What a year, huh?
2025 has been such a phenomenal year for me, I learnt so many things, albeit not so much new science.
This year started with my closest and dearest friend’s wedding. May his household be filled with blessings & prosperity. This year I broke my personal record of marriages attended in a single year: from 1, to 4. I was honored to attend these weddings wearing my most stylish dapper: a hand-made black Bisht. 2 of these weddings were Hijazi style, which means a lot of dancing and loud chants, which is completely new to the Najdi me, but I stepped out of my comfort zone, and participated in all the dancing and chanting; pretty huge for me to be honest.
Locking In
This year’s theme for me was productivity, I really maximized my “locked-in” skills. My dearest friend gifted me shape-shifting octopus:
When I turn it red, everyone knows I AM LOCKED IN, DO NOT TALK TO ME. Boy oh boy was the feeling delicious! Practicing locking-in really raised my attention span, I basically developed a flow-state switch, and it worked both at work and at home.
Moreover, when the end of the year dawned upon me, by the start of December. I realized I have a more-than-a-month-long stuff that I didn’t finish, and that I have to finish by the end of the year, so I had the second upgrade to my locking-in skill tree: Microsoft To Do!
This app is amazing! I am a simple guy, I need a very minimalistic todo app, with a very intuitive reminder system, and “My Day” feature which is “chef’s kiss”! I watched some reviews on Todoiest and some blah blah alternative. Microsoft To Do is simple, clean, and super organized!
I started using it by the end of the first week of December, and man, it was my Gear secondo! I ravaged through tasks like it’s nothing, very focused, very motivated, and very very locked in! You will never know how a simple to-do app can boost ya!
Personal website upgrade!
This year, I adopted Claude Code as my coding companion, and the first thing I did was to power-up my website. I made it extends way beyond its state in previous years, with the additions of the following:
BS in Physics: I have compiled all resources about the physics undergraduate program at KFUPM, some of them originated from me, some aren’t. They used to be scattered between a GitHub repo, and a google drive. However, for me both of them seemed unintuitive to navigate. So I decided to host them all in here, with the additions of having a google form for people to contribute. I am quite proud with the output!
MS in Quantum Computing: I am currently studying an MS degree in Quantum Computing @ KFUPM. I thought why don’t I gather the resources there as well? I went a little overboard by solving all of my homework in a standardized LaTeX format, so it’s easy to read and follow. I added some other bits here and there such as general resources for QC as well as some simulations websites. I hope I continue contributing, as again, I am quite proud of it!
I also add counters to track the traffic, cuz fun.
UMQ
UMQ: Well, let me start by saying I kinda shot myself in the foot this year. I volunteered myself to every opportunity I can come across, and I collapsed mid-year. That’s why, unfortunately, UMQ had a hiatus. It is my resolve to reignite it this year, with a more consistent schedule.
UMQ had one main activity this year, which is the QC reading group. It was announced through WhatsApp, but then that’s it. So I thought I should make a website, with some calendar integrations that people can subscribe to, and boy oh boy how I am very happy on how it’s turned out!
All I have to do is to create an md file for the event, with some frontmatter with the date, registration link, meeting link, etc., and:
- The detail will be displayed in the beginning of the homepage as “next”.
- If people are subscribed to the calendar, it will automatically popup in their calendar.
Then, after the meeting is done, I can update it with all the details and slides and recommendations from presenters. I am very proud of how it’s turned out! Go check it out, and consider to join us!!
One Piece! (Manga Spoilers Ahead)
Man, one piece this year is unmatched. This anime, is without a doubt, the best piece of human fiction ever written. The events that transpired this year are craazzyyyyyy!!!! MORE GEAR 5! Shanks & Shamrock! ROCKS D XEBECK!!!!
Man, the gear 5 transformation at the giant’s ship that just debuted is just incredible. Bonney witnessing it makes it all the better! EMETH, and the Haki knot! The fact that Joyboy’s voice actor is Luffy’s voice actor but in the OVA preceding the anime is FIRE!
The flashback of Rocks & Harald is just sad, like man fuck you imu. The fact that Shanks had the tier-1 seal, with Luffy making him losing that arm, is just amazing! I cannot wait to learn about Loki’s fruit, and I really would for him to join the crew, cuz super fun!
The story is concluding, and I feel as excited as sad. What a masterpiece alright!
What a nice smile, my GOAT!
