🪞 2025 in review

🌊 Hello, world!

Once 2025 was in the rearview mirror, I opened a new note and started writing the things about 2025 that really stood out to me. I pruned the list until the only items left were things I absolutely could not remove. Proper reflection on a whole year takes much longer than the week and change that I dedicated to this blog post. A year is too much for a single blog post to capture but these are the things that have earned their spot as absolute highlights of my year.

Since this post got rather long, the list immediately below includes external links to more info about each item. Below that, I go into further detail about each item to make sure it’s clear why it belongs. Without any further ado, here are the experiences, tools, and activities that defined my 2025:

🤭 Yes, I am very happy that this list is exactly 25 items long.

🆕 New Software

Apps and software I discovered during 2025 and used at least weekly.

This was a fantastically exciting year for adding to my digital toolboxes. I am known to enjoy experimenting with tools and utilities but I am also appropriately particular about what I incorporate into my workflow. That’s why I’m super excited about all the software I discovered in 2025 that truly clicked. I am passionate enough about each of these tools that I genuinely hope you find at least one cool thing to try out in this section, dear reader!

🎧 AntennaPod

AntennaPod is my new default podcast client! Any change in default apps — especially for something like this — is noteworthy. I’m pleased with how much I like this new default. Prior to this year, I had been using a few different apps for listening to podcasts — including Spotify. While apps like Player FM and Pocket Casts were fine, I was motivated to look for an alternative because I want to gradually excise Spotify from my life. Moving away from using Spotify for podcasts was a great place to start.

I love AntennaPod because it checks a lot of boxes for me: open source, highly customizable, listening stats that are available year-round, gPodder support, releases made available outside the Play Store and an active community. I’ve been using AntennaPod regularly since discovering it. I continue to use Pocket Casts for times when stats don’t matter or shouldn’t be tracked.

Get AntennaPod on Google Play or F-Droid

📸 ImageToolbox

This app is fantastic for a range of photo editing tasks. It is my go-to photo editor for anything beyond cropping, replacing apps like Pixlr and freeing me from the many limitations of Google Photos. The ImageToolbox UI was not immediately intuitive to me but the learning curve was gentle, short and worth the climb. The app has a lot more functionality that I have yet to explore. Though I am not big on predictions in these annual reflections, I anticipate that ImageToolbox will continue to serve me well through the year ahead. Check back here around January 2027 to find out if I’m right!

Get ImageToolbox on Google Play, F-Droid or GitHub.

🎼 Pano Scrobbler

Pano Scrobbler is a cross-platform music scrobbler for Last.fm, ListenBrainz, Libre.fm, Pleroma and other compatible services. I am extremely excited about this one because it solves a problem that I’ve wanted to address for at least a decade!

The problem? I want to be able to scrobble the songs I hear anywhere — not just the songs I happen to play on one of my devices. I listen to a lot of music in settings that don’t permit me to automatically scrobble (at a restaurant, in a store, at a party, et cetera). When those songs are actually scrobbled somewhere, they appear on another person’s account.

Enter Pano Scrobbler. Pano has support for Google Now Playing History and permits scrobbling to multiple destinations. Now I have things set up so that the songs I hear when I stop at the coffee shop on my bike ride get scrobbled to last.fm, libre.fm and listenbrainz.org without me needing to do anything besides carry my phone with me.

Get Pano Scrobbler on Google Play, IzzyOnDroid or GitHub.

🌐 URLCheck

Another new default app! Thanks to URLCheck, I have a new default Web browser on my phone. That’s a significant change that means I’m interacting with URLCheck many many times per day. URLCheck brings some of the configuration possibilities typically found on the desktop to my mobile browsing experience. URLCheck is super helpful for exercising control over which app is used to open a particular link since it functions a bit more like a passthrough than an actual Web browser. For example, URLCheck can be great for avoiding unwanted deep links.

Like so many things, URLCheck’s functionality is easier to demonstrate than it is to describe. A few articles that demonstrate the functionality:

Get URLCheck on F-Droid, GitHub or Google Play.

🐍 uv

I am energized — and surprised — by how much my Python workflow was shaken up this year! After some experimentation towards the end of 2024, I decided to give uv a fair shake on January 1st. I used uv by default from that point onward to find where it would serve me and where it would fail me. In January 2025, I wrote Python Made Better with uv about my first month of experimentation with uv. Fast forward to the end of the year and the experiment is now permanent. I am very happy with the role uv plays in Python workflow. Development of uv was rapid enough in 2025 that many of the gaps I identified were addressed shortly after I stumbled upon them.

Read about the features of uv or proceed straight to installation.

🎊 Things I’m happily self-hosting

Tools I started self-hosting this year that are reliable enough to warrant spots on this list.

A relatively small number of the things that I think about trying are good enough to be worth deploying and maintaining. My year was much richer for my usage of these three tools.

🔑 PSWD

PSWD is a super simple web-based password generator and I am a bit surprised at how useful my PSWD instance has been. PSWD has earned a spot in my password generation stack (a topic, perhaps, for another time). It’s a fairly simple tool so there’s not much more to say: get PSWD on GitHub.

🔖 Shaarli

Managing Web bookmarks is a very important topic to me. I am often tinkering with all kinds of different and interesting bookmarking tools. I found something worth spending time with in January 2025: Shaarli. A chance encounter with someone actively using Shaarli inspired me to see what I could do with the tool myself. A great way to learn about me and my year is to take a look at the tag cloud generated by my Shaarli bookmarks. I used Shaarli for all my public bookmarks in 2025. In addition to being lightweight and database-free, Shaarli plays very nicely with others: it generates RSS feeds, integrates with Wallabag and Wayback Machine and exports to HTML. I’m using the excellent EchoFeed service to post bookmarks from bookmarks.by.brie.dev to Mastodon. I’d like to extend this further in 2026.

Shaarli is easily my favorite bit of software on this list. If you know me, you’ve probably heard me mention my Shaarli instance this year. I would love for you to tell me what you use to manage Web bookmarks: I am genuinely curious!

📊 Statistics for Strava

This is a self-hosted open-source dashboard of data from Strava. The software works well and the Web interface looks great. I rely on it to analyze and review my workouts. Overall, I’m pretty happy with my commitment to exercise in 2025 and I’m sure that having this site helped to motivate me. You can spot a break I took in the summer when there was an especially tough weeklong heatwave. There’s also a period of inactivity at the end of the year thanks to an ankle sprain I sustained while walking. Recovery was slow and frustrating but I am very pleased that I was able to get back on the Peloton before 2025 ended. I committed to biking outdoors as long as I was healthy and it was freezing or warmer. I honored that commitment all the way through the Pennsylvania winter.

Get Statistics for Strava on GitHub.

🎫 Performances I Attended

I saw some super cool shows in 2025!

I had half a year to prepare for the concert; the comedy show was a same-day decision. Regardless of the difference in lead time, both of these shows stood out and have been on my mind in the month since my attendance.

🎤 Kendrick and SZA: Grand National Tour in Toronto

I spent the first half of the year getting hyped for this show and I spent the second half of the year reflecting on how amazing it was. Seeing Kendrick and SZA’s Grand National Tour in Toronto this summer was incredible! Though I am not quite a superfan of either, Kendrick and SZA are both meaningful artists to me and they did not disappoint. Kendrick and SZA are both naturally talented vocalists, making a live performance an impressive place to display their talents. Seeing Kendrick perform in Drake’s Toronto in a 🥩 post-beef world added an additional layer to the show. Although the show was up North in Canada, the weather for the mid-June show was warm and sunny! In short: the night of the concert was ✨ perfect ✨ and lived up to the considerable hype.

