Back to the drawing board

I have a policy of not talking about Arbeit as much as possible because I don't want to have the censorship board come after me. Besides I have found out by very bad experiences on why and how it is a bad idea to be identified by your blog content. 

[source: ijustdid.org]

But anyway Arbeit sucked so much yesterday, that when I got into the car yesterday, I told B1 I was going to train as a McDonald's staff. (Ok, that was until this afternoon when the ladies reminded that I would have to clean the toilets. So I am back to aspiring to be a dungeon mistress). I started chanting lines like "Do you want fries with that?", "Good morning Mdm, welcome to McDonald's!" in a super cheery voice.

He said "Why don't you go and work at *censored* since your friend is already a manager there?"

"Good morning Mdm, do you want a latte with that?!" I shrieked.

Anyway it's pretty bad. I decided it is time to re-examine my storyboard for ideas to do coding on. Like I told Mr Bear before, he ought to code small games to understand better how to do android coding than go full bang and then hate what he did. So I decided to follow my advice. 

I am now listening morosely to free music that people post online to collaborate with developers. Maybe now I can develop the game I wanted to make. Or maybe add a new simple game to Burgerstacko.

Invalid command-line parameter

New error found when trying to run the application using the emulator:

invalid command-line parameter: [blah blah blah]
Hint: use '@foo' to launch a virtual device named 'foo'.
please use -help for more information

This is something totally new to me. Apparently Eclipse can suddenly become even dumber than usual and not recognise where your Android SDK home is, after you have been using it at that location for the last two years. My god, it is like your boyfriend telling you "sorry hunny, I went to fuck the neighbor by mistake, because I don't know where we live anymore."

Right there you moronic software. Anyway according to various online resources (1)(2), it's because the path is too long *bullshit*. Close Eclipse (because some resources in the SDK are still being used. Apparently your boyfriend still remembers enough to leave his car parked outside), Move the SDK home into something like D:\ (i.e. no funny folders in between), and then restart Eclipse and run the project.

Note: there is no need to delete or recreate your AVD devices. Ignore any lame advice that tells you that.

Anyway, Burgerstacko has been upgraded. It handles incoming phone calls <- removal of bug.

Skipping index file "...\ thumbs.db"

This got to be one of the lamest stupidest errors on earth. I am not sure whether I should even write the solution here since I think everyone will know how to fix it. But I have a policy on reporting all stupid Android errors and their solutions

If you encounter this error "Skipping index file ....\thumbs.db", it means you must have opened your drawable folder in Windows. In Eclipse, go to res\drawable, delete thumbs.db and recompile. QED.

Android Functional Testing

I just created a generic Android Functional Testing list, taking references from Vodafone's QA list and mobileappstesting and my own testing. I will probably supplement it with additional tests as I do more tests. I am thinking of asking the South Koreans if they have a default functional testing checklist.

Hmmm. Anyway no matter if you are an android developer or user, please login and fill out the form for user experience? Thanks! The generic testing and the Additional testing worksheets have been frozen. If you want to contribute to those, please comment here instead and I will update the form directly. Thanks!

Calling all starving developers

If you are free this weekend (Friday evening to Sunday night) and still hungry, take part in Codesprint by Interviewstreet (a programmer database startup)

Participants will receive a set of engineering challenging and basic coding questions on Friday night and the participating tech companies, such as Skype, Apple, Zynga, etc, will recruit from the leaderboards. Remember fastest, most efficient code wins.

It is starting in 20hours time. Good luck!!!

Sample Question (from Interviewstreet):
Card Shuffling (30 Points)
Here is an algorithm for shuffling N cards:

1) The cards are divided into K equal piles.
2) The bottom N / K cards belong to pile 1 in the same order (so the bottom card of the initial pile is the bottom card of pile 1).
3) The next N / K cards from the bottom belong to pile 2, and so on.
4) Now the top card of the shuffled pile is the top card of pile 1. The next card is the top card of pile 2,..., the Kth card of the shuffled pile is the top card of pile K. Then (K + 1)th card is the card which is now at the top of pile 1, the (K + 2)nd is the card which is now at the top of pile 2 and so on.
For example, if N = 6 and K = 3, the order of a deck of cards "ABCDEF" (top to bottom) when shuffled once would change to "ECAFDB".

Given N and K, what is the least number of shuffles needed after which the pile is restored to its original order?

Input:
The first line contains the number of test cases T. The next T lines contain two integers each N and K.

Output:
Output T lines, one for each test case containing the minimum number of shuffles needed. If the deck never comes back to its original order, output -1.

Constraints:
K will be a factor of N.
T <= 10000
2 <= K <= N <= 10^9

Sample Input:
3
6 3
4 2
5 5

Sample Output:
6
4
2

Lazy Coders are doomed to be punished

I don't consider myself to be a coder. Can't be, when I spend my nights in front of the pc playing COH instead of doing constructive work. Haven't started on anything other than upgrading the latest SDK. Yawn. Doesn't help that I am still mad at Google.

Now I am supposed to change something for Ubinuri and I am mentally face2palming myself because I realize I changed all the words in the game back to English already. Stupid. Should have dumped everything into the xmls instead. Idiot!!!!

Better stop being a lazy ass and finish the stuff already. The best part of working with the South Korean team is that they test my shitty app for me. For free. And they post the video so that you can see what they mean. I don't even have a working phone anymore, let alone testing the app with other functionality (e.g. phone calls) so all this testing is definitely invaluable. Absolutely priceless.

And if I finally get off my ass to do the other coding, I will definitely push the game to them for testing. *wicked grin*

Joining the dark side (Part III) - from Google's Android to Apple's iOS development?

B1 wants to give me a iMac for my birthday, as a sort of weird ass encouragement to stop developing Android apps and move to developing for iPhone and iPad.

"Don't bother," he said, "Android market is full of malware, especially those free apps (I hope he is not referring to BurgerStacko, even though it is now labelled as a junky app. Hey at only ~160KB, don't expect miracles!). Those evil China developers steal apps off the market and trojanize them."

I have to agree on that point. Some months ago, I wrote a super scathing email response to this Chinese website which had the bloody cheek to tell me that they had taken my app off the market and stored it somewhere on their site and do I want to register a developer account with them?!

WTF. Seriously.

"I don't know Objective-C." I replied as I continued to play his "Hanging with Friends". That game is seriously addictive. Now and again, I kick myself for not thinking of this game first.

"Maybe if you build the games with me, then I might consider changing platforms."

"No. I know your pattern. You will say you have an idea, and then make me do all the coding."

This man must be seriously traumatized from all the coding work I chucked at him during our uni days. Don't know what is his problem, I have always been Project Manager material *I vomit a little in my mouth*.

"Fine. Then you buