I wanted to write this once things started cooling off after @BetterSoftwareC 2026 and the release of @Blick_Editor, but it doesn't seem like I'll be getting any less busy for a while, so I'm just typing this out and posting while traveling for a shoot. This year of BSC was all the follow-up we could've asked for. Once again, graciously, we received so many fantastic talks, from so many fantastic speakers. It's the most humbling honor to be entrusted with polishing and sharing these valuable few artifacts of programming wisdom, history and knowledge with the world. Massive, massive thanks to all the speakers. As you probably know, we do not take this privilege lightly. I would like to give an extra thank you to @cmuratori, not just for delivering yet another fantastic and important opening talk, but also because immediately after BSC last year, he vowed to help me with AV for 2026, and enthusiastically followed up when the time came. It was a lot of fun getting to share what I do at the conference with someone, but not going to lie, it being Casey made it a little extra fun. Swell fellow. Meet your heroes, everyone. Highly recommended. Also helping out on AV, and rigging, and lugging stuff around, were our great friends Charlie, Andrew, Shwa, Terry, our legendary cameraman Sindre, and of course the one and only Sam. You guys made the extra burden I put on myself for pushing the quality and setup this year far lighter. Thanks to Kasper for lending us his extremely overpowered tripod! I genuinely thought that investing in a better setup with more nice equipment would ease my job, but it really didn't, it was just more stuff to plan and think about. It did help for raising the bar in various cool ways, which will hopefully become apparent in the official YouTube versions of the talks, however what I've come to learn is that the only things that make your job easier are: - Replacing untrustworthy equipment - Planning more - Preparing and testing your plans more Adding more pieces to the equation never simplifies things. Also, turns out Twitch will just silently fail sometimes if you try to stream in 1440p or higher without being a partner. They don't tell you this when you do it. It just works, but not for every viewer. Some of them get an error with no explanation, some of them don't. Thanks for that. My bitterest regret of BSC 2026 was being so busy the whole time, so I couldn't hang out in the evenings. There were so many conversations unhad, whiteboard diagrams undrawn, Quake rounds unplayed, and laughs unshared. There were even a few hands I didn't shake! Worse yet was that I didn't even get to jump in the lake with people a single time!!! I swear will do my utmost to avoid doing a talk next year. The night before our Blick talk on the second day, I got a total of about 2 hours of sleep inside the venue, behind the projector screen. I didn't have time to go home. Our presentations still needed work, the backups needed babysitting, a key microphone had gone missing, and so on. I had a single dinner at BSC with my shoulders down. The rest of the time, there were always half a dozen things hanging over me I had to race back to the venue to get done before I could squeeze in some sleep. Next year, I just want to do my job on AV, have that run smoothly with far fewer fires to flatten, and hang out with the absolutely magnificent community we have in the evenings. Huge shoutout to Sindre, here, for just deciding to step in and start doing the footage backups for me in the evenings. This lifted an immense load off my shoulders, knowing an absolute professional was taking care of one of the most sensitive aspects of the operation. Thank you. The later parts of BSC, when things were calming down I finally got to bathe in the infectious energy of the people you'll find gathering around the various whiteboards strewn about the place. Though I probably stammered and lagged significantly, I felt great running purely off this energy by osmosis. It is the most inspiring and engaged environment I've ever experienced. No university, course, bootcamp or class has or will ever come close, I'm certain of it. It genuinely makes you want to explode with excitement to just sit down, with your keyboard, editor and compiler, and just get programming. Thank you to the attendees in general. People stepping in, helping out, picking up unfamiliar things in minutes and just getting it. This thing was a collective effort, and could never have gone as well as it did, if it wasn't for our great attendees and friends. You people never cease to amaze me, and I had a bloody amazing time. Can't wait to do it all again, and I can't wait to deliver VoDs TO THE PEOPLE! YES, THEY'RE ON THEIR WAY, PROOF ATTACHED! I apologize for the delay. This season, I've been busier than ever before.

Canva bought Affinity. You can no longer purchase the normal fully-featured subscription-free Affinity programs.

We just wrapped up @BetterSoftwareC. The gratitude I feel is indescribable. The talks were all incredible, the people were wonderful, the food was amazing, and everyone keeps telling one another how happy we are to have met and become friends, and that we're still processing things days later. BSC 2025 was nothing but miracle, after miracle, after miracle. Life-changing for many of us. Certainly for me. A thousand thanks to everyone who trusted us with traveling out to the middle of nowhere in rural Sweden to go to a brand new conference, with brand new organizers that have never done anything like this before. Somehow it all came together perfectly despite, and clearly the Gods were with us for this. Surreal to think so many people I once only considered heroes, I now also consider friends. The Muses are with me, and I feel more ready to create than I have in years. I know many others feel the same. This is despite barely having slept AT ALL over the last week! @vkrajacic said it best: "sleeping felt like a waste of time". Every single day was packed full of work, play, programming, discussion, swimming, dining, jokes, laughter, and learning. Yet, somehow, I still feel like I could have done 5x more things in that time with all the fantastic company we had. Before we started the livestream on the first day, I asked my friends and fellow organizers @SamHSmith2 and @CharlieMQV to hold my hands in prayer. I don't remember it exactly, but it was something like: "Lord, please grant us grace and skill in this endeavor as we try to make proud those who walked before us to make all this possible, and help us bring a better world into existence." I feel that prayer was more than answered. We'll be publishing the talks for the people to enjoy very soon, and we hope to reinvigorate the software world more broadly, much like we have been reinvigorated ourselves. I'm relatively new to this realm of great programmers, and I feel so warmly welcomed up onto the shoulders of the giants that walked before us. I hope we have done them proud in helping amplify and bolster their signal for the future kids who once again will come after us, and need to hear what they have to say. I once thought I was too stupid to do proper programming, but a few years ago,@cmuratori and the many, many people he has inspired over the years showed me this is not true. It can all actually be quite simple, once you understand. These people have since become my closest friends, and completely changed my life. I cannot in words fully express how grateful I am to have been part of this, and how much I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.