Humor is a funny thing. (Har, har.) It’s very individual and yet universal at the same time. As a kid, I was fascinated but also confused by it. I remember obsessively reading each of the comics in the Sunday paper, trying to figure out what made them funny but mostly I’d ask my dad. My parents never really told jokes or anything like that but I do remember them laughing at things we did or said. They were both pretty literal as well, so for the longest time, I didn’t “get” sarcasm. Boy, that made for some awkward times in high school and college. (“Hey guys, that girl said I’m totally her type!”) Good times, good times…

Anyways, I started thinking about this whole thing recently because I just recently ran across a phrase that made me go, “Wow, yes, that phrase perfectly describes my concept of what I think is funny.” It’s actually a title of a book. I don’t know if it’s any good or even if it’s out yet. But as a phrase, it’s pure awesome. And that phrase is: “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies“. (The italics are mine because that’s the part that’s awesome but I have to admit, I do have a thing for Jane Austin novels.)

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.

I had to go to the dentist the other day and unfortunately, one of my fillings cracked and I had to get a crown. Buuuuut, it turns out that the best material for crowns is gold. Porcelain looks more like natural teeth but has a tendancy to eventually wear away or crack. On the other hand, gold is pretty malleable so it’ll last a good long time.

There’s a French phrase “l’esprit de l’escalier” (“wit of the staircase”). It refers to those times when you think of a witty response or retort … just a little too late. It happens a fair amount to me in real life but I’m referring to something on my blog.

See, occasionally, I get a small spike of visitors on my blog. Someone links to my blog and then a bunch of their readers check out my site. Sadly, they usually only visit once and I don’t find out until the next day when I check out my traffic stats in the morning. It’s too bad because I’d like to greet them with something like, “Hey, readers from Kupuk.com, welcome to my site!” and also that … umm, well, I guess I don’t have much more than that.

In any case, I just wanted to say, “Hey, readers that happen to be visiting my little blog for the first time today, welcome to my site! I mostly started this blog to chronicle my experiences developing iPhone apps. But occasionally, I write about other things. I guess that’s about it. Oh, I almost forgot, go buy Mach Dice!”

I did a bit more work on app #2 this weekend and I managed to get something working fine on the simulator, but it was all messed up when I actually tried it out on my iPhone. Turns out the problem was a call to glColorPointer(). There is a “size” parameter, which can normally be 1, 2, 3, or 4 depending on how many of the (r, g, b, a) channels you want to set. But for the iPhone OpenGL ES implementation, size must be 4. So, bear that in mind if you want to draw a vertex color poly mesh. You can’t just specify a color, you have to specify an alpha as well.

I probably would have gotten more done on my app if our friend hadn’t called us over for a game of Castle Crashers. I’m not addicted! I can quit anytime…

I’m diligently working on app #2, which includes the ability to use photos from your photo library (or the camera if your device has one) and I ran into some memory issues. If you repeatedly create and destroy UIImagePickerController instances, you’ll quickly run out of memory (after picking like, seven photos). Fortunately, a little digging around led to the solution. Essentially, it involves keeping one instance around and continually re-using it.

Oh, also, if you’re doing animation in your app, be sure to turn off the animation while you access the camera. Otherwise, the camera will be really, really slow; causing you to question whether or not your app idea is even feasible; leading to a looong sleepless night until you finally realize what you were doing wrong. Just sayin’…

I make mistakes so that you don’t have to.

Yesterday was an historic day that will be remembered for years to come. Many wondered if this day would ever come, some felt it was inevitable. But now that it has happened, I feel a sense of relief and maybe even a bit of optimism. I am, of course, referring to the fact that according to my tallies of daily sales around the world, I have sold my 10,000th copy of Mach Dice yesterday! Woohoo!

Oh, also, some new guy became President of the United States so … you know, that’s cool, too. =)

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! I actually get the day off work today, which always throws me off my schedule a bit so I almost forgot to post. I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I’m trying to adhere to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule.

Anyways, yay Martin Luther King Jr. — civil rights leader, inspired orator, and all-around great guy. MLK makes me think of milk but it also makes me think of Harvey Milk, another civil rights leader, which makes me think of the movie Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant, whom I met once during a extras casting call for said movie. But that’s a whole ‘nother story…

Ricardo Montalban passed away earlier this week. He was wonderful as Mr. Rourke on Fantasy Island. He was terrifying as the indomitable Khan on Star Trek. He had such a charismatic air about him that he was fascinating in any role. He was an all-around great guy. And now he is gone.

It got me to thinking about people I’ve lost in my own life. My father passed away nearly a decade ago. My piano teacher passed away when I was in high school. I’ve lost beloved aunts and uncles and grandparents throughout the years as well. There are people whose very presence make life just a little bit brighter and it’s sad when they go. I wish I had told them how much they meant to me when I had the chance. But maybe they already knew.

I guess I’ve veered a bit from Ricardo Montalban. But I hope that he had some sense of how much people around the world enjoyed his performances. I’m going to try to spend the day being more appreciative of the people in my life including each and every one of you dear readers.