Polaroids
I am an avid analog fan. I owned 2 polaroids instant cameras, they were vintage ones so I only used them for special occasions. This year I decided that I wanted to digitize my photos, to build some sort of an archive. So I can find the photo in my phone, check its name, and know exactly where to find it.
So I bought a Canon LiDE400 flatbed scanner. However, scanning polaroids is so tedious man, I have to position them on a flatbed scanner and they move and I have to crop and rotat them, ugh. I hated it. Then I thought about 3D printing some sort of an adapter that I can place them into, but then I thought, surely someone thought of that! And to my surprise, Polaroid just launched it! The adapter also solves an artifact I didn’t notice, called “Newton’s Rings”, I didn’t care so look it up yourself.
So I bought two adapters, and a new camera “the Polaroid Flip”. It’s a new polaroid instant camera with an homage to the vintage ones. I bought with it a bunch of instant films, cuz shipping costs and I wanted to make the most out of it. This purchase made me take pictures even more, knowing that scanning them would be faster. Alas, it wasn’t! But the problem got way simpler, the locations of these pictures is fixed, so with the help of Claude Code, I spawned this repo. Basically, a python file that selects the scanned area based on a calibration file, created by the program, then scan the photos, names them according to the scheme I created, and then saves them in their respective locations. Scanning high fidelity scans takes time, each photo takes 1 minute if I want 1200 DPI, that’s why it’s impractical to scan the whole flatbed and crop it, it will take way more time. Here are the best photos I took this year, that aren’t too personal to share:
a Beatiful sunset
This is a long-exposure instant photo, the trail above is a plane passing by!
New things I learned, tried, or developed:
I made this a single section because some of them will be shortly described, but this year I dabbled in:
The gym: When I entered the university after high school, I agreed with myself that until I graduate, I will never give the gym a serious chance. You ask why? Because I like setting arbitrary rules and following them religiously. My rationale was that I was in survival mode, so a gym will add to the mental load that I would rather deal with later. However, since I graduated university, I never gave it a serious shot, until this year. It was quite fun to be honest, and I lost a few kilograms, not a lot because I didn’t commit enough. You see, I… or nah, I don’t feel like discussing my philosophy about the importance of the physique. Next.
My AI Council: I am a big fan of Claude Code, but this mf is an avid over engineering bitch. With my subscription in Google Pro (the student’s package), I thought why couldn’t I use Gemini cli as well? Well, it turns out gemini cli sucks, not as robust and featurefull as Claude Code, but then it hit me! I can make Claude invoke Gemini through the cli! So, I looked up what do people do, and found an attempt at doing just that, but it was over engineered imo. So, I created the council using itself, and the main idea is the following:
- Claude is the chair of the council, it executes the protocol.
- Claude starts by forming an opinion itself, then invokes Gemini based on a certain level of adversity I set.
- Gemini checks the codebase, and formulates its opinion.
- Claude responds and so on until they converge.
- They create a blueprint, which Claude can execute.
It works amazing, the council had many iterations of improving itself, resulting in the version above. I almost always use the council whenever I code with Claude Code, the system is fun and robust. I just added an interactive mode, which allows me to have a say after each round, to steer their debate and conversation.
Polyglots: There was a leak of the apple’s frontend source code of their App Store. I didn’t care of course, until I saw this tweet. I knew of polyglots files but never dealt with them. When I saw this tweet, a neuron activated! I downloaded the image and changed its extension to .zip, and voilà, the source code is right there! I installed the PolyZip library, and started to play with it for a bit. It’s such fun, now try to download any attached image in this post, and rename it to have a .zip, in each one hides an easter egg! (if a zip extractor fails, it’s okay, try another one)
Video games: For Honor, of course. I set a goal to re-teach top 100 by October 2026 (one year after I re-started playing the game). I also liked the concept of this mini game.
Final remarks:
Having a support system of close ones is of paramount importance. I cannot state, and I mean cannot, how life feels worthless without their existence. They know who they are, with the bottom of heart: Thank you.
What do I aim to do in 2026: Powerlifting at my to-be-established home gym. UMQ having a return, and a Podcast…?
Here are your memes of the post:
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P. S. I have always believed through observation, that my role models never give social media any time. Well, in part because we are separated in age by half a century, but also because they are busy building. This year felt like “busy building”, and I liked it!
P. P. S. S. I intended to write this post on December 31st, and I actually wrote a skeleton by then. However, I wrote the post on January 2nd, but I can manipulate time in my own website 🤪.