Author: Mach

Hey, notice anything different? Yeah, me neither. But recently my web hosting company, In Motion Hosting, told me that they’re upgrading PHP and Apache. What does that mean? I have no idea. But they said that older versions of WordPress might not work with the new stuff. I’ve been meaning to upgrade for a while (I was at version 2.6 and now it’s up to 2.9.2) so this just forced me to stop putting it off.

Fortunately, WordPress has a very handy guide on upgrading. The only tricky thing was to make sure that I didn’t overwrite my old plugins and themes.

Hopefully, you guys won’t notice any difference. For me, it means that it’s a lot easier to keep up with the latest plugins (mostly to fight spam). But if you notice anything wrong with the website, let me know!

Last year at this time, I debuted my Holograms app for the iPhone. It was just a quirky idea I had to add a bit of dimensionality to images using touch and the accelerometer and I wasn’t sure if anyone would really get it. But several people did, including Steve Wozniak. And a few more people continue to buy the app each day, even now.

If you’re one of the people who bought Holograms, thanks for making it a memorable first year!

We’re going to a wedding on Saturday in LA. I’ll be flying down there this evening but the wife and baby Mach 2 already arrived on Wednesday. So I’ve been on my own for the last couple days. (Say hello to bachelor cooking: rice with microwave chili mixed with leftover Chinese food and some peas I found in the fridge!)

I got a lot of little errands around the house done but it’s amazing how quiet it seems now. And it’s the first time since my kid was born that I’ve gone a day without seeing him! Fortunately, I have the pictures to keep me company.

I recently got a new computer (yay!) to replace my old one which is dying, but had to spend several days getting things to work properly again (boo!). Some notes:

• Apple’s Time Machine is pretty fantastic for transferring computer info
• if you have a whole bunch of USB devices plugged into one hub and are having problems, try using USB cables that are as short as possible
• my external monitor flickers sometimes on individual pixels and sometimes rows of pixels, anyone have any idea why?
• my wifi doesn’t connect sometimes when I wake my computer although resetting the router usually fixes it, anyone have any idea why?

The last problem is particularly vexing because it happened on my last MacBook and I was hoping that the new one would be better. Maybe I need to buy a new router. The one I have is about five years old.

When I was growing up in Southern California, our family would gather every Memorial Day. I didn’t understand until much later why it was such a big deal to us. Lots of families have grandparents who lived through World War II. But my family, being Japanese-American, had a particularly complicated experience during the war.

My father was just a toddler when the war broke out. But soon after Pearl Harbor, American suspicion towards anyone Japanese (even if they were born and raised in America) was so high that the government decided to intern people of Japanese descent in internment camps. My dad’s family lost everything when they were forcibly imprisoned by the American government. But even after they went through all that, his uncles volunteered to fight for the US. One of them, Kaz Masuda pictured above, died while charging a German machine gun nest in order to give his men a chance to escape. He was 25 years old.

So every year, we would gather to honor our relatives who fought in the wars. They intrinsically understood how deeply flawed America could be, but still chose to risk their lives defending it. It’s something worth remembering.

A reader commented in my last post that I’m not the only one having problems selling apps in Brazil (and apparently South Korea). It seems that both those countries don’t allow games to be sold without going through their games approval board. Since Apple has its own approval process, apps don’t go through Brazil or South Korea’s game approval board and so apps that are games aren’t normally available there.

Some companies try to get around this by categorizing their apps as “Entertainment” instead of “Games” and that’s what I’ve tried to do for Mach Dice. I’ll let you know if that works.

Someone in Brazil was kind enough to email me that they wanted to buy Mach Dice. Sadly, for some reason, Mach Dice wasn’t available on the iTunes Store there. I’ve followed up by emailing customer support at Apple but now I’m a bit concerned. Are my apps missing from other countries?

If you happen to live outside the United States, would you mind clicking on this link and seeing if you see all four of my iPhone and iPad apps? You should see something like the image above. Thanks!

OMG, can you believe last night’s finale?!?

Actually, I haven’t seen it because it hasn’t aired yet. Or, rather, it hasn’t aired yet for me because I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon. So here are my spoiler-free predictions for the finale:

• Lots of people are going to die.
• If there are any minorities left, they will heroically die first.
• No matter how it ends, lots of fans are going to be unsatisfied.
• I’ll probably still like it anyways.
• The last line will either be, “Welcome … to Fantasy Island!” or “Gilligan, is that you?!”

I know I’m going out on a limb with some of these predictions, but man, that would be so awesome if my last one was true.

For some inexplicable reason, my wife gets very dubious whenever I’m in the kitchen. But the other day, I was in there and had a culinary epiphany: a pizza is a pastry product topped with cheese and tomato sauce.

A pastry product with cheese? Sounds like grilled cheese sandwich to me. And tomato sauce? I’ve got a whole jarful of spaghetti sauce where tomato is the first ingredient. Therefore, grilled cheese sandwich + spaghetti sauce = pizza.

Of course, you can’t just put spaghetti sauce in a sandwich. It’d be way too messy. (I found that out the hard way…) You have to put the spaghetti sauce in a bowl and use it like a dipping sauce. It also helps to cut the grilled cheese sandwich into sticks for easier dipping, too.

On of my friends made a puzzle game, PowerUp!. It looked neat so I downloaded the free trial version, which only has the easier levels. But it was so much fun that I went and bought both the full iPhone version and the iPad version.

If you’re into puzzle games like Sudoku or Nicoli type pencil and paper games like Slitherlink or Yajilin, this game is for you! It involves rotating tiles to light up all the tiles on the grid. That’s all there is to it. But it gets incredibly challenging at the higher levels, especially with wrapping turned on. And games typically last 5-10 minutes, so it’s perfect for a short break. Check it out on iTunes!