I’d like to wish all family, friends, regular readers, commenters and all other visitors Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year or any other Holiday Greetings you prefer! As usual, I prefer Happy Newtonmas because Isaac Newton was born on December 25th, but I’m very democratic in that respect and let everyone celebrate the the holiday they like.
2025 was three quarters terrible and only one quarter good. It started in the worst way possible – in February my uncle became seriously ill and I had to make an emergency trip to Berlin because we were not sure if he would make it. But he did and he fully recovered, but it was a long way and most of the Spring and Summer was an emotional rollercoaster. Overall this year war really exhausting. Luckily my own health held up despite the stress, but it definitively was not fun. We’re all sure 2026 will be better, though. Because of all the chaos, this year there isn’t even a Christmas tree anywhere, so this year’s tree photo is a reworked version of the one from last year.
It was, once again, a year of buckling down and concentrating on the things I love and this time it was somewhat more succsessful than last year. As usual I still managed to post photos every day on my Photo Blog and I took a lot of very nice photos with the new camera body I got last year. Analog photography also happened a lot and I even bought another analog SLR camera for traveling because the other ones were just too heavy. Photography is still fun and the Camera Store I work in is still doing well – this year the Christmas sales weren’t as bad as last year but politics and the overall sense of gloom and doom is definitively not good for business. If anyone wants to support me by giving me job security, please consider buy something from us – this would help a lot and do something good for a shop that has become an institution in our region.
The relaunch of DVDLog as Cinetales has unfortunately not gone so well since all that stress this year left me with no energy to actually write more reviews. I do have a few in the pipeline but finishing them still takes more energy that I currently don’t really have. It’s going to be a case of it happens when it happens but I’m not giving up – it’s just going to be a very slow work in progress. I did buy quite a few new Blu-Rays this year again during the numerous sales of the big river, so there is plenty to write about and of course there are still enough artilces to translate.
This Blog still suffers of the same problems as Cinetales – I’ve got any number of ideas and drafts but never have the energy to actually finish them. I actually managed to post two new articles in December about the Commodore Amiga Anniversary and the games I’ve played in the last few years. There’s still that social media article and some more gaming-related posts too which I hope to complete soon, but not before the . I definitively want to write more about games and old computers once again!
Like last year, the social media landscape is still in recovery mode since Twitter was demolished by Elon Musk and I’m not even going to start talking about politics. Fortunately BlueSky and Mastodon continue to do well and even Threads is getting a bit better too – there is still a sense of hope and opportunity around that simply refuses to go away.
I’ve also been a bit better with Music this year – I still refrained from buying a new instrument, but at least I got a nice new guitar effects device courtesy of Thomann which was a great birthday present this summer. I still haven’t been able to move my big keyboard into the living room to complete my home studio, so I played way more guitar and bass than piano, but I hope to finally change that in 2026. The musical energy is definitively there.
CosmoQuest is stillvery much alive too! The main project Escape Velocity Space News is going strong. Two citizen science projects called Lunar Melt and Mars Mosaics have also finally been launched under the new World Mappers banner separately on the Planetary Science Institite for political reasons – but it’s still the same good old CosmoQuest behind it. Funding is still difficult and there was, of course, another slightly smaller and scaled-down Hangout-A-Thon this year that was a lot of fun to watch, even though I didn’t participate in it myself this year. With the Weekly Space Hangout in permanant retirement for two years now, Astronomy Cast is now the oldest podcast of the CosmoQuest universe, approaching its 20th birthday next year – Pamela Gay and Fraser cain are still recording almost every week. Fraser’s Universe Today is still one of the best space and astronomy news sites around and he still busy on his own Youtube Channel with many news videos and the Open Space live show. And of course 365 Days of Astronomy is also still going on!
As usual, I’m in Berlin right now over the holidays and the train ride here was very comfortable and almost on time again! This is the fourth time I’ve been here in 12 months and the place keeps slowly changing but it’s still a wonderful home away from home with my family. This year two cats have been added to the household making it even nicer to stay here for two weeks. There might be cat photos coming soon too! Like every year, we will have good company, good food, lots of relaxing and maybe even some more photography if the weather plays along.
I’m probably not going to work a lot over the holidays on the websites, but as usual the Photography Blog is going to be active over the holidays and of course you can follow me over on all the social media outlets – Mastodon, BlueSky, Instagram, Facebook and even Threads are all getting the photo crossposts from the blog to cover all of the outlets.
Have a nice end-of-year holiday, everyone – and as always thank you especially everyone who helped me to get through this difficult year! You know who you are and it would have been much more difficult without all of you!
MERRY NEWTONMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
