Spoiler alert. You may want to skip this blog post if you’re, like, 12.

So, Santa Claus doesn’t exist. (“Wait, whuah?” Dude, I told you “Spoiler alert.”) I’ve always known this because I grew up in an apartment in LA and we didn’t have a chimney. Come to think of it, I don’t think any of the other neighborhood kids believed in Santa either.

But now I’ve got a kid of my own and I’m trying to decide whether or not to do the whole Santa thing with him. On the one hand, it’s generally good policy not to lie to your kids. On the other hand, I don’t want him growing up like me.

See, my dad was a pretty literal guy and my mom is from Japan, where they don’t really have things like sarcasm. So I grew up kinda not getting certain social cues. For example, I was super gullible. Also, I had a hard time understanding humor, although I was obsessed with it. I’d spend hours pouring over the Sunday comics trying to figure out what was funny. (Mary Worth was particularly challenging.)

So I’m wondering if maybe lying to Dyson about Santa Claus and then having him figure it out on his own is just part of the growing up process. But if I’m going down that path, I think I’ll just go all the way and tell him that we’re descended from Elves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVaQvr10g5o

The trials and tribulations of trying to practice playing the flute when you have a baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5fq8SY-tVE

Check it out, we were on national TV in Japan! If you missed my earlier blog post, NHK came to our house to film a bit for a segment on Japanese baths in America and this is the segment that aired. They used a still image of us at the beginning and a short clip of us around 3:42.

Last night, my wife and I were out on the town and waiting for a couple friends for dinner. A man named James approached us and started to tell us his story. It was a long one involving several years in the armed forces and several years in jail. He also said he spoke three languages and was spoke about his modest plan to get an ID so that he could get money recycling cans. And at the end he asked for money.

Now, I used to have a policy of not giving cash. But I’ve started to rethink that. I mean, I have no idea how much of this guy’s story was true. But there was a chance and regardless, I do know that the money meant a lot more to him than it did to me so I gave it to him.

A couple weeks ago, some people from NHK came and interviewed us for a segment on their morning show, Ohayo Nippon. Well, it looks like it’s going to air in Japan on Monday, December 5 sometime between 6am to 8am.

If you happen to be in Japan, check it out! Otherwise, I hope it’ll eventually be on the internet in some form or another…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB84MAB86P4

I’m thankful that Dyson is starting to talk. Mostly, he just repeats whatever we say. So of course, I had to take the opportunity to ask him what is best in life.

(If you don’t recognize the quote, it’s from Conan the Barbarian.)

I’ve been spending the last year or so working on a new feature for one of my apps.

That’s not as impressive as it sounds since I only a few minutes here and there to work on iPhone stuff but it’s one that I’m pretty excited about.

Can you guess which app and what the new feature is? (There’s a big hint in the upper left hand corner of the screenshot.)

A couple years ago, I blogged about our ofuro (Japanese bath). It turned out to be one of my more popular posts so when Miki Ebara, a reporter from NHK, started researching into Japanese baths in America, she found my blog post.

One thing led to another and she decided to make a trip out to our home with a small film crew to shoot a short bit at our house. (I suspect Dyson’s cuteness was a factor.)

I don’t know exactly when the segment is going to air (maybe December?), but it looks like we’re going to be on Japanese national TV taking a bath. And yes, Dyson and I are naked in it.

This week, I got to finish up the figure drawing that I started last week. I worked on trying to get the hands and feet right in addition to adding some more detail here and there.

I’m still a bit rusty, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. It helps a lot that the model, Linda, was great. It also helped out to be in a room full of artists who are much more talented than I am, although that can also be a little intimidating.

Last week, one of my customers reported that Holograms was crashing on their iOS 5 device. I couldn’t reproduce the problem, but I did find out that iOS 5 has some issues with parentViewController being replaced with presentingViewController. So I patched that up and issued a minor update, which also improves some memory issues.

So, if you were having memory issues with Holograms, try updating to the latest version.

On a developer note, issuing an update didn’t get me any more sales but I did find out that over a thousand people still have copies of Holograms on their devices, so that was pretty cool.