Sydney - Winding Down

 With just a little over a week to go, here are a few more things I will remember when I go.

• Long lines of people at the Stussy store.
• Also Acme de la Vie, and Deus Ex Machina.
• The Sidney Fish Market, an amazing temple to seafood.
• Our dumb president starting another dumb war while I'm abroad.
• Sick Land Cruisers with Snorkels.

Sydney - More

 Some more things I will remember from Sydney:

• The bird calls. I'm not really a bird call kind of person, but even I noticed the vast difference in bird calls. It just sounds nothing like back home.
• Hilux pickup trucks, especially with a snorkel or a tray bed (pictured).
• PrintGPT - Presumably AI-powered?
• Biking around Centennial Park

Sydney, 3 weeks in

 We've been in Sydney for just over 3 weeks now, we have about 3 more to go. Here are some things I think I'll remember when I get back home.

• Hungry Jack's, Rice Bubbles, and other familiar products with different names.
• Seeing the Harbor Bridge and Opera House when biking up a hill, in just about any part of town.
• Walking Rory to daycare, looking through a hole in the fence of the construction site to see how things were coming along.
• The Oscar Piastri Burger (pictured)
• Sydney Mardi Gras, watching from our balcony, and realizing it's over a week after real Mardi Gras, and it's on a Saturday.
• Secondhand stores, absolutely everywhere. 

"Days at the Morisaki Bookshop," Satoshi Yagisawa

Hey look at this, I'm on a roll. I'm on leave from work while my family is in Australia, so I have extra time to read. This is one of those typical Japanese translations where you can't tell if it's just a really simple, earnest translation, or if the original is like that, or both. Still it was a pleasant read. Great cover.

https://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

"The Songlines," Bruce Chatwin

I'm in Australia, on leave from work, trying to learn Korean and ride my bike and read about Australia. This was the first book I finished. It was good. A gritty manly book from the 60s. It has like 100 pages of his notes that are unrelated to the plot.

https://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

Favorite songs from 2025!

 Continuing a yearly tradition, here were 6 of my favorite songs released in 2025. Hope your 2026 is already going great. I'm getting ready for some bigtime travel, so it's a little stressful over here. Without further ado:

• WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! (RAYE): WHY ARE WE SHOUTING? This song is so fun, this is exactly the kind of music that is best to dance to, and I like the ambiguity of the title line, like, is she looking for a man to marry (yes, I learned) or is she already married and she just wrote a song like where is that guy (no, but funnier). 
• What do I know (Deep Sea Diver): This song is coolest song on the countdown.
• Sally, When The Wine Runs Out (ROLE MODEL): Hear me out, I am sure you heard this 1000s of times in '025 but it's catchy for a reason. I don't even mind the hip-hop interlude.
• The Giver (Chappell Roan): It's going to be nearly impossible to ever top "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess," and most of her songs post that album haven't really done it for me, but this one is great. SHE GETS THE JOB DONE!
• Downstairs (Matt Maeson): This guy just really wants to chill.
• The Wolf (Witch Post): It's a guy from Scotland and a lady from Montana! I can never remember if Witch Post is the band or the song.

Special honorable mention song that didn't come out in 2025 but that's when I first heard it:

• Old Friends (Pinegrove): This song is emotional, and nostalgic, and is abstract enough to make you think about your own life, but concrete enough to make you want to understand the singer's story.

Hope you will listen here: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6hZRfDZm7IdbPNJZyjHO0hMEFJLKaU2e&si=00QkcKC6SGk1Sx2O

And tell me about your favorite songs from 2025!

"Roadie:The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer" - Jamie Smith

The inscription reads, "I have a hunch that you enjoy reading this book! And I love you more than you love cycling!"

https://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

"Boom and Bust Colorado," Thomas J. Noel and William J. Hansen

Wow this is the first book I have finished in a while. Sorry to all my fans. Anyway, I mostly enjoyed this book. The best parts were definitely about the gold and silver rush at the beginning, since I learned about how almost every place I ever go to in Colorado is somehow rooted in those discoveries.

