I used to take piano lessons as a kid. It’s just a thing that Asian kids do. I never really practiced, though, because I was a kid and I was more interested in playing computer games.
But now I’m older and I have a greater appreciation and patience for things like practice. Unfortunately … well, if you watch the video, you’ll understand why I don’t practice much now, either.
(Incidentally, the piece that I am attempting to play is Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique.)
I got called up for jury duty last week. Like most people, I was reluctant to serve and was hoping to get dismissed early. But as I learned more about it, I began to understand its importance.
The judicial process isn’t perfect. But we’re not perfect human beings either. We all have biases, even if they’re unconscious, and most of us would have misgivings about controlling the fate of another human being. The system tries to compensate for this in a number of ways during jury selection: they try to find people who are not familiar with the case, they ask potential jurors questions that would indicate strong biases, and they give precise instructions about what is and is not evidence. (I also learned that we’re not only prohibited from talking about the case, even with the other jurors until deliberation starts. We’re also not allowed to research the facts of the case, which includes visiting the scene of the incident. So for a few days, I wasn’t allowed to go to a certain bowling alley in Alameda.)
But all of this only works if people are willing to take on the duty of serving as jurors. Several people got out of it by essentially saying they didn’t think it was right for people make these kinds of decisions on other people. And I can sympathize with that. But it is a duty and somebody has to do it. Socrates thought that the best rulers would be reluctant to serve and I think that applies to jurors as well. The judge also made a point of saying that we were only there to determine the facts of the case and it was his job alone to judge the person and determine sentencing, if any.
In the end, the case was dropped a few days after I was called. And part of me was relieved not to be responsible for deciding like that. But it was a fascinating look into the whole process. Also, I got paid $17.72 each day I served, which is more than I make on my iPhone apps…
I only spent a couple months working on Brave, which comes out this weekend, but I felt a particular connection to this movie. It’s a very personal story about a mother and a daughter and although I’m not either, the issues that come up in the movie are universal.
Well, okay, I haven’t had to fight many bears in my life or had to convince my parents not to force me into a marriage. But we’ve all had to come to terms with our identity and often, that means fighting expectations placed on us, which is what this movie is all about.
So go check it out: it’s got bears, it’s got magic, it’s got castles! Also … archery! If you’re wondering what I did for the movie, I worked on several of the wisp shots, including the last one in the movie before it cuts to the dedication and credits.
My dad passed away years ago, over a decade before my own son born. And now that I’ve been a dad for a couple years, I find that there’s a lot of stuff that I wish I could ask my own father.
What was it like? How did it change things? Was it hard for him?
He was pretty taciturn, so I suspect he would have just said, “Mm, mm”. But now that I have a kid of my own, I think I would have understood what that meant.
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On Tuesday, June 5, 2012, Venus transited in front of the Sun for the last time this century. I hadn’t given it much thought. But at the last minute, I decided to check it out.
I was surprised at how moved I was by what I saw. It was just a tiny black dot on a white circle, seen through special sun-viewing glasses. But the enormity of it struck me. I was seeing another planet … in front of the Sun.
It was tangible evidence of the solar system, something I could see with my own eyes. It was as if I were gazing at tiny portion of the inner-workings of our universe. In my mind’s eye, I could see the dance of the Earth and Venus around the Sun and how, for this brief moment, they were aligned enough for us to observe it.
It will be over a century before it happens again. I thought about that, too. I will be long dead and it seems quite likely that every recognizable trace of my existence would be gone from this Earth. Everything that I have ever and will ever experience in life will be forgotten. I’m not even sure that I will have any descendants alive at that point.
But it didn’t make me sad. Instead, it made me realize how insignificant my problems and worries were in the face of such scale. And it made me realize how precious our very brief experiences are.
I felt very fortunate to have witnessed the transit and I hope that future transit viewers will feel a bit of kinship through the centuries with the other humans who gazed up into the Sun and saw the universe.
I’ve heard that comedy is born of pain. If so, then self-deprecating humor must come from self-doubt. And I have a lot of self-doubt because I know just enough about a whole slew of subjects to know how bad I am at them.
This is a very silly video, but the idea came from some things I really do struggle with. I actually did start writing a screenplay like the first idea in the video and my wife’s response was that it was “fraught”. And in the past, when I’d attempted to write something else serious, the feedback was “this would make a great comedy skit”.
So it got me thinking: “What if I just suck?” In a sense, that’s what these three split-screen videos have been about. What if I just suck at singing, acting, writing, etc.?
I’d like to think that I’d get better the more I practiced. But I recall a story about an acting teacher who told the class that the ones who become successful at acting are not the most talented, but the most stubborn. And that’s why you see so many famous actors who suck. Because they’re the ones who stuck with it. But they still suck.
So, what if that were me? What if, no matter how hard I worked at these things, I still sucked? Well … to be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do beyond stubbornly trying again and again. Except … except that I do know how to make fun of it. And maybe some other people will find it funny, too.
They say that comedy is born of pain. But sometimes it helps ameliorate it, too.
A few things I learned from this one:
Asians age well
it’s a lot easier to memorize dialog that you’ve come up with yourself
in the future, everyone talks like Nic Cage
Also, I’ve noticed that I’m very strongly affected by caffeine because I’m up at 2:35am from having a couple pieces of chocolate and an iced coffee earlier in the afternoon.
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My first split-screen movie idea was to do a fake duet and I figured I’d try to shoot it while my wife and son were out of town. I was also going to take the opportunity to cut my hair. But then I thought … why not try to combine those projects?
So I tried to come up with an idea that could leverage off the fact that I would look dramatically different in the two versions. And this is what I came up with. A few things I learned on this one:
putting on make-up is hard!
acting with an imaginary version of yourself is really hard
it’s very nerve-wracking to have your two versions separated by a haircut because you can’t go back and reshoot the first one
A few months ago, I implemented the custom dice feature for my dice app, Mach Dice. It was intended for board game and role playing game enthusiasts to create custom dice for their games. But I thought there might be an audience for casual people to turn their photos into die without having to deal with the complexities of dice formulas, multiple boards, etc. And so the idea for Photo Dice was born.
You’d think it’d be an easy task to reduce a complicated app into something simpler, but quite a bit of thought went into deciding exactly what to leave out and how to make things more elegant.
If you’ve got an iOS device, check it out! It’s free on the iTunes store. (Note: there’s currently a bug with the In-App Purchase to remove ads but a fix has been submitted to Apple.)
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I have a bunch of ideas for short films. The problem is that it’s hard to find people willing to work on them. Also, it’s nearly impossible to find time to work on them what with a full time job, part time iPhone development hobby, and a kid. But then I got a hold of some editing software and had an idea, or three…
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.
