BeeSee Blog

Book I Read and Video Games I played in 2025

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Albums of 2025

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Favorite Music 2020-2025

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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:

MacOS Finder Be like - lets open settings

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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

The Killers - Sam's Town

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Books I Read in 2024

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Albums of 2024

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Games I played in 2024

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Yakuza Like a Dragon

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

iPhone 16 Pro

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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).

Star Ocean: The Second Story R

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

MacOS Dock Placement

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Astro Bot

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Apple Music - Smart Playlist Issue

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Laravel Reverb Issue

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

I kept getting an error like the one below:

Games I Played in 2023

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

Books I Read in 2023

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Albums of 2023

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

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

Starfield

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I put easily a hundred hours in to each of the previous Bethesda games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4). I played about 20 hours of Starfield and nothing ever clicked. Some of the locations were cool, some of the story was interesting. None of it was interesting enough to make me choose it over Baldurs Gate 3. So I stopped playing, and I don’t feel like I missed anything.