Today Daniel posted an open letter about Black Pixel²:

We’ve developed almost twenty applications in the last nine months, including those we developed for our contract customers. We’ve spent much of our time working on iPhone, but at the same time, our work with iPhone and Apple has changed us, too. The expectations and demands we make upon ourselves as designers have increased dramatically.

Great design and interaction are a huge part of the user experience for iPhone applications, and the more we experienced and learned what is possible, the more we desired to refine our work and take full advantage of what the platform has to offer. Creating our first iPhone apps was a very fulfilling experience, but like an artist looking back at early sketches, we soon began to spot the flaws and see the shortcomings of our initial efforts.

We’ve made some great applications, but for a variety of reasons, our own applications have largely kept the same user interfaces that we introduced them with when the app store opened, and we feel that we can do better. The cognitive dissonance resulting from this situation started to become intolerable late last year.

By the time we went to Macworld we had already decided that we were going to focus on raising the level of polish and focus on our applications as much as possible. The addition of Chris Clark to our team raised the bar for us even higher.

Black Pixel means good design. To us, that means quality, innovation, beauty, and fun. We are pushing ourselves hard to develop applications that adhere to these principles. Effective immediately, we have decided to pull all of our applications from iPhone App Store until they are up to our own standards.

Daniel Pasco, CEO
Black Pixel Luminance
March 18, 2009

I’m excited to see what BPL comes out with. Daniel has always been concerned about the company and the employees. The addition of Chris Clark is huge. I’m looking forward to all the guys up there driving to better things and beautiful software.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is the right thing to do. In this case it’s hard to pull already released apps from being sold. That’s income and a public face for the company. I know that with a little bit of time the BPL team will come back stronger and better and more satisfied with their work than ever before.

Good luck guys. I’ll be here waiting to see what happens.

1. I mean, the dude has his work on another planet. So full of awesome.
2. The letter is quoted here in its entirety for posterity’s sake

1. BTW, Rob is an insanely smart fellow. I’m glad I got to work with him if only for a little while.

One other thing that I love about Fish.¹ is that the menu has all prices with tax-included so if something is marked as five dollars you throw a fiver down and you’re done. All places should goto that, stupid $0.99 endings on prices. I hate you.

1. Yes, it is spelled with a period on the end

After Jeff got his idea of of creating an animation (he’s an animator by the
way) to propose to his girlfriend he contact the folks at the href="http://tlc.discovery.com/">TLC show href="http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/perfectproposal/perfectproposal.html">
Perfect Proposal. Not only were the producers of the show really
interested in Jeff’s idea, but they helped him out with the planning and
duping.

Now, Jeff couldn’t work on his animation during work hours so for a while he
was doing a lot of the work in the off hours and staying until midnight or
not going home for many nights. He was very lucky that he had many animator
friends help him and animate for him because the final product came out
perfect.

Along the way I took care of Jeff and Natasha’s cat Tigger while they
were gone for the holidays in December. When I got to the apartment to see
where Tigger’s food and stuff was Natasha asked me a lot of questions about
why Jeff was working so late and I didn’t have to. Luckily I’m in a different
department from Jeff so it’s very possible that I would have to work only
the normal business hours and Jeff would put in some overtime. Thankfully I
was able to bluff (well, actually lie to) Natasha and tell her that Jeff was
working on a short that we have in-house. Now, we do have a short in-house
and it’s been worked on for a while, but what I told Natasha was that because
we got a new board of directors they had decided that the short needed to get
finished A.S.A.P. She seemed to buy it because she told Jeff that and he
agreed so the story was in place.

While Jeff had pay work to do there were some times towards the end where
during the day we’d help him out with his project a bit. The funniest one
that I got to help him with was figuring out why in his new versions of his
opening shot wouldn’t render the floor. There was a wastepaper basket, papers,
and walls, but no floor. Eventually we got it to render and all was well.

So, back to the story. The Perfect Proposal crew came into town on Thursday
and got everything set up for shooting for the next couple of days. On Friday
they shot some interview and b-roll at the Wild Brain offices and on Saturday
they shot more with Jeff at the
Parkway Theater. I was apparently Jeff’s alibi that morning so, again,
I was helping to deceive Natasha. The night before Jeff and Mike at work had
made a DVD to use at the screening. Unfortunately the DVD played smoothly only
on computers. At first I was going to somehow get the data from Jeff and burn
a DVD for him, but then I got a message that Mike was able to make a good DVD
but he had to leave it on Jeff’s desk at work. Being the swell guy that I am
I got in my car, drove through a massive pacific storm that was blowing through
the Bay Area (including suckingly slow traffic on the Bay Bridge both ways and
getting to see lightning either strike one of the towers or really near it).
I got the DVD to Jeff at the theater and they were able to make sure it worked
(by the way, when I dropped it off Jeff introduced me to the host of the show,
Nikki
Boyer. I tell you, I was a bit stunned because she’s so gorgeous).

That same Saturday Jeff and Natasha went to lunch in Rockridge and the TV crew
approached them in the guise as of a fake TLC show they were calling “Popcorn
Picks.” The premise was that they were going to get an audience together
and have them pick a romantic movie to watch and talk about. According to Jeff
they got Natasha to talk quite a bit about her favorite romantic movie and even
enact a scene from the movie. I don’t know all of those details but I’m
looking forward to seeing it.

