Writer Merlin Mann, of 43 Folders fame, gave an interesting talk at work the other day. It was all about priorities and he had two main points:

• priorities are observed, not manufactured
• priorities are a product of care and sacrifice

His first point is that something doesn’t become a priority just because you say it’s one. If something is a priority in your life, you’ll know it. How will you know? Because you both care about it and you make sacrifices for it.

Applying this to my own life, I can see how much of a priority Dyson has become since he was born. I make sacrifices for him (hanging out with friends, playing video games, iPhone development time, but mostly sleeeeeep) and I do it because I love him and I want to be there for him as he grows up.

So what are the priorities in your life? What do you care about and what do you sacrifice?

I recently hosted a friend of the family visiting from Japan and she sent me a lovely thank you email, including this segment:

お若くご親切でこの世の天使のようなトニーさんとトレイシーさんと赤ちゃん、どうか、いつの毎日も、楽しくおしあわせに。

Now, I can speak Japanese, but I’m not that great at reading it, so I gave it a whirl with Google Translate and it came out like this:

Tony and Tracy’s baby and, like the angel of death at younger you kindly, if, even when every day, and enjoy your happiness.

I think something was lost in translation.

Have you heard of the Bechdel Test? It started out as a tongue-in-cheek litmus test to see how many movies have:

1. at least two women
2. who talk to each other
3. about something other than a man

It shouldn’t be taken too seriously as a feminist credential because you can pass it very superficially or fail even with a very strong female lead. But it is telling that so many mainstream movies fail this low bar. I think it’s because the vast majority of movies are made by men. And men tend to write about other men and the worlds they know, with the occasional woman for dressing.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with people telling stories that they’re familiar with. People should tell stories that are meaningful to them. But don’t you ever long to see something different?

Well, if you’re like me and want to support something like that, then check out this short film project my friend Emma is going to make.

It’s an awesome short film Western (with real horses and everything!) that will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before but she needs your help to make it happen. Even a small contribution means a lot. But if you’re looking for an investment, for a $100, you’ll get a set of signed limited edition prints that are going to be worth a lot when Emma makes it big. Just sayin’…

Over the past several days, it seemed like there were always fewer and fewer Duplo blocks around. I figured that Dyson was hiding them somewhere, I just couldn’t figure out where.

This morning, I discovered where he was putting them. In the diaper pail.

It’s been about a week since I started the whole free app experiment. Following that, I got 3 paid downloads the next day, 1 paid download the next after that, and none since then. So that’s a total of 4 paid downloads resulting from 2,534 free downloads, or a conversion rate of 0.158%.

I make about $1.39 per paid copy of Boom Dice (that’s 70% of $1.99). So assuming that the ratio of paid to free stays the same, how many free apps would have to be downloaded in order to make a $3500 ad campaign worth it? Let’s do a little math to find out… (Welcome to the educational portion of this blog, brought to you by the letter “B” for Boom Dice.)

$3,500 / (4 units * $1.99 * 70%) * 2,534 units = 1,591,709 units

Holy Hecuba, I’d have to give away nearly 1.6 million copies of my app in order to break even on an ad campaign like that?! That seems exceedingly unlikely.

Of course, this is based on a conversion rate of 0.158%, which I think is pretty low. As proud as I am of Boom Dice and I have friends who tell me it’s fun (and my baby absolutely loves it), I know that it’s not as cool as, say, geoDefense Swarm, which my entire coding group got sidetracked playing on Thursday. I’m sure they have a much better conversion rate.

So I think the lesson here is that if you’ve got what you know could be a huge crowd-pleaser of a game, doing a Free App A Day type ad campaign may be worth it. But if you’re making smaller, more niche type apps like me, then stick with word of mouth. Or maybe a blog.

Five years ago, I met Steve Jobs. It was just after Premiere Magazine named him and John Lasseter the most powerful men in Hollywood. I spotted them after they addressed the company at an annual meeting, and on a lark, I asked them if I could get a picture with them. They both graciously agreed.

For someone that I only met once, Steve Jobs has had a pretty big impact on my life.

In 1986, he acquired then-unknown computer graphics company, Pixar, and personally bankrolled it for years. Why? Because he believed in the dreams of Pixar’s founders when no one else did, that it would someday be possible to use computers to bring a story to life. Without him, I’m not sure if the industry I work in, let alone the company I work for, would even exist today.

With his return to Apple, he brought forth the iMac — a line of computers so easy to use that my mom feels completely comfortable using one to email her friends and video chat with my baby.

And then in 2007, with the advent of the iPhone, I suddenly had a new hobby that brought me … well, if not fame and fortune, new friends and some extra spending money. It also gave me something to start blogging about. Sure, I blog more about baby stuff and short films now, but it all started with a little dice rolling app for the iPhone.

Heck, even in the past year, part of my day job was to help support a certain iPad project at work. What all of these things have in common is that they all happened because one man had the faith and vision to support the teams to bring them into the world.

So for all the good that you have bought to my life, thank you Steve Jobs.

I made Boom Dice free over the weekend and wow, people sure do like free apps. Here are the numbers:

1. Friday: 81 free downloads
2. Saturday: 1181 free downloads
3. Sunday: 1224 free downloads

That’s a total of 2485 free downloads in three days! Before that, 345 people had purchased Boom Dice since it came out over two years ago.

In a few days, let’s see what effect the free weekend has on sales.

I didn’t get 100 votes but it was pretty clear that Boom Dice was a favorite. So I’m making it free this weekend starting now! I posted this announcement in the Touch Arcade sub-forum related to price drops and what not:

As a little experiment, I’m making my game Boom Dice free this entire weekend. It’s an explosive little dice game of strategy and luck for up to 4 players.

Wait, did I just say FREE?! Oh my gosh, I think I just did. For a game that’s normally $1.99, that’s a savings of … 100%! At those prices, is there any reason not to download this game? No, no there is not. Get it now! (Or, wait until the weekend, when it’s free.)

If you enjoyed it, please help me out by putting in a nice review or by replying to this thread. And tell your friends. Thanks!

So if you’ve got an iPhone, download Boom Dice for free now. And help spread the word!

On Monday, I’ll report how many free copies went out over the weekend.

Recently, I was contacted by a couple Free App A Day type networks asking if I’d be interested in featuring one of my apps on their network. If you’re not familiar with them, they pick an app and an available day and I make that app free for that one day. Hopefully, the resulting publicity is enough to increase sales even after the app is no longer free.

So I said, “Heck yeah, I’m interested!” But then I found out that not only do you have to make your app free for the day, you also have to purchase one of their promotional packages which range from $699 to $3500 depending on the network. I don’t know about you, but that’s way more than I make on my apps in even a month so it seemed a bit much to gamble.

But then I was thinking, there’s nothing stopping me from just making one of my own apps free for a little while. So I posted a thread on Touch Arcade to generate some publicity. If it gets at least 100 replies, we’ll move on to phase 2 of this experiment!

At nearly a year an a half, my baby is starting to say words! Well, sort of, anyways… They’re not always the same as the words we use. So I’ve started making a list of translations:

• watn = water / juice/ milk / other liquid
• da! = dekita (Japanese for “I did it!”)
• waiowaio = owari (Japanese for “done”)
• dai-ee = kitty
• bo = Bubba the dog = dog
• upn = up
• opn = open
• bye bye = bye bye
• beshoo = bless you
• ear = ear
• bawh = ball
• bai = when handing something?
• mama = mother / father (yeah, we’re still working on this one)
• manomano = ???
• aiiii-tee = ???
• bado = ???
• mai = ???

As you can see, the list is somewhat of a work in progress.