http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4-rbYQXDbs

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.

• If you go to Xcode -> Organizer -> Devices -> Refresh and it crashes, remove “~/Library/Developer/Xcode/connect1.apple.com*”.
• Go to Apple’s developer portal -> Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles -> Certificates -> All and hit the “+” sign to generate new certificates.
• If “iOS App Development” is grayed out, then revoke all your expired certificates.
• 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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDFP2bQ4P7g

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.

This is one of the hardest things for me to deal with as a parent. Dyson is 3 years old and spends almost all of his time with Tracy. And they just got back from a 2 week trip to visit her parents. So naturally, he’s much more attached to her than he is to me. It also doesn’t help that things at work have been pretty rough lately and I’ve been spending some late nights there.

It’s natural and I completely understand, but it hurts. He’s just a kid, he doesn’t mean anything by it. And maybe at some point, it’ll switch. But for now, he pushes me away when I try to comfort him if he’s upset or just asks for Mama if I try to help.

Still, I know that I should keep trying and keep on being there for him even if he doesn’t want me to be. I take him on trips out of the house on the weekends even though it’d be easier to disengage and just let him stay home with his mom. Because it’s the right thing to do. But sometimes it’s hard.