Q1 2026 updates

posts/blog/2026/2026-04-06-q1-2026.md → posts/blog/2026/q1-2026.md

@@ -1,11 +1,11 @@
 ---
 title: "Q1 2026"
 date: 2026-04-06
-description: "Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace, a gastritis diagnosis, three rooms of William Morris wallpaper, and ditching ChatGPT for Claude. Q1 covered a lot of ground - PETALS Plus plans nearly live, training started for a 35km Jurassic Coast walk, a fitness comeback from ankle injury, and a 973-day Duolingo streak still intact. The quarterly catch-up."
+description: "Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace, a gastritis diagnosis, William Morris wallpaper, and ditching ChatGPT for Claude, PETALS Plus plans nearly live and a fitness comeback for 35km Jurassic Coast walk"
 categories:
   - "blog"
 tags:
-  - "quarterly-review"
+  - "quarterly"
   - "petals"
   - "house-finesse"
   - "managing-engineers"
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ tags:
 coverImage: "fatboy-slim-alexandra-palace.jpg"
 ---
 
-Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace. Raye in Manchester. A gastritis diagnosis after years of not knowing. Three rooms of William Morris wallpaper. PETALS Plus plans nearly live. Training underway for a 35km walk along the Jurassic Coast. A switch from ChatGPT to Claude. And a 973-day Duolingo streak still standing. Here's how Q1 2026 went - including how this post itself got made.
+Fatboy Slim at Alexandra Palace, Raye in Manchester. A gastritis diagnosis after years of not knowing. Three rooms of William Morris wallpaper. PETALS Plus plans nearly live. Training underway for a 35km walk along the Jurassic Coast. A switch from ChatGPT to Claude. And a 973-day Duolingo streak still standing. Here's how Q1 2026 went - including how this post itself got made.
 
 ---
 
@@ -34,8 +34,6 @@ Training has started for a 35km walk along the [Jurassic Coast](https://jurassic
 
 Three rooms in the house have had a [William Morris](https://www.william-morris.co.uk/) wallpaper makeover this quarter. Cloakroom, downstairs bathroom and stairs. Looks brilliant. Highly recommend going a bit bold with wallpaper if you've been sitting on the fence.
 
----
-
 ## PETALS
 
 [PETALS](https://petals.team) has had a productive quarter. The [monthly newsletter](https://petals.team/newsletter) is now a proper fixture, mixing product updates, industry opinions and prompts to try. Open and click-through rates are solid, though engagement is still something to work on.
@@ -44,8 +42,6 @@ I made the call to revert the PETALS Slack space to the free plan. A handful of
 
 The Plus plans are nearly ready to go live after a lot of detailed work this quarter with Sertan and Brian. One of the more interesting things has been watching prompt engineering and spec-driven development play out in practice. We'll be writing that process up once the plans are live.
 
----
-
 ## Side projects
 
 [Managing Engineers](https://podcast.managingengineers.net/) has kept its roughly fortnightly rhythm with topics covering quality engineering, remote working, metrics, communities and AI.
@@ -58,8 +54,6 @@ The [HF VIP Club](https://housefinesse.com/club) has had its own journey. I star
 
 I've paused the SuperRams.com Substack for now to focus energy on PETALS and House Finesse. The [Bluesky community around Derby County](https://bsky.app/profile/superrams.com) is more active and engaged anyway, so that's where the attention will go when I pick it back up.
 
----
-
 ## AI tooling
 
 This quarter I made the switch from [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) to [Claude](https://claude.ai/) as my primary LLM. The US military situation was a nudge, but the results have generally been better too, especially for coding. I've also been trying [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com/) for certain tasks, and [Google Jules](https://jules.google.com/) has been genuinely useful for some lower-risk project work.
@@ -78,30 +72,24 @@ Journaling on iOS has become a regular habit too. This is less "blog mode" and m
 
 I gave the [Comet browser](https://www.cometbrowser.com/) a try and came away unimpressed. Not worth the data trade-off. [Brave](https://brave.com/) remains my default, Safari as backup. Chrome stays off the table.
 
-And finally, the iOS app development rabbit hole - I started looking into building something custom for listening to my legal MP3 collection during workouts. It's definitely possible with AI assistance but life got in the way. One for the backlog.
-
----
+And finally, the iOS app development rabbit hole; I started looking into building something custom for listening to my legal MP3 collection during workouts. It's definitely possible with AI assistance but life got in the way. One for the backlog.
 
 ## Reading
 
 Two books keeping me company in the quieter moments this quarter.
 
-*[I Love You, Byeee](https://www.adambuxton.co.uk/)* by Adam Buxton - a delightful autobiography from one of my podcasting heroes. Warm, funny, full of great anecdotes from a genuinely interesting career. Highly recommend if you're a fan.
-
-*[The Coming Wave](https://www.the-coming-wave.com/)* by Mustafa Suleyman - a much weightier read, but thoroughly gripping. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, sold it to Google, and is now CEO of Microsoft AI, so when he writes about the implications of AI and biotech convergence it carries real authority. Scary in places, essential in others.
+*[I Love You, Byeee](https://www.adambuxton.co.uk/)* by Adam Buxton: a delightful autobiography from one of my podcasting heroes. Warm, funny, full of great anecdotes from a genuinely interesting career. Highly recommend if you're a fan.
 
