So there’s this thing going around at work. No, it’s not the flu (at least this time…). It’s this chain letter type thing where you write 25 things about yourself and then try to get 25 other people to do it, too. Well, I’m not going to force any of you to do it. But hey, if you’ve got a blog, this is kind of a neat topic to cover.

Anywho, here are my 25:

1. I combined a love of programming, gaming, and drawing to create the iPhone app, “Mach Dice“. I wanted to go with a more generic name but there were like a dozen dice rollers already out there and all those names were already taken.
2. I speak English, a fair amount of Japanese, a bit of French, and a smidgen of Russian (well, at least I can read Cyrillic … slowly).
3. I don’t shave because I don’t grow facial hair but I do cut my own hair. The trick is to use mirrors or close your eyes and feel where you think you need to cut. That and also be willing to shave your head if it doesn’t work out.
4. I can fold my tongue in three.
5. I was student body president in junior high.
6. In high school, I sang in the California All State Honor Choir.
7. I worked on my university’s school paper; I drew weekly a comic and I was editor of the features section. The comic was for fun, I ended up being editor because they couldn’t find anyone else to do it.
8. I’ve gone by three different names at various stages in my life.
9. My wife and I lived in Japan for a year where I worked as a financial analyst.
10. I’m a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild.
11. I’ve spoken at three funerals and two wedding. Speaking at weddings is more fun, but I don’t get asked to do that as often.
12. I don’t smoke because I know I’d enjoy it and it’d be harder to quit than to not start. Also, my two closest uncles died from it and it seems like a really bad way to go.
13. I don’t drink because I have a tendency to exhibit less than optimal judgment. They say that you regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do. Sooooo not true for me.
14. I was once expelled from school for arson.
15. I have a number of scars, mostly self-inflicted (motorcycle mishap, hair cutting mishap, butterfly-knife mishap, etc.). I also have one from when my dad was giving me a ride on a bicycle and my foot got caught in the spinning rear wheel.
16. As a kid, I once leapt into the open window of a speeding car to retrieve a stolen backpack. I didn’t care about the backpack so much but there was no way I was going to let the guy take my programmable calculator.
17. I was once an exchange student in Mexico and I had a great time except for when I fell in the swimming pool and broke a front tooth.
18. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Yokohama, Vancouver, Honolulu, and the San Francisco Bay Area; all places near water and almost all of them have a Chinatown.
19. My memory is exceptionally bad. One time, I asked my friend if he had gone to a computer graphics conference the previous month. He stared at me until he said, “Mach, we shared a hotel room and split a bed. Remember?”
20. I’ve directed two sock puppet short films. One based on The Incredibles and one on Ratatouille.
21. My brother and I have a tradition of carving pumpkins together for Halloween which started because our dad always carved cool pumpkins for Halloween when we were kids. He also taught us how to make stop motion animated movies and the importance of “non-destructive testing”.
22. I inherited a love of art, Japanese food, and playing the piano from my mom. She was also the one who taught me to speak Japanese since my dad didn’t speak it. Come to think of it, my mom didn’t speak much English when she got married so I guess I picked up how to switch between languages from both of them.
23. When I was young, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always replied, “tall”. I’m 5’3″, which is taller than I was in grade school but still kinda short so I guess I should have been more specific.
24. I am a horrible cook. I once tried to make French toast for my wife and it tasted funny so I tried using more sugar. But no matter how much sugar I used, it didn’t get any sweeter. It turns out, I was using salt.
25. My wife and I started off as pen pals and I fell in love with her before we met.

Over the weekend, I did a little more work on app #2. For project like this, there’s always the question of whether or not it’s even feasible. I think I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty sure the answer is, “yes”. So I took a break from the heavy coding and worked on some icons for my toolbar.

In the process, I did find out something interesting: The colors of the images used for UIBarButtonItem buttons aren’t used. In other words, it doesn’t matter what colors your images are, you’ll just get a white shape on your toolbar. But since the opacity of your image is used, you can get different values of grays by fading the image.