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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeqqETDnzHw

I’ve actually jumped off the cliff at South Point, Hawaii once before. It was over a decade ago during my first trip to Big Island. But back then I didn’t have a video camera.

I remember it being pretty terrifying back then, too. But even scarier? The climb back out of the water on a rickety, rusty ladder.

Also, we can use a bit of physics (x = x0 + v0 * t + 0.5 * a * t * t) to estimate how high the cliff is. In the video (which is 29.97 frames per second), I’m in freefall for roughly 44 frames or 1.468 seconds. So then the cliff is about 34.67 feet high.

Furthermore, we can calculate the speed at impact to be roughly 32.2 miles an hour. And I’ll tell you: at over 30 mph, water packs quite a punch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMafIsB0_G0

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I’m sorry we couldn’t be with you this year but here’s a cute video from Dyson to make up for it.

Saturday was May 5, which is widely celebrated in the US and parts of Mexico as Cinqo de Mayo (loosely translated as “Excuse to Drink Day”). But it’s also Kodomo No Hi in Japan (“Children’s Day”).

It’s a day set aside to celebrate the joys of children but mostly, it’s an excuse to put kids in cute Japanese outfits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLMh9UDyT3M
I got a chance to see an early screening of The Avengers and it was a blast! Here are just a few of the fun scenes from it (using only toys and no dialog to prevent spoilers).

This morning, we spotted a wasp inside the house. Tracy’s policy on wasps is, “live and let live … unless they come into the house, in which case their ass is mine.”

Except that I actually had to kill this one. And okay, sure, it looks innocuous enough in this picture but when you’re actually there, with only a few millimeters of cheap plastic between you and a godless killing machine … it’s terrifying.

Well, I’ll spare you the gruesome details but I will say that at the end, I felt sorry for the wasp. She couldn’t help what she was. But neither could I let her report back to the nest how she had gotten into our home.

In college (back when my name was “Dexter”) I met a guy named Javier Grillo-Marxuach because we both worked for the school newspaper.

Javi left an impression on me because he’s a really funny writer and also, he has a kick-ass name. Years later, I happened to spot his name in the credits for “Lost”.

Flash-forward to today, I got to attend a talk with J.J. Abrams and during the Q&A, I joked that I knew a guy who he knows so could I hang out with him some time? And this picture is the result.

For the record, J.J. Abrams is a really cool guy and if he ever happens to read this: I forgot to say thanks for creating Under Covers! It was really refreshing to see a major TV series that starred people of color. I hope to see more of that some day.

A few days ago, I noticed a sudden increase in sales for my iPhone app, Holograms. I had no idea what caused it until someone commented on one of my videos that Tupac brought them there.

It turns out that a few days ago, rapper Tupac Shakur posthumously performed as a hologram at Coachella and it generated a lot of buzz. And then:

• hundreds of thousands of people search for videos of Tupac as a hologram
• a couple thousand of them stumble on my Holograms video
• a couple dozen of those people decide to buy my iPhone app

And that’s how Tupac Shakur got me $40.

Woohoo! iPhone Quality Index recently listed Mach Dice as one of its top five dice games, which is especially impressive since it’s really more of a utility than a game itself.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of the site. But as near as I can tell, they’re like a Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic for iPhone apps. You can list apps by genre and they give an aggregate score based on other review sites and possibly the iTunes Store ratings. Mach Dice is actually #11 in the dice genre, but I guess they exercised some subjective judgement in putting together the list.

Well, I managed to get a lot done while my wife and son were out of town, but my favorite part was seeing them back again.

Our household, like many others, operates on the principle of division of labor:

• I do the dishes, take out the trash, watch Dyson in the mornings and weekends, bathe him, etc.
• Tracy takes care of Dyson the rest of the time, prepares the meals, etc.

For the most part, this works well as we can each focus on our own tasks and do them efficiently. But Tracy and Dyson have been out of town for the last several days, leaving me to fend for myself at home. On the one hand, the house is a lot cleaner than it’s been in a long time. On the other, I am a terrible cook. Case in point, I have learned that although feta and parmesan are delightful cheeses when spread in small amounts on crackers, they make for horrible quesadillas.