😹 The Comedy Cellar

I found myself front-row at a secret show at New York City’s Comedy Cellar this autumn. This was a super exciting opportunity for me as a big fan of stand-up comedy. The warm-up act, Daniel Simonsen was quite funny. The secret headliner was Aziz Ansari, a regular at the venue. I want to say more but writing my thoughts on Aziz and his set feels like pinning jelly to the wall.

✍️ Things I Wrote

While I really enjoyed writing one post per month back in 2023, switching to writing whenever I felt moved to do so has been working out pretty well in the years since then. Although I often feel like I don’t write here on brie.dev anywhere near as often as I would like, I wrote some of my favorite blog posts this year!

✌️ Goodbye, Goodreads

In 2025, I finalized the decision to get rid of Goodreads and started figuring out what my post-Goodreads workflow would look like. I describe that journey in Goodbye Goodreads.

🔍 Use `gron` to grep JSON

The Use gron to grep JSON blog post was catalyzed by a conversation with a customer at work. However, that post represents the culmination of years of introducing folks to gron. It’s a really useful tool and I love when it “clicks” for people! If you know what grep and JSON are, do yourself a favor and learn about gron. While I hope you appreciate my writing about gron, I care more that you find whatever helps to make it click for you because gron is awesome and super helpful. The Use gron to grep JSON post is currently one of my favorite blog posts on brie.dev.

Get gron on GitHub or read a post like Grepping through API payloads with Gron.

📖 OK, Reader

Inspired by KOReader’s features, I bought a new e-reader in 2025. The OK, Reader post describes how this combo of hardware and software freed me from Google Play Books. It’s been eight months since that post and I remain very happy with both KOReader and the PocketBook.

🗺️ New Places

Exploring my surroundings by bike helped me with my evergreen goal of sating my curiosity about the world around me.

Although I went to Caribbean islands, Floridian beaches and Canadian lakeshores this year, the travel that stands out most in my mind is all the exploration I did by bike through my native Appalachian surroundings. I spent a lot of time solo hiking and biking the trail network along the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Though I have called this area home my entire life, two new-to-me nearby trails became really important parts of my life in 2025.

🍂 Great Allegheny Passage

The Great Allegheny Passage is every bit as beautiful as you might have heard.

I live close enough to where the Great Allegheny Passage begins in Pittsburgh to bike from there whenever I would like. Despite this great fortune, I had not availed myself of this opportunity — ever — before 2025. This trail is a bucket list item for some people and I absolutely understand why after exploring it a bit this year. I had some of my toughest — and most rewarding — bike rides of the year on the Great Allegheny Passage. The distance between trailheads was long enough for me to be able to string together long rides through absolutely breathtaking scenery. The bike infrastructure in and around Connellsville was especially pleasant and there are many gorgeous views of the Youghiogheny River:

I recorded some footage on my GoPro as I biked: watch Great Allegheny Passage: Connellsville to Liberty on YouTube.

🚂 Panhandle Trail

I also began cycling the Panhandle Trail this year. This rail trail winds from Walkers Mill Station in Pennsylvania to Colliers, West Virginia. I challenged myself to bike from Fort Cherry, Pennsylvania to West Virginia and back, a feat I accomplished several times in 2025. I rode many segments of the Panhandle Trail many times through the summer, fall and early winter. When I overlay those rides, I’ve cycled the length of the Panhandle Trail. I really love this trail because of the terrain, the scenery, the proximity to Montour Trail — and because of Jack! Jack Eckenrode is a 97-year-old National Senior Games cyclist and a very sweet and friendly person. He and his wife live along the trail and Jack operates a trailside rest stop with a water station and a guest book. It took a few weeks of cycling the Panhandle Trail weekly before I had the good luck of meeting Jack for the first time. Tory’s review of The Panhandle Trail - My Trails Are Many over at mytrailsaremany.com is a great intro to the trail and a few of the cool waypoints.

