2025 | The Highlights
Each year, I pool all of the best (and my favorite) clips from that year and put them together into a video expertly named, "The Highlights." These videos are incredibly joyous to make, but something I've never done is publish an article for the non-video stuff. So that's what this is. I can't promise it'll be interesting, but it's interesting to me. They are my highlights, after all.
One Thirteen (and mobile app development)
Throughout much of 2024, I spent time working on an app I released called Bit Buddy, which was designed to help content creators and creative professionals manage their, undoubtedly, growing external hard drive and SSD collection.
In 2025, Bit Buddy saw two major updates, with versions 2.6 and 2.7 being released respectively. Bit Buddy 2.6 brought sweeping changes and additional functionality like Parent Devices, Maintenance Schedules, and more.
In addition to Bit Buddy, I also released an app for iPhone called Quick.Link, which is a link shortening service built on YOURLS, an open-source service for shortening links (it literally stands for your own URL shortener). Quick.Link saw four updates throughout the course of the year, all of which brought varying levels of changes, feature additions, and in the rare instance (once), the removal of a feature.
But it doesn't stop there, as there were also multiple applications and projects conceived but ultimately never made it to the finish line. There are, of course, the major ones like Moneyminder, which I'm still working (slowly...very slowly) on, this website, and Sparrow Films (website/mobile app), but there were others, like MileTrack, Archive, Timeline, and so many more. Of course, there were some that made it past the initial steps and have since become active projects, but that's all I'll say on that (for now 👀).
Sparrow Films (and One Thirteen)
In 2025, I decided to "fold" Sparrow Films into the One Thirteen "umbrella." This doesn't really mean anything for users/viewers, but for those who care, Sparrow Films is technically a "division" within One Thirteen. As such, I spent considerable time this year working on a new website for Sparrow Films, one that could offer our films in the best quality possible while still maintaining control. Enter SparrowFilms.co.
A website like this has been in the back of my head for so long, and finally being able to have it live, with some help from v0 and a lot of help from Cursor, is a dream come true. Sad, isn't it? Once it was live, we began experimenting with premiering films on the Sparrow Films site early to drive views/visitors, but it's 2025 (or later depending on when this is published/being read), and no one actually reads anything unless it's Grok or ChatGPT explaining it to them. Pathetic. Before I go on a tangent, there were some other, more exciting, things Sparrow Films worked on.
Films
Unsurprisingly, I didn't spend that much time working on video projects this year. But the ones I did work on were very intricate and time-consuming. Milestone No. 3, How to Make: The Perfect Pizza, BREACH: Part Zero, and BREACH: Iteration 005 were all more ambitious (in their own ways) than the projects that came before them. In the case of BREACH, I found myself learning the basics (and I mean basics) of Blender to get the film made. With Milestone No. 3, I found myself learning how to edit, shoot, and visualize a documentary, and with Perfect Pizza, well, I got to eat pizza.
Everything Else
As I've talked about at length in previous articles, the biggest highlight, without question, was being invited to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, which had been a dream of mine since I was a child. I also became more of an active member in other aspects of my day job, and watched what might be a career low in movies.
Finally, I spent an absurd amount of time working on my pride and joy, The Machine, which is my, and my family's, home server. The Machine runs everything from Home Assistant (plus add-ons), Plex, Jellyfin, n8n, Open WebUI, and more. The thing is an absolute beast. In fact, I'm writing this as Plex is playing in the background...at 4:40 AM. But that's an article for another day...
Happy New Year.