The crew also told Jeff and Natasha that they were going to be drawing for
one couple to be a featured couple and that they would get “red carpet”
treatment including a limo ride to the theater with twelve of their friends.
Amazingly Jeff and Natasha won the limo ride so that she wouldn’t suspect a
thing when they got to the theater.

So, on Sunday all of the invited folks (family and friends) were to meet at
the Parkway Theater at 2pm. When I got there the crew was still shooting Jeff
and Nikki doing set-up stuff including putting a poster for the fake show up
outside (they had the marquee already set as “TLC Popcorn Picks”), rolling out
a red carpet, and putting up stantions. At least that’s what I could see from
the sidewalk. Eventually we were all let in and had to find seats. If
Natasha would recognize us then we had to sit on one side of the theater.
Unfortunately there were very few people that she wouldn’t recognize there
so some people had to be careful. The only saving grace was that the lights
were down and she had a camera in her face with a light on top of it.

Jeff and Natasha walked in, were led to the front where they sat on a couch
and then Nikki introduced it as “Popcorn Picks” and the movie was supposed to
start. Then, instead of the romantic movie Natasha was expecting Jeff’s
animation started. In the first shot the camera pans over to a desk with a
caricature of Natasha in a picture frame and then cuts to the animated Jeff.
During that time Natasha was looking at the screen and then turning to look at
Jeff and then back at the screen.

When the animation was over Jeff stood up, got Natasha to stand up, and
proposed to her. Before Jeff got down on one knee and had the ring out Natasha
could be heard to say “What the heck is going on?” which got a good chuckle
out of the crowd. Jeff proposed and Natasha said yes and the entire audience
burst into cheers. At this point Natasha still didn’t know who was in the
audience and they turned the house lights up and she got to see it was her
family and friends. I don’t think I’ve seen quite that much shock on anyones
face in a long time. At that point the host came out and explained the show
and what had happened to Natasha. She was really happy and I think Jeff had
a permanent grin.

I’m glad everything went off without a hitch considering how many people knew.
That Natasha was surprised was even better. I’ll be sure to post a note
when I find out the air date of the show. At the theater they told us it would
be about six to eight weeks so we’ll see.

Saturday morning rolls around and I’m up early because I was going to take
some friends to the airport. Cort calls and tells me that (a) her mom’s flight
is delayed some six hours (yeah, booo) and (b) she has to be in Marin at noon
to pick up her mom’s dog, George, from the kennel. I didn’t mind going along
and hanging out all day so she came over and picked me up at eleven after I
had done the airport drop off. Little did we know what was in store for us
at the kennel.

Now, George is quite an energetic pup and he’s also a show dog, so he’s not
been snipped. It seems George was in the kennel for a refresher course
in behavior. He did really well and even thought the trainers explanations
seemed to go on for ever everything she said made a lot of sense. Why does
George jump up on people? Because you touch him and he wants that. Anyway,
George was a perfect dog on the way home and we let him out in the yard and
he went nuts with the running and the jumping and the leaping through the air
(there were even parts where he looked like he should have been in the Matrix).

Cort and I were a bit hungry so we left George at the house and went in search
of food. Now, it being Christmas everything was closed…except the Rite-Aid.
Not only was this Rite-Aid open, it was stocked to the hilt with alcohol.
Cort and I got some cookies, hot pockets, vodka, kalua, and half-and-half.
Back at the house we made white russians and ate snacks since her mom wouldn’t
be getting home until at least eight that evening. A good time was had and
both of us got a bit drunk much to our amusement.

So, we’re at the house and we’ve pulled the roast out of the freezer that’s
supposed to be for dinner. As anyone that cooks can tell you, a roast will be
barely defrosted in time for dinner if you just pulled it out. Cort and I did
our best in trying to defrost it, but only the outside got that way.
Fortunately Michael had brought a ham back with him from his trip. With
Cort’s mom delayed and dinner not on it’s way we started to prepare some food.
I don’t know why, but I took over what was going on with some suggestions from
Cort’s mom over the phone (like where stuff was).

So, I put the ham in the oven to heat, started some red potatoes to boil, put
some pre-made butternut squash soup on to heat, and then stewed some carrots
in a pan with beef broth and worcestershire sauce. The soup seemed kind of
thin so I left that on to reduce and it came out much better. The carrots and
potatoes cooked for a while and once the carrots were tender and had soaked in
some of the flavors they were done. The ham was hot and ready to bake rolls
only took about 10 minutes once we knew we were ready to eat.

I’m really surprised that I was able to pull enough stuff together to have
a decent Christmas dinner for us. It appeared everyone liked it and nothing
tasted bad (not that it was too complex at all). The title comes from Cort
telling me later that this was going to be a memorable Christmas dinner like
the “year grandmas set the table on fire” this would be the “year dan saved
christmas dinner.” I’m honored I guess. It was a lot of fun and I’d do it
again soon for sure, although I passed on an invitation to go over again today
because I just wanted to chill around the house and goto bed early since I
have to work in the morning (boo hoo me).

src="/SenorTaco/images/cb-athena-wedding.jpg" alt="the happy couple" />

Photo by Dan Weeks

The ceremony was great and Athena looked absolutely stunning. I got to see a
lot of friends and had a great time partying it up. I’ll post more pictures
and a summary later once I’m back in the Bay Area.