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

Google Cloud Emails

I have a web site with a list of books that I have read that is generated dynamically from a database. So probably once every 3 months I get some email like this from Google Cloud that makes almost no sense at all to me. This one is especially egregious. I have no idea what they are talking about.

Hello Nels, We’re writing to inform you about an important change that will impact your App Engine app. The older App Engine projects could be using Google Container Registry to store container images created from the deployed source code. Google Container Registry is being discontinued and will be replaced by Artifact Registry. This means if you have content in Google Container Registry, you need to follow the instructions below to allow App Engine to automatically migrate your deployment flows. We’ve provided additional information below to guide you through this change. What you need to know When deploying App Engine, Cloud Build transforms source code into container images which may be stored in Google Container Registry. Artifact Registry is the next-generation service for storing container images, offering improved regionalized storage and security features. Going forward, Artifact Registry will be the container repository used by App Engine. After a successful App Engine application deployment: The App Engine standard environment doesn’t require pulling from the container repository The App Engine flexible environment pulls from the container repository on each instance startup Upcoming changes: Starting March 5, 2025: New deployments will start using Artifact Registry instead of Google Container Registry for storing application images. After March 18, 2025: Google Container Registry will begin shut down, preventing App Engine flexible environment instances from starting. What you need to do If your project already uses Artifact Registry for gcr.io urls, either because you have run the automated migration tooling, or because it was created after May 2024, you can ignore the following instructions for that project. For projects which are not yet migrated you will need to follow these steps to enable App Engine to automatically migrate your deployment flows. App Engine standard environment users: For standard deployments to work correctly with Artifact Registry: The service account associated with deployments (typically this will be the App Engine default service account, project-id@appspot.gserviceaccount.com, or your custom service account) command should have a role that grants the explicit Artifact Registry permission artifactregistry.repositories.uploadArtifacts (for write). You can find this information by viewing the roles of the service account. New deployments will be able to use Artifact Registry, if any of the following roles are present in the service account associated with deployments: Editor role Pre-defined Artifact Registry role with write access (like Artifact Registry Writer). Custom role that grants artifactregistry.repositories.uploadArtifacts permission. It can be verified from the Console or through the gcloud iam roles describe command. If none of these roles are present, grant the Artifact Registry Writer role (roles/artifactregistry.writer) to your deploying service account. Potential Impact: If the preceding steps aren't completed before the Google Container Registry shuts down, you won't be able to deploy new versions of your App Engine standard application. Existing App Engine standard applications will continue to run. App Engine flexible environment users: For flexible deployments to Artifact Registry to work correctly: The service account associated with deployments (typically, this will be the App Engine default service account, project-id@appspot.gserviceaccount.com, or your custom service account) should have a role that grants the explicit Artifact Registry permissions: artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts (for read) and artifactregistry.repositories.uploadArtifacts (for write). You can find this information by viewing the roles of the service account. New deployments will go to the Artifact Registry if any of the following roles are present in the service account associated with deployments: Editor role Pre-defined Artifact Registry role with read and write access (like Artifact Registry Writer). Custom role that grants artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts and artifactregistry.repositories.uploadArtifacts permissions. These can be verified from the Console or through the gcloud iam roles describe command. If none of these roles are present, grant the Artifact Registry Repository Administrator role (roles/artifactregistry.repoAdmin) to your deploying service account. You can migrate manually built container images to Artifact Registry only by running the automated migration utility for your project. Potential Impact: If the preceding actions are not completed before the Google Container Registry shutdown, deploying App Engine flexible applications, scaling instances, and restarting instances will fail. We’re here to help If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact Google Cloud Support. Thanks for choosing App Engine.

— The Google Cloud Team

Books in 2024

 In 2024 I read 7 books. Pretty sad!

But I guess that's life as a parent. Anyway, my favorite was Counterweight, by Djuna.

Favorite songs from 2024!

 It was a good year for music! Want proof? Well my list of favorite songs for this year has 10 songs instead of the normal 5. I think this music summarizes the "cool dad" vibe I am trying to put out there, but you can be the judge. As usual, most of the songs were from 2024, but a few were just ones I learned about in 2024 for the first time!

