May 2012
1 post
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?
February 2012
1 post
January 2012
6 posts
3 tags
5 tags
2 tags
2012. Go.
Our extremely humble kagami mochi display for New Year’s Day 2012.
Let’s get this New Year rollin and kick some ass!
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
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.
2 tags
[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...
June 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Father's Day 2011
May 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Shipped and Available
IMVU’s first mobile game, now available on iOS.
1 tag
Shipped...
…an iOS App. Details will follow as soon as we’re approved.
March 2011
2 posts
4 tags
WatchWhile learning iPhone game development, I wrote a test game inspired by our own Stella-The-Dog, and I can’t stop cracking-up!
Also: I would love to learn about your recommendations for OSX screen recording software.
3 tags
February 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Outside SuperHappyDevHouse 42 at The Tech Museum. This is Market Street in San Jose looking Southeast.
There are a few snapshots of what happened inside The Tech that night via my Flickr set.
Twenty-second exposure with a Nikon D90 at ƒ/11, ISO 200, 11mm (17mm equivalent). <3 The starburst from the street lamp near the base of the hotel.
Something Different
And something new. In the upper left corner: My new desk.
1 tag
Scrumy Live Stats
This is for anyone who uses Scrumy and Google Chrome.
I managed to carve out a chunk of weekend hack time to learn about Google Chrome Extensions. I ended up writing Scrumy Live Stats.
At work, this should help with our future planning meetings, where we often want a rundown of the hours we’ve charted for an upcoming sprint, and we often have at least a hundred tasks up on the board....
1 tag
The Reflux
I make up my own lyrics for almost every song that I listen to. Thus, I cannot talk about music with friends, because my lyrics are not the lyrics they know and love. Sometimes these alternate lyrics are awesome, but I don’t write them down. Eventually, I allow another song to reciprocally pollute my brain.
A friend from my long-ago school days was complaining about her “acid...
January 2011
9 posts
Rinse, Rather, Repeat.
Two Hunks in a Truck
December 2010
9 posts
1 tag
3 tags
Oxymoron In A Carton
I opened the fridge tonight and found something embarrassing. Light egg nog is oxymoron-in-a-box. Having 73% less fat and 33% fewer calories means 100% less soul. I’m going to need to fix this tomorrow. I don’t even know why this is still in the house. I love my wife.
Automotive Heating ProTip
It’s a good idea to avoid re-routing your exhaust into your automotive heating system, no matter how cozy and warm it feels.
Today's Nap Head Was Brought To You By...
Today’s nap head was brought to you by Kim Jong-Il and Christopher Walken. Thank you for viewing.
1 tag
A Little Recognition Just Made My Day
Thanks, Pictory. Your post was happy-making.
Today’s tweet and blog post from Pictory refers to a photo of mine they featured last year. As a fumbling amateur photographer, I’m reminded of how much I appreciated seeing my work among that of more talented photographers. My ego appreciates even the tiniest of nods, and the nod was neither too tiny nor too large. Huzzah!
Also: If...
2 tags
pbcopy: Copying and Pasting from the Command Line
One of those things I will not use very often, but will come in very handy if I ever remember it. Noting it here to help me along: pbcopy accepts standard input and puts it onto your OSX clipboard. For example,
cat /somewhere/on/your/volume/textfile | pbcopy
Will pretty much put all the text in textfile onto the clipboard. There’s a corresponding pbpaste that will write the...
The Walking Part of My Commute
This is a test post.
Palo Alto, California.
To my coworkers — and anyone that works in downtown Palo Alto — Bryant Street between Lincoln to the south and Homer to the north looks extra purdy with the various types of maple trees changing colors.
April 2010
1 post
2 tags
Nacho Fries
Iguanas, Fremont, California
Known as “Carne Asada Fries” in SoCal. This is showing up in more and more places around NorCal.
March 2010
1 post
2 tags
Maiwand Market
Fremont, California has claim to the largest Afghan American population in the USA. On the corner of Fremont Boulevard and Bonde Way sits a nondescript building filled with delicious foods from the home country. Inside is a Halal butcher, who prepares the freshest lamb in the region.
Located in an otherwise “boring” Bay Area suburb, this market is renowned by the local Afghan...
February 2010
1 post
2 tags
Blog Posts and Measuring Customer Abandonment?
My quick blog entry about uninstalling Evernote on the Mac has been seeing a small spike of hits in the last few days. It has been making me think about ways to measure customer abandonment.
December 2009
1 post
1 tag
My Best Photo of 2009
Lake Sabrina, just west of Bishop, California. It was a late afternoon in early October, and the next round of the season’s first snowfall had started to arrive. Inside the Chevy, there’s a couple enjoying the lake, the fall colors, and hot coffee from a Thermos.
November 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Uninstalling Evernote (Mac)
I’m documenting my uninstall steps for Evernote build 62233 on OS X Snow Leopard.
I tried Evernote for a week. Despite the decent user experience, the system didn’t catch on, so I wanted to remove it. Turns out that it doesn’t have an uninstaller, not even a command-line uninstall script. Neither the support website nor the online documentation has any information about...
1 tag
Quickie Grand Marnier French Toast
This isn’t the fancy-schmancy version with heavy cream, tons of eggs, and soaked for hours and baked in the oven. This is quick morning routine version, or the post-party 3AM version… and takes only 20 minutes to prepare, and still seems pretty darn fancy.
About six day-old 3/4” slices of pugliese style bread
1 cup whole milk
two large eggs
1/4 cup Grand Marnier
1/2...
September 2009
1 post
1 tag
Robert Otani, not "Roberto Tani"
Back around 2002, I lost the domain name robertotani.com. It was about to expire, but in the back of my mind, I guessed that the odds of losing this domain name to another “Robert Otani” was pretty low, and ended up not paying attention to it.
It turned out that a feng shui consultant in San Francisco, named “Roberto Tani” procured the domain. (Back then grace periods were...
March 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Maybe I'm Officially Pro
I’ve been acquiring more and more DSLR photography equipment over the past year or so, and apparently getting some decent shots these days. This provides me, a new dad, the ability to take thousands and thousands of photos of my super-awesome baby girl!
I often bring my camera to work, in the event there may be something cool to photograph, thus guaranteeing that I won’t have...
1 tag
San Jose Japantown
Japantown in San Jose has been right under my nose for almost a decade. If memory serves me right, over those years, I made two half-hearted attempts to find it without a map, and missed it by three blocks on both occasions. Japantown appears to have fewer shops today than it did twenty or thirty years ago, but also has a vital core that is poised for growth. We enjoyed ramen at Kumako, which...