I tend to ride early in the mornings and the portions of the Panhandle Trail that I frequent are fairly remote. As a result, the Panhandle Trail presents peaceful rides with few interruptions and abundant opportunities for wildlife sightings. I am thankful that I only observed a range of relatively safe and expected fauna like deer, rabbits, squirrels and turkeys. The scariest sighting was a small group of baby raccoons one morning. (They stayed on the trail a little too long as I was riding towards them and they made me nervous in the same way that the baby zombies in Minecraft do.)

My favorite part of the trail is the spot where Pennsylvania and West Virginia meet, shown above. Learn more about Pennsylvania and West Virginia’s Panhandle Trail.

💰 Take my money, please

These are the efforts I enthusiastically supported with my wallet in 2025. Surprise: they are all websites.

📰 newspapers.com

At the start of the year, I had been on the verge of canceling my subscription to newspapers.com. I wasn’t getting that much usage out of it and something about Ancestry’s ownership of the site doesn’t sit very well with me. During 2025, my interests broadened and matured enough for me to find newspapers.com useful for new and exciting purposes including genealogical exploration, local historical research for coraopolis.org and contributing to various Wikimedia projects.

🌟 omg.lol

On a list of very exciting things, omg.lol is super exciting! I think of omg.lol as a community that I am pleased and proud to be part of but it’s so much more than that, kinda hard to describe — and very lovely. Take a look at the omg.lol home page to see how they describe themselves or take a look at these omg.lol-adjacent things:

I had heard about social.lol in passing for quite some time prior to finally signing up. I would notice a link to social.lol or similar and think “seems cool but I don’t know what it is and I’m busy”. I have been trying to make more of a point of looking things up instead of wondering “what even is that?” and remaining satisfied with a cursory knowledge. This requires a balancing act but it was totally worth satisfying my curiosity in this regard.

After a few months kicking the tires, I’d seen enough: in September, I upgraded @brie to a lifetime address. I’ve been using the photos feature to run pics.brie.lol, a photo gallery of bike pics and selfies. I use the statuslog feature for status.brie.lol. This place is even cool enough to have finger, a service I remain nostalgic for. I won’t say much more about omg.lol because a lot of the fun is in discovering all of this stuff yourself.

🤭 My cat Plop has his own account; feel free to use his referral code if you do decide to sign up!

🔄 rsync.net

This is another one of those sites that’s been on my “I should look into that” list. When Manu let me know about the 2TB for $480 lifetime Black Friday deal at rsync.net, I was sold. It’s a ZFS filesystem made available via SSH. In that sense it “just works” and doesn’t warrant much further discussion. The history of rsync.net is reliable enough for me to feel good enough about the risk I’m taking and I store things there accordingly. I’m putting rsync.net on this blog post because it’s been such a long time coming and I’m really excited about it.

Learn more about Cloud Storage for Offsite Backup at rsync.net.

🤞 2025 Resolutions

At the beginning of the year, I made a few resolutions. I am very pleased to have kept to these resolutions.

❎ Disable the YouTube app on my phone

I disabled the YouTube app on my phone at the end of 2024 and kept it that way for the duration of 2025. Self-hosting a MeTube instance (a yt-dlp frontend) helped make this a sustainable decision. Since YouTube is a part of the infrastructure of our lives, moving to “no YouTube at all” would get too much in the way of communicating with others. I have no complaints about MeTube: it’s simple and gets the job done. I would like to experiment with YT_DL_OPTIONS to enhance my workflow but that’s a fairly low-priority item.

Overall, I am very pleased that I managed all of 2025 without the YouTube app. When I replaced my phone mid-year, I had to disable the YouTube app to stick with my resolution and I had no problem doing so. Now that 2025 is in the books, I have not re-enabled the app and I don’t intend to.

🐾 Mark walks as runs on Strava

Marking walks as runs on Strava was a small decision with a big impact since Strava and friends often ignore walks in favor of runs and rides. Over the years, I have lost tons of insight about my performance by marking walks as such on Strava. I enjoyed being able to take advantage of additional functionality in Strava and apps that ingest Strava data, like effortly.run and SmashRun this year. There are tradeoffs to this decision: I dislike the decreased accuracy but I run on concrete rarely enough that it’s fine. The additional insight about my activity undoubtedly reinforced my commitment to exercise. In the summer, my main form of exercise switched from “on foot” to “on bike”. You can see that in the 2025 Rewind generated by Statistics for Strava.

