It's time to pick up some habits again. I have been pretty much offline for the last half of the year - at least with some of my minor private hobbies and practices. Actually, I did a lot but was not able to keep up lots of smaller stuff around me. Unfortunately, a lot of this small stuff makes me really happy and it took some time to realize this, because I became more and more grumpy over time. The constant traveling is really paying a toll on me and does not make it easy to keep up with atomic habits - at least not in a way I established them. You are always at a location where things get in your way or some things get very inconvenient or you don't have access to the exact thing you would need now. Since traveling will continue to be part of my life I somehow have to find a way to incorporate that.
However, to cut a long, sad story short, I pick up my monthly essential links again because I really liked them and I was using them as a reference myself all the time. So here is the first essential links post of 2026. Enjoy.
Inspiration
There was a "Welcome 2026" newsletter by Smashing Magazine a few days ago and boy was it inspiring. Here are some highlights.
- PostHog create devtools and they have a gorgeous, operating-system-like website to promote them.
- I am reminded of some good old flash-sites, when I look at the beautiful portfolio page of visual designer Mitch Ivin. Expect some retro vibes here. ❤️
- Benji Taylor, LA-located designer, plays around with Claude and creates these beautifully morphing icons.
- This is some beautiful curated digital garden.
- Pallenberg on PeerTube over bonn.social (like the move, hesitant about the content)
- I love these retro color palettes
Articles
- Oooooh, just stumbled across this very good, old but nonetheless actual piece of writing on the AI website: AI art is the new stock image (via anh).
- This is awesome: All you need to know about CLAUDE.md - not in a video but within an article! Found in the awesome We Are Developers Newsletter.
- How to create the best CLAUDE.md (don't tell me this is clickbait)
Beauty
- Somebody just re-build the whole program of MTV. This is beautiful and I spent an evening re-watching LIve Aid.
Software Engineering
- You know it is still paramount to keep a changelog
- Need to prepare documentation? There seems to be an alternative to mkdocs evolving.
- Wow. Björn and Claude brought us an Atlassian CLI. This is as nerdy as it can get but combined with Claude CLI this becomes a magic rainbow wunderland.
- I have become a checklist nerd. Checklists take away so much of my mental load, because I can fire them at will and they contain everything I need to know to cut sharply through some serious chores. I have created my own app for it. It's in early Alpha stage and works in browser / localStorage only, but I want to go into beta in march.
Product Management
- There will be an A.I.-induced product management coworking by Markus Andrezak on Zoom.
Podcast episodes
Actually, I didn't listen to a lot of podcasts this month. My stats would give me less than usual figures, I think. However, #39c3 happened and there were a lot of publications in the aftermath.
- On Chaosradio (German CCC radio channel) there is a great conversation on ai crawler traffic with people from Uberspace.
- The Podjournal by Jörn Schaar is always a good start into the new month.
Thanks for reading!