FreshRSS, honorable mention favorite tech thing of 2025
An honorable mention goes out this year to the application FreshRSS, which I’ve been hosting on my Raspberry Pi computer for the last three years. What’s different this year is that I’m using the FreshRSS web interface. Previously I used FreshRSS as nothing more than a back-end for other applications, namely NetNewsWire on Mac and iOS. And as I look to disentangle myself from Apple’s platforms, I switched to using FreshRSS in the browser. Part of it is that I never found a good RSS application for Linux. There are a few, and I thought they were awful in one way or another, either looking like they were fresh out of 1999 or not working in a way that I liked.
As I used my Linux laptop more, I found myself using FreshRSS in the browser and then I bookmarked it on all my devices, and I really liked it. It even looks and works well on mobile. Normally I prefer a native application to a web application because I feel like it’s a waste of system resources to run a browser when I could have a native application running locally. In the case of RSS, it feels different because the content of all of it is web-based, so viewing it in a browser feels native to that content. When I open links from the RSS feed, I’m going to open it in a browser anyway. RSS feed items are all of the internet and on the internet and it makes sense to have it all in a web browser from the get-go.
This year in particular has required a different approach to media. My country, the great United States of America, elected a new (old) President, and this guy is far more interested in creating headlines and spectacle than running things well. He needs to be the center of attention for something every single week, if not every single day. And for the last 12-13 years that he’s been in politics, the mainstream media can’t help but play into it. Internet media drinks up traditional media and dissects it into thousands of tiny bits of re-packaged out-of-context twaddle. It’s not a sane person’s quest to sift through that, especially when the sifting is aided my algorithms tuned for maximum emotional reaction and engagement.
It’s more important than ever that I can pick and choose my sources and put them into a system that lets me manage my reading, group my sources however I like, mark news items as read to get them out of the way, or star them to reference later. It puts some control back in my hands rather than being the recipient of a feeding tube. And I find that control has been really healthy and wholesome.
And that’s why I give FreshRSS a 2025 Favorite Things honorable mention. Because of the capabilities of the software, which is very good and reliable, and also that the media landscape in which I live makes this kind of thing necessary.
I’m a lifelong Nintendo fan, but I never gave much thought to Nintendo’s DS and 3DS. I was inspired by ProZD/SungWon Cho’s YouTube video Top 20 Nintendo 3DS games, which showed off a treasure trove of games that I completely missed, including series like Mario and Zelda that are otherwise must-play for me. So I went out and bought a Nintendo 3DS XL from my local GameStop this last April.
I also bought Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Partially out of brand loyalty, but also morbid curiosity. My impression of the game was that it was a remake of A Link to the Past with a new story that served to paper-over the fact that it’s a remake. And things I’ve heard and seen over the years suggested it’s not a worthy entry in the Zelda series (see Why Modern Zelda Sucks: A Link Between Worlds). But as it turned out, I loved it. My initial impression of it being a kind of remake of A Link to the Past was not entirely mistaken – it’s set in the same world as Link to the Past – but it’s its own game with all original dungeons, items, and mechanics. I enjoyed it so much that when it was over, I played through the whole over thing again on Heroic (hard) mode.
Another game I’m playing though is Super Mario 3D Land. 3D Land is the predecessor to Super Mario 3D World. Both games reuse the style of classic Super Mario Bros. games and translate it into 3D. Compared to 3D World, 3D Land is a smaller game. The levels are shorter with each level focused on a single mechanic or challenge (like platforms that appear in time to music). That makes it more of a portable game, where it’s designed for filling shorter slivers of time. The first play-through of 3D Land is enjoyable, but the levels are pretty easy, almost making for more of a visual demo of the 3D capabilities of the system than anything else. After beating Bowser, the special worlds are unlocked with soul-crushingly difficult variations on the regular levels. Between going back to get Star Coins that I missed in the easy levels along with fighting my way through the special levels, I’m getting my money’s worth of game play.
Lastly I’m playing Pokemon Sun. When I was around 9 or 10 years old, I played the hell out of Pokemon Red. But I lost interest with the Pokemon sequels Gold and Silver. Back then I had very strong opinions about games and the new Pokemon in the second generation rubbed me the wrong way. A few decades later, I’m enjoying going back to the generations of Pokemon that I missed since the first generation. The Pokemon formula is so familiar to me that it makes for a cozy game like the way people talk about Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley. It gives me just enough fiddly tasks to keep me interested and feeling good.
Any of these games would make the list of my favorite things in any given the year. The fact that they are all on it is why I have to give it up for the Nintendo 3DS.
It’s a delightful game system with a great catalog of games. A truly portable system that fits nicely in a bag or pocket it a way that the bulky Nintendo Switch doesn’t. This thing sat in my blind spot for years despite the fact that I’m its exact target market. I’m grateful that I finally got back around to playing this system. I’m pleased with the game play I’ve gotten from it already, and I’m excited because I know I’ve only gotten started.
I took all of last week off from work to clean my apartment and prepare food for a Thanksgiving feast of about 20 people. All this in spite of both my spouse and I having parents with extra medical needs these last few weeks.
This time of year is always its own animal, a distinct phase from the time before and after it. At work, somehow things both slow down and speed up with the sinking realization that there is only so much a team can accomplish in the next three weeks while not having your full staff. In my personal projects, including this website, it’s when I reflect on what I hoped to accomplish this year and re-evaluate what I might work in around the holidays.
This year is different. I declare 2025 over right now. With everything going on with multiple family medical emergencies and an active toddler, I know that I’m not accomplishing anything more of note this year. And that’s fine. It’s not my job right now to satisfy my interests and hobbies. It’s my job to facilitate things for my family and make sure things go as smoothly as they can.
That said, I’ve tried to keep a bi-weekly publishing cadence for this website. Nobody is imposing that on me, but I’ve found that two weeks is a sweet spot to take something I want to write about and polish it into something to publish. If you look back at the dates on previous posts, you’ll see that there may be months between them. And that’s what happens when I don’t have a schedule and rather wait until I think a piece is a pretty enough flower to pick.
Since 2025 is over for me, my posts from now until whenever I run out of things to say will be retrospectives on the last year. What went well, my favorite things, and thoughts for the next year.