• Northern Attitude (Noah Kahan & Hozier): This song is great. It's about getting older, as is all good media. Don't believe whatever nonsense they have on Genius.com.
• Apple (Charli xcx): I have to be honest, brat didn't really do it for me, I think I have gotten a bit too old, but this song is a good one.
• Deeper Well (Kacey Musgraves): Kacey Musgraves has a pretty good Indie Country thing going.
• Close to You (Gracie Abrams): Did you know Gracie Abrams is JJ Abrams' daughter?!
• Illusion (Dua Lipa)
• Please Please Please (Sabrina Carpenter): This whole album is good and you should given it a listen. But the backstory to this one (her real-life now ex boyfriend is an Irish actor who causes a big scene every time they go out) is too funny.

Honorary entries that came out before 2024:

• Chaise Longue (Wet Leg): All day long
• The Place That Makes Me Happy (The Moss): I am going camping!
• See Her Out (Francis and the Lights): Heard this on FX's excellent The English Teacher! Watch and Listen.
• She Looks So Perfect (5 Seconds of Summer): The dumb fun I have come to expect from 5 Second of Summer.

You can listen yourself here:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6hZRfDZm7IcrKbs52LoeR6I7gc8TRYAF&si=l0HhDjap_nYZ2tST

5 Songs from 2023

Well Q1 was a doozy, so I have finally gotten around to compiling my 5 favorite songs from 2023! Here are my 5 favorites, only 3 months late:

• "Honey," by Samia - You should listen to the whole album, but this was the gateway song!
• "Sinner," by The Last Dinner Party - From what I understand the dinner party was pretty wild.
• "Modern Girl," by Bleachers - I have already completed burned myself out on this song, but it was my top 1 for several weeks. Real Bruce Springsteen vibes.
• "103," by The Kills - Yes, very awesome.
• "My Kink Is Karma," by Chappell Roan - Dang her album is great and I am sad that her show in Boulder is sold out. Don't be like me folks.

Try listening on YouTube music?!

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6hZRfDZm7IdYZ83atCeU9t-ifJTftaTC

A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons - Ben Folds

 I have basically always loved Ben Folds' music, and he has a ton of it, so it seemed only right to give his book a read. Ben seems like the kind of person who keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, and if your his family or friend you love him but kind of cringe to see him doing the same thing again. Overall it was good. I would have liked to hear more about some of the specific songs and albums. For example, Reinhold Messner which I consider to be one of his best albums, was like a throwaway paragraph in the book!

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

The Cabinet - Un-su Kim

 This one took me forever to finish, I just couldn't get engaged...

www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

The Maze at Windermere - Gregory Blake Smith

Took me about a third of the way through to get into it, and I read it entirely on my phone! (I started it while I was walking around the house a lot with Rory, then a baby, and finished when he was almost 2!) But eventually I liked it a like. 5 or so different stories in different time periods. Each interesting in their own right. Better together.

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

Easy Korean Reading For Beginners - TalkToMeInKorean

 Not at all like the others, but since this is the first Korean book I read cover to cover, I am adding it!

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

This Is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

 I read this in the slowest way possible, I probably could have read it in a few days but it took me months. Enjoyed it overall but a few times I got tired of the letters back and forth...

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

My Italian Bulldozer - Alexander McCall Smith

 One of the reviews on the back of the book called this a 'gentle book,' and I have to agree. It's slow paced, and very little happens, but still enjoyable to read. When I bought it, I said, I wanted a dumb vacation book, and this hit the spot.

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

Moms - Yeong-shin Ma

A graphic novel about Korean moms who are mostly divorced and dating. Pretty funny, and fun to read, even if it was a little dark. I learned about "colatecs," alcohol-free dance clubs for the elderly.

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp

Agency (The Jackpot Trilogy) - William Gibson

William Gibson has a way of describing things where you have no idea what is going on, but you still know that it's pretty cool. This book was great at first, though it did drag on a bit. The main characters kind of always had the right answer to every single problem. Still glad I read it.

http://www.nelsbeckman.com/books.jsp