to set up my own runner. I am not sure. I also should take a look at setting up my own instance of forgejo.

Bambu Lab A1 Mini

It might be a toy but oh boy it’s a really enjoyable toy. Be it risers, stands, knock boxes, housing for synths, cookie cutters, Christmas decorations and so, so much more. My brain is now wired to see a physical problem and somehow find a way to use the 3D Printer to solve it. Yeah, yeah, I know, everything looks like a nail.

Trains

Trains are amazing.

That’s it for now! What did you enjoy in 2025?