✨ et cetera

In this section I’ll collect a few miscellaneous things about the year that don’t fit neatly into a single overarching category like the others.

📚 The Green Bone Saga

I read Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga in 2025 and greatly enjoyed it. I’ve recommended the book to a few folks who have also enjoyed the story — and the way it’s told. After I finished the first book in the series in January, I had a feeling that it would be one of my books of the year. Though I read some great books in 2025, Jade City, Jade War and Jade Legacy were truly impactful. Read more about the first novel in the series on the author’s website.

📸 2025 in Photos

I organized my personal best photography of 2025 into this Pixelfed collection. I’ve already started the 2026 collection and I expect to add and remove items throughout the year.

♣️ IRL Book Club

I have written a bit about my IRL book club elsewhere on brie.dev. The book club launched at the beginning of January 2025 and we remained committed to reading throughout the year. See 2025 Book Club Selections for the list of books we read last year. Our first book of 2026 was George Orwell’s Animal Farm (my pick). Check this list to see what else we read in 2026.

🎮 Spirit City: Lofi Sessions

When I took a look at my Steam Replay for 2025, there was a clear standout game, Spirit City: Lofi Sessions.

While I didn’t 100% complete this (or any other) game in 2025, it’s still possible for me to do so in 2026. This game replaces the role that Virtual Cottage filled for me. I haven’t been back to that game since picking up Spirit City and likely won’t return. I reviewed SCLS in August and have played for another ~60 hours since the review. It’s a cozy productivity game that is absolutely perfect for me.

Another super exciting thing about gaming in 2025 is the massive improvement that I got in achievement tracking thanks to Manu’s work in steam-achievement-tracker. Follow my Steam gaming efforts on achieved.by.brie.lol.

🚲 Return to cycling

I loved riding my bike as a kid. Prior to 2025, I could not remember the last time I rode anything other than the Peloton. The chatter about the Ozark Trail G.1 Explorer and its sub $300 price tag was enough to inspire me to buy a bike that I named Green Tea and fell in love with. My return to cycling is evident in other items on this list and influential enough to deserve its own spot on this list.

Bike	Distance (km)	Moving time (hour)
🍵 Green Tea	1444	85
Unicorn (Peloton)	132	5
Trek Navigator	128	7

Beyond the Panhandle Trail and the Great Allegheny Passage, I got a lot of riding done on and along the Montour Trail. I’m fortunate enough to be able to walk to the Montour Trail from my house.

I’m continuing to recover from my ankle sprain. The Pennsylvanian winter has been cold enough that I have not yet been back on my bike but I’m eagerly checking the forecast in anticipation of my return.

For some time, I kept up with reviews on my semi-automated biking blog. I may spend some of the slow season back-filling missing rides and improving this automation by making it a bit more sustainable.

A photo of graffiti cats on an oversized garage door at a park pavilion

In the meantime, the photo above and this 4K timelapse capture my July 2025 ride through Pittsburgh’s Riverview Park, one of the spots I learned to ride in as a kid.

💖 From the Heart

Freedom and open source are recurring themes on this site and in my life. In the list above, there are some concrete communities and services in that bright spirit. I think that’s incredibly exciting and worth highlighting in a world where the entangled dominions of capitalism and big tech feel oppressive and inevitable.

Although I started this list from scratch, the preparation for this blog post began in December 2024 when I was building out my goals and plan for the year 2025. I am pleased with how these annual reflections have given me perspective and improved my ability to plan and strategize on longer time scales. All of that has me cautiously optimistic about what 2026 might bring. The year ahead will come regardless of what I might think, so — despite the many horrors of the world — I will greet it with a smile whenever I can muster one.

Be well.

— Brie