DOM Invaders!

Back in March 2012, I spent my train ride from San Jose to San Francisco writing a Space Invaders clone. Here are the results:

http://otanistudio.github.com/dominvaders/

The details on the how and why are here:

https://github.com/otanistudio/dominvaders/

Should I do more of these?

“Play is the work of children. It’s very serious stuff.” — Captain Kangaroo View high resolution

“Play is the work of children. It’s very serious stuff.” — Captain Kangaroo

A Marvelous Bed Head (Taken with instagram) View high resolution

A Marvelous Bed Head (Taken with instagram)

on Flickr. View high resolution

on Flickr.

Taken with instagram View high resolution

Taken with instagram

3M Command Strips and “Functional Yoga?” I’m trying out 3M Command Strips, the kind for picture frames that contain a “Velcro” style middle-layer to join each half of the strips. The hook-style ones worked out well for hanging Christmas stockings over the holidays, so I’m giving these a try on the kids’ fifteen-pound (6.8 kg) magnet board with the goal of avoiding drills and screws. Secured at six points around the board’s frame to a semi-gloss coated half-wall that we have in our family room, they appear to be strong enough to withstand one of the greatest forces of nature: Toddlers. Uh, so in order to set the adhesive, I laid down and used my feet. I got bored, and took this photo. I may fall into a meditative trance (code word for “falling asleep.”), which may commence a whole new practice of yoga: Functional Yoga? View high resolution

3M Command Strips and “Functional Yoga?”

I’m trying out 3M Command Strips, the kind for picture frames that contain a “Velcro” style middle-layer to join each half of the strips. The hook-style ones worked out well for hanging Christmas stockings over the holidays, so I’m giving these a try on the kids’ fifteen-pound (6.8 kg) magnet board with the goal of avoiding drills and screws. Secured at six points around the board’s frame to a semi-gloss coated half-wall that we have in our family room, they appear to be strong enough to withstand one of the greatest forces of nature: Toddlers.

Uh, so in order to set the adhesive, I laid down and used my feet. I got bored, and took this photo. I may fall into a meditative trance (code word for “falling asleep.”), which may commence a whole new practice of yoga: Functional Yoga?

Zenzai on Flickr. A sweet red bean (azuki) and rice cake (mochi) “soup,” eaten as a… dessert. The red beans are simmered in a simple syrup for hours. We rice cakes are toasted over a hot charcoal grill until they “puff” and turn golden brown. Of course I cheated by using canned azuki beans thinned-out with a bit of hot water, and the oven’s broiler to toast the mochi on a cookie sheet with parchment paper. My Cajun-Welsh-Scottish-American wife still finds sweetened red beans (very) weird, whereas I find it to be a comfort food and have it at least once every new year. Fundamentally, it seems there are many cultures that have variants on a “red beans and rice” recipe as a dish symbolizing good fortune. Read more Ushiwakamaru’s Zenzai Sekihan, Savory Japanese Red Beans and Rice Classic Southern American Red Beans and Rice View high resolution

Zenzai on Flickr.

A sweet red bean (azuki) and rice cake (mochi) “soup,” eaten as a… dessert. The red beans are simmered in a simple syrup for hours. We rice cakes are toasted over a hot charcoal grill until they “puff” and turn golden brown.

Of course I cheated by using canned azuki beans thinned-out with a bit of hot water, and the oven’s broiler to toast the mochi on a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

My Cajun-Welsh-Scottish-American wife still finds sweetened red beans (very) weird, whereas I find it to be a comfort food and have it at least once every new year. Fundamentally, it seems there are many cultures that have variants on a “red beans and rice” recipe as a dish symbolizing good fortune.

Read more

2012. Go.

2012

Our extremely humble kagami mochi display for New Year’s Day 2012.

Let’s get this New Year rollin and kick some ass!

Where’s My Library Folder in OSX Lion?

In Terminal:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

That’s it. I wonder when that option will simply be added to Finder preferences or somesuch.

[Post-Lion Install] CS4ServiceManager: Eff-Off

After installing OSX Lion on my MacBook Pro, I was annoyed by a dialog upon startup that stated:

To open “CS4ServiceManager,” you need a Java runtime. Would you like to install one now?

(My answer: “No.”)

This is a Photoshop CS4 nag utility that I didn’t want to have running on my machine all the time. I also did not want to install a Java Runtime just to run this stupid thing. How did I get rid of it?

Photoshop’s support site was barely supportive: A knowledge-base article informs us that we can create a custom plist file to disable CS4ServiceManager.

Ugh. Instead of doing that, l used launchctl:

launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.CS4ServiceManager.plist

Haven’t seen it since.

Now, I won’t receive auto-update notices, but there are some apps that I prefer to manage on my own time. (If forced to choose, I would prefer that my app check for updates during launch.)

(P.S.: With launchctl, I can also disable a bunch of other auto-updater agents, like Google’s App Engine updater by applying unload -w to com.google.keystone.agent.plist)