Marty Supreme-ing into the New Year
January 31, 2026
CC Readers —
Welcome to 2026! According to my Life Calendar, we're already 7% (!!) done with the year. January has absolutely flown by. Whoosh. I've had a decent start to the year: a mixture of good and bad. Mais, C'est la vie, as they say. That's why this newsletter exists — to ensure I (/we??) keep on keeping on!
The start of the year was nice and calm for me. My end of year writing was done. I was on break from work — enjoying slow, sunny, winter days with my girlfriend. However, a week into the year, it was time for her to go back home. We're doing long distance and she was in India for Christmas and New Years. As you can imagine, separation is never easy. It takes us some time to shift gears and get back into our long distance routines and rituals. Around the same time (as her leaving), I returned to work where things went from zero to a hundred miles an hour in no time. The calmness of the year turned into a turbulent few weeks.
We settled into our long distance routines in a week or so. Work took longer to stabilise, but thankfully, as of yesterday, things are back to being calm. At the end of January, I feel settled, ready to take on the year. Let's get the first edition of CC for 2026 underway then, shall we?
Seventh Year of Reflecting
At the end of last year, I hit publish on my look-back at 2025. I've now written my reflection blog posts for seven straight years. I started this exercise on a whim back in 2019 and have managed to keep going through the years. I would be lying if I said doing these is easy. I've thought of quitting many times. I'm grateful to my past self for pushing through and hitting publish. The joy of being able to look back at each post is great motivation to keep going.
For the 2025 piece, I followed the format I established in 2024. I went through the various realms in my life and talked through what went well and what didn't.
For the bod this year, I bought a smart ring by Ultrahuman as a birthday gift for myself. I was a bit unsure about how useful a smart ring would be for a disabled person. Steps and workout tracking were not going to be of any use to me. I was hopeful that the ring might have ways to 'turn off' features that were not required. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. [...]
Vinyl was a mini-hobby this year. I picked up some - ̗̀ nice ̖́ records over the course of the year. Some are new releases, while others are much older pressings I bought from collectors. My favorite way to spin vinyl is on weekends while brewing and sipping a nice cup of coffee. It's genuinely a soul soothing activity for me. [...]
A job switch year is a good time to reassess your money box. Money box is a term I learned from Monica Halan's Let's Talk Money. It is a dynamic system to keep track of money and how it flows on an individual basis. [...]
You can read the full piece here. Reply to this email if any of it resonates with you. Let's talk!
Becoming AI-Pilled
Ramblings on AI and its impact on being a professional (and hobbyist) programmer is becoming a regular feature of this newsletter. I really don't want it to be this way. But the pace of change of AI tech is SO rapid right now that I can't help but think and talk about it.
I no longer write code by hand now. I talk to my computer and get an AI agent to write my code. Sci-Fi is not so Fi anymore. Working with state of the art models like Opus 4.5 using Claude Code feels like magic. As a builder at heart, I feel equipped to build and ship whatever the hell I want. It feels like you can just do shit now.
No problem feels unsolvable now. In the pre-LLM, pre-agent era, I felt like a mortal programmer. I had my core set of skills and weaknesses. For instance, I was good at things like writing clean code but not the best at coding up complex UI animations. This disparity is out the window now. Having an AI agent at your disposal feels like a superpower. I can dream up any animation I want to make my creation delightful and then guide an agent to build it for me. Similarly, if a product manager at work wants a certain feature to be built, I can just get it done painlessly in record times. To me, this is an incredibly freeing feeling. I can work less to achieve the same or greater results.
Every conversation I am a part of these days touches the subject of AI in one way or another. I can't be the only one feeling this? How're you adapting to all this? How's work changing for you?
The! BBC!
Something SUPER COOL happened this month. The editor of this newsletter (aka my girlfriend) got the opportunity to be LIVE on BBC Radio talking about her favorite thing: her research on olfactory heritage (read: smells)! She got an email randomly on a week night asking if she'd be interested in doing this. UM, duh?!
On a personal level too, this was so exciting. I've loved podcasting and radio for many years. I now know someone who's actually been on live radio on the fricken' BBC. HOW COOL IS THAT!? I'm high key hoping she becomes a regular guest on the BBC — mostly because the audio nerd in me wants to figure out her microphone setup and audio-treat her room to sound super professional. ^ _ ^
If research on smells interests you, check out her segment here.
Mooooooovies
Movies have been goooood lately. I've been watching a healthy mix of old and new movies.
I watched Friendship (2024) on New Year's Day. I love Paul Rudd and whenever he's in a movie, I try to watch it. This one just didn't land for me. In fact, I hated it. Perhaps cringe comedy just isn't for me? Such a shame.
Next up, I watched Uncut Gems (2019). This one had been on my list for a long time. I decided to watch it while waiting for Marty Supreme (2025) to come out. Uncut Gems is by the same director(s): the Safdie brothers. I went into the movie knowing nothing about it — and WOW! I loved it! It's an instant classic for me. Be warned though: this movie will make you VERY anxious. It is not for the faint hearted. It grips you from the first minute and only lets go at the very end. So good.
Speaking of Marty Supreme, I watched it today! It was SUCH a fun time. MOVIES RULE! I love Mr. Chalamet or as my friends and I jokingly called him Mr. Chameleon. He can truly fit in and give a killer performance in any role. He was superb as Marty. Peak acting. Top of his game. I won't say much else as the movie is still pretty new and I don't want to spoil it. All I'll say is: watch it. Don't miss out on this one.
The final movie I watched this month was One Battle After Another (2025). This showed up in so many people's best-of lists for 2025, often at the #1 spot. I really enjoyed it, especially when Leo is being absolutely hilarious. The climax of the film stands out as well. That. Car. Chase. Overall though, the political undertone of the movie felt forced to me. I didn’t like it. My #1 for 2025 goes to Sinners (2025). I really hope they win big this year. Fingers crossed!
OK, that's all I got for this month! I'm looking forward to February being filled with more movies and fun with AI-assisted programming. Let's see what advancements the next month brings. I hope everyone is staying warm and doing well. Until next time... C'mon C'mon!
More soon,
R