----
+*[The Coming Wave](https://www.the-coming-wave.com/)* by Mustafa Suleyman: a much weightier read, but thoroughly gripping. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, sold it to Google, and is now CEO of Microsoft AI, so when he writes about the implications of AI and biotech convergence it carries real authority. Scary in places, essential in others.
 
 ## Habit tweaking
 
 I've been getting more deliberate about tracking my Greek language learning this quarter. What started as a Google Sheet evolved into a Numbers spreadsheet with some Apple Intelligence shortcuts bolted on. I swapped out a ChatGPT call (which was parsing screenshots) for a local model instead, which feels cleaner. The payoff is being able to see granular accuracy trends that [Duolingo](https://duolingo.com/) only shows you after a long session - genuinely useful for spotting where you're slipping.
 
-On the content creation front, I'm deep into a [#Threads100 challenge](https://blacktwist.app/threads100-challenge), using [Blacktwist](https://blacktwist.app/) to schedule daily posts. I'm on the home stretch now. It's less about the engagement numbers and more about rebuilding the habit, getting back into the rhythm I had on Twitter. I've also been syndicating selectively to [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/), [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/) and [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/) via [Buffer](https://buffer.com/). Worth a special mention for Blacktwist itself - it's a great example of vibe coding a real-world app in public, and it's been genuinely inspiring to watch it take shape whilst using it as part of my daily routine. Exactly the kind of thing that makes the current AI development moment so exciting.
-
----
+On the content creation front, I'm deep into a [#Threads100 challenge](https://blacktwist.app/threads100-challenge), using [Blacktwist](https://blacktwist.app/) to schedule daily posts. I'm on the home stretch now. It's less about the engagement numbers and more about rebuilding the habit, getting back into the rhythm I had on Twitter. I've also been syndicating selectively to [Bluesky]([https://bsky.app/](https://bsky.app/profile/sijobling.com)), [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/) and [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/sijobling) via [Buffer](https://buffer.com/). Worth a special mention for Blacktwist itself - it's a great example of vibe coding a real-world app in public, and it's been genuinely inspiring to watch it take shape whilst using it as part of my daily routine. Exactly the kind of thing that makes the current AI development moment so exciting.
 
-## Fitness - Q1 2026 vs Q4 2025
 
+## Fitness 
 |Metric                 |Q4 2025   |Q1 2026    |Change |
 |-----------------------|----------|-----------|-------|
 |Total activities       |66        |60         |-6     |
@@ -115,31 +103,20 @@ On the content creation front, I'm deep into a [#Threads100 challenge](https://b
 |Weight training        |5         |2          |-3     |
 |Longest single activity|7.9km walk|11.6km walk|+3.7km |
 
-### Q4 2025 breakdown
+*December was almost a complete write-off due to an ankle injury, Q1 was pretty much recovery with walking taking over from elliptical as the primary activity. The Jurassic Coast challenge in May is providing good motivation to build up the strength.*
 
-|Month   |Activities|Distance|Time   |
-|--------|----------|--------|-------|
-|October |45        |145.0km |23.4hrs|
-|November|16        |62.0km  |8.9hrs |
-|December|2         |4.2km   |2.2hrs |
-
-*December was almost a complete write-off due to an ankle injury - Q1 was essentially recovery and rebuild, with walking taking over from the elliptical as the primary activity. The Jurassic Coast challenge in May is providing good motivation to keep the momentum going.*
-
----
-
-## Duolingo - Q1 2026 (Feb-Mar)
+## Duolingo
 
 |Metric               |February|March   |
 |---------------------|--------|--------|
 |Avg daily XP         |425     |545     |
 |Avg accuracy         |80%     |90%     |
 |Streak (end of month)|934 days|973 days|
 
-*Tracking started mid-February. Greek picked up in March ahead of the annual trip to Greece in August - and a potential side mission rebuilding a hotel website. March was a perfect month - zero days missed.*
+*Tracking started mid-February. Greek picked up in March ahead of the annual trip to Greece in August and a potential side project rebuilding the hotel website.*
 
----
 
-## Podcast listening - [Castro](https://castro.fm/) (Feb-Mar)
+## Podcast listening - [Castro](https://castro.fm/) 
 
 |Metric              |February|March  |Change  |
 |--------------------|--------|-------|--------|
@@ -149,4 +126,6 @@ On the content creation front, I'm deep into a [#Threads100 challenge](https://b
 
 *Combined: 70h 16m, 95 episodes. Switched to Castro in February from [Fountain](https://fountain.fm/) - January data unavailable.*
 
-On the subject of podcasting, I also posted a YouTube Short in February on Apple going all in with video podcasting and what it could mean for the space. Worth a watch if you're interested in where podcasting is heading: https://youtube.com/shorts/llAQiOn4xoA
+On the subject of podcasting, I also posted a YouTube Short in February on Apple going all in with video podcasting and what it could mean for the space. Worth a watch if you're interested in where podcasting is heading… 
+
+https://youtube.com/shorts/llAQiOn4xoA