A totally random roll that I happened to get just now.
I recently got an email from Apple informing me of a new “App Transfer” feature. Basically, you can transfer the rights to any of your apps to another developer. It got me thinking about principles (and money).
I thought about what this might mean for my apps like Mach Dice and Selector. If I transfered those apps to an unscrupulous developer, they could do totally shady things like install cheat codes to get high rolls or favored picks. Can you imagine how terrible (and potentially profitable) that would be?
Fortunately, for the tens of thousands of loyal and trusting customers of my apps, I have integrity. And integrity like that can’t be bought for any amount of money (under $1,000,000).
I have this theory that at some point, everyone is the best in the world at something, although it might be pretty minor. I wondered what it might be for me and when it might happen.
Well, this week, I found out. On June 2, 2013, I managed to get the world’s fastest time (4.55 seconds) on medium level 99 of Blendoku (a fantastic free color matching iPhone game).
So, at least on that day, I was best in the world at something. As it happens, it would have been my dad’s 74th birthday. It’s the sort of thing he would have found amusing.
Every once in a while, I get a request to license the source code to Mach Dice. It’s not something that I actively encourage because it’s an app that I just hacked together haphazardly over the course of several years. But who am I to stop people from giving me money?
This week, one of those requests came to fruition in the form of an app on the iTunes Store. It’s called Bangkok and as far as I can tell, it’s an interactive choose your own adventure type book about an American cop turned bodyguard in Bangkok. I’m not entirely sure because it’s originally in Spanish and the English translation is … creative.
Anyways, it’s free and it’s got my dice in there so check it out!
As Dyson gets older, he exhibits more independence. I find that it’s a balancing act between letting him grow into his own person and watching out for him.
If he’s being mean or behaving badly, I’m not really sure what to do. Ignore him if it’s towards me? Lecture him on the importance of being nice? Either way, it seems like something that warrants a response.
But for the most part, I try to let him do his own thing. He’s a pretty good kid and he’s a lot more cautious than I was (or still am, probably). So when he wanted to go down the big slide by himself, I let him. Well, that’s not quite true: he just leapt out in front of me before I got on. But the point is, I felt that the potential harm was outweighed by the potential benefits.
Bodies heal and character grows. That’s the hope, anyways.
I used to dye my hair occasionally but I hadn’t done it in … over a decade? It’s not exactly easy to do that sort of stuff with a kid underfoot.
But I had an occasion that called for “creative formal wear” and since my hair was pretty short anyways, I decided to go for it. Here are the results!
Also, the suit I’m wearing in the picture belonged to my uncle in Japan. When he passed on, I was the only one of the relatives that was close to his size. Come to think of it, most of the clothes that fit me best come from Japan. Maybe it’s genetic.
I saw Upstream Color with a friend the other day. We had both really enjoyed Primer, by the same director, so we were both very interested in his latest movie. I loved the movie but my friend got a little lost by the end so I thought it’d be fun to make a video explaining what I thought happened. With stick puppets.
I talk a bit about it in the video but one of the reasons that I loved the movie so much was that it’s about flawed and broken people that somehow manage to find and make each other whole. We’re all flawed in some way and usually those flaws hinder and hurt us. But I love the idea that maybe sometimes, just maybe, it’s those flaws that enable us to do great things.
The video isn’t terribly informative, but it does show how much fun it is to play around with one of these things.
A few of my co-workers got together and funded the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and a bunch of us tried it out. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a virtual reality device that combines head tracking and stereo images to create a very compelling experience. It was a little blurry and there’s still some lag but wow, it felt completely immersive.
It’s not like you’re ever fooled into thinking that it’s real life, but it really does feel like you’re walking around inside a video game. I’ve heard that one of the first motion picture demos was of a train coming towards the screen and that audiences would run away because it felt so real to them. I think this might be somewhat akin to that. I mean, it wasn’t like I ever forgot that it wasn’t real … but I did feel vertigo looking over the virtual cliffs.
Also, I didn’t get motion sick in the few minutes that I tried it out but I got really dizzy as soon as I took it off. It was almost as if the real world took some adjusting to get used to again.
Every year, I have to go through the hassle of redoing all the provisioning profile and certificate stuff. And every year, I forget exactly what I did and have to go scouring the web to figure out what to do. So this year, I’m writing a blog post in the hopes that I’ll remember to look at this in future years.
Ideally, you should be able to go to Xcode -> Organizer -> Devices -> Provisioning Profiles and just hit “Renew” on all the expired profiles. If not, then you may just have to do it manually through the developer portal.
I have always been fascinated by humor. As a kid, I didn’t really understand it but I remember pouring over Sunday comics and pressing my dad to explain what was funny about each one.
Then one day, I got a hold of some comedy cassette tapes and really learned about comedy: Bill Cosby’s Wonderfulness, Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, Weird Al Yankovich on Dr. Demento, Robin Williams … the list went on and on.
I struggled with some things in life but no matter how tough things got, listening to the tapes made me feel better. And I thought that making people laugh was one of the most wonderful things in the world. That’s one of the reasons why I make silly videos and what not. But I’ve always wanted to try stand up comedy because that’s what inspired me. Unfortunately, that’s a little hard to do that when you’ve got a full-time job and a family that needs you around at nights and on weekends.
But the wife and kid were out for a couple weeks last month and I thought, I’m gonna do it! So that’s how I ended up on stage at Club OMG during LOL Mondays on March 25, 2013. And it was terrifying. But it was also an incredibly exhilarating experience to make people laugh and see them smile.
The best compliment I got was from my wife. I showed her the video and she said, “I knew you could be funny, I didn’t know you could be stand up funny.” Well, I think I’m a ways from being actually good at it, but it’s a start.
