Welcome.

I played a lot of games this year:

• Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D *
• Dragon Quest 1 *
• Suikoden 1 Remaster *
• Oblivion Remaster (main lines, basically no side quests just for a quick hit of nostalgia)
• Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 (did not finish, played about 5 hours - just didn’t hook me)
• Sports Story
• Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters * (I played all 6 all the way through and it was great)
• Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles *
• Star Wars Outlaws

Because of all those games I played I only read one book this year, Rowdy: The Roddy Piper Story. It was great.

Favorite Albums of 2025

• Big Thief - Double Infinity
• Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Massage Parlor
• Geese - Getting Killed
• Jeff Tweedy - Twilight Override
• Laufey - A Matter of Time
• Saintseneca - Highwallow & Supermoon Songs

Some albums I haven’t listened to very much yet, but seem really good:

Just thinking about some of my favorite albums from the past five years (in no particular order):

• The Songs of Bacharach & Costello (Deluxe Edition) - Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach
• Dragon New Warm Mountain - Big Thief
• Rough and Rowdy Ways - Bob Dylan
• Bright Future - Adrianne Lenker
• Shadow Kingdom - Bob Dylan
• Carnage - Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
• Please Daddy - Sarah Mary Chadwick
• Me and Ennui are Friends Baby - Sarah Mary Chadwick
• I Don’t Live Here Anymore - The War on Drugs
• Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace - Nick Cave
• Wild God - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• Unlimited Love - Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Woodland - Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

And some albums I really liked, but I’m not sure if they hit that ‘favorite’ category:

I know that you regularly open Excel, but what if like every tenth time we opened Bluetooth File Exchange instead?

Note: This was happening before the Tahoe update. After the update to Tahoe nothing has changed, every so often it decides that I want to go to some random setting page than an application I use all day every day.

Sports Story was such an amazing game - so much freaking charm. I think it was just about the perfect length.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_Story
• https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/sports-story-switch/

I listened to The Killers al bum Sam’s Town today, I forgot how much I like this album. Looking at the Wikipedia article it seems like I’m not alone. When it came out I remember it getting a lot of hate.

I didn’t read a ton this yeaar, my pile of books to read just keeps growing. Hoping to clear out a lot more in 2025.

• The Ghost Map
• Sea of Tranquility
• Faith Hope and Carnage
• Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment
• Emotion By Design: Creative Leadership Lessons from a Life at Nike

Some albums I really liked and listened to a lot:

• Sarah Mary Chadwick - Messages to God, Unadorned
• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Wild God
• Kendrick Lamar - GNX
• Joan as Police Woman - Lemons, Limes and Orchids
• GloRilla - GLORIOUS
• Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Woodland
• Alejandro Escovedo - Echo Dancing
• The Decemberists - As it Ever Was, So It Will Be Again

Some albums I like, but haven’t listened to a lot:

I played a lot of games in 2024, but I only finished a few.

Games I finished:

Baldurs Gate 3 I played bunch of this in 2023, and a bunch in the first half of 2024. It is an amazing game. I want to do a full write up on it at some point.

I played about 10 hours. It was pretty fun, but not enough to keep me engaged. A few years ago I put 20ish hours in to Yakuza 0 but never finished it. I want to like these games but the battling and the traveling always turns me off.

I upgraded from the 14 Pro to the iPhone 16 Pro. This thing is great. Screen is somehow a ton better; almost no bezels. It’s lighter too (at least until my case gets delivered).

I played Star Ocean Second Story on the original Playstation back 1999. The art was amazing, the battling was annoying and the story was fine. I never beat the game back then.

My MacOS dock has been on the left of the screen since about 2006. I don’t know why I made the change, but after I made it I never reconsidered it. I’m a developer and having that extra height for long files seemed reasonable.

I’ve only played 2-3 hours so far, but this game is so much fun. There is a level where your character (Astro Bot) can shrink down to be really really tiny on command and it is amazing.

Recently I was creating a new smart playlist in Apple Music. I was trying to set up two separate conditionals a ‘match all’ rule and ‘match any’ rule so I include a variety of artists (any rule) and exclude specific genres (Holiday). I knw this was possible, but I could not figure out how to do it.

I recently had an issue trying to run the new Laravel Reverb.

I kept getting an error like the one below:

I played some games in 2023, I liked most of them a lot (one I wasn’t so hot on). In no particular order…

• Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Spider-Man 2
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Super Mario RPG
• Starfield

I did not read much this year. I played two games a whole butt load and re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy - it didn’t leave much time for new books.

Some of the albums I listened to, and enjoyed the most in 2023….

• The Songs of Bacharach & Costello
• Bob Dylan - Shadow Kingdom
• 100 Gecs - 10,000 Gecs
• Laufey - Betwitched
• Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Australian Carnage