Now that Dyson is getting a little older and more independent, I don’t need to be around quite as much. So I took the opportunity to get back into figure drawing again this week.

This is a two week pose and each week is a four hour session. It’s been a while since I’ve been to one so I wasn’t sure how it would go, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

We went to a Halloween party over the weekend and of course, we took the opportunity to put Dyson in a cute little costume that we inherited from a neighbor.

Easier said than done. The only thing harder than getting a baby into a costume (especially one with a head covering) is trying to take a picture of said baby. If you can’t tell, it’s a little skunk outfit. And yes, that is the Dread Pirate Roberts peering over his shoulder.

Update: the Camera option seems to be fine, it’s the Photo Library option that crashes.

Apparently, my Holograms app is crashing with iOS 5 devices. Unfortunately, I don’t have an iOS 5 device myself so I can’t really test it. But it looks like lots of other apps that use the camera are now crashing in iOS 5 as well.

Fortunately, I’m meeting with some friends on Thursday for a coding night so hopefully one of them has an iOS 5 device and I can test some stuff out. For now, you can still use images from the “Photo Library” in Holograms. So take your pictures using the regular camera app and then run Holograms afterwards. Sorry for any inconveniences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7U7WSgXAwM

A couple of my friends have the new iPhone 4S and I have to say that the new Siri voice recognition feature is pretty impressive. But what do I need with a digital assistant when I have a baby to do my bidding?

I recently started playing this freemium game, Tiny Tower. It’s one of those Farmville type games where you start a bunch of jobs and then wait for them to finish so you can start them up again. Umm … it’s more fun than it sounds. Well, maybe “addicting” is a better word for it.

Anyways, you spend a lot of time waiting for stuff to finish. But you can cheat pretty easily by just setting the date ahead on your iPhone. But at some point, you’re probably going to want to set your date back to normal and if you happen to have any uncompleted jobs, the time remaining will get extended by the same amount.

Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround: just make sure you complete all the jobs and don’t start any new ones (including constructing a new floor) before you go back in time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zl0qoRAglU

Steve Jobs has been lauded for many things, but I think his greatest contribution is evident in the video above. I joke that the iPad is intuitive enough that a baby can use it. But really, there is something significant there.

When I was a kid, I was fortunate enough to have a computer at home and I was pretty good at using it. But it certainly wasn’t something everyone felt comfortable with. Computers were powerful tools, but you had to be a certain kind of person to really use them.

Steve Jobs changed a lot of that. He was fond of saying that Apple was at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. But I think it was more that he was the pioneer of making technology for humans.

Dyson loves the iPad and the iPhone. And it’s not just because they’re beautiful devices. It’s because there are things he wants them to do and he knows how to make them do it. For a being that only barely knows how to speak, that’s no small accomplishment.

(I would also like to point out that some of his favorite apps are Mach Dice, Boom Dice, and Castle Tiles. He’s also fond of geoDefense swarm. But to be fair, he’s not very good at it.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX0UsYcrC5Y

Dyson needed to get his hair cut again. Now that he’s a little older, he moves around a lot more than he did the first time so it’s quite a bit more challenging.

When we were all done, I gave him a baby beard with the leftover hair.

Google was kind enough to offer me another free $100 in Google AdWords ads so I figured I’d give it another shot.

But this time, instead of spreading it out over a week and a half like I did last time, I decided to blow it all in three days on targeted ads for Mach Dice and Castle Tiles.

The results? The ads did not seem to have an appreciable effect. They may have resulted in a sale or two, but certainly not nearly enough to justify spending $100 in ads.

I think the main reason for that is that my apps are pretty niche apps and the odds of my ads hitting the type of person that would be interested in my apps is pretty low. On the other hand, the ads themselves seemed to be pretty effective. For $100, I got 836,276 impressions and 1,423 clicks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jri-wqgMLqw
Dyson’s reached the age where he’s starting to say words. He seems to get certain concepts pretty well but for now, he can only say two syllable words.

It’s fascinating to see the limits of his little baby brain and then to see him pushing on those limits. The most incredible thing about the whole thing is just how quickly things change.

Through a coincidental series of events, I got invited to an all day safari tour with my former department at work. It was loads of fun hanging out with them again and I got to see all sorts of cool animals.

In addition to the Masai giraffe, flamingos, and the colorful African ducks, I got to see the world’s smallest antelopes (duikers are smaller than my house cats!), some of the most dangerous buffaloes in the world (the Cape buffalo), a very happy turtle, and the angriest looking bird I have ever seen.

If you happen to live in the Bay Area, go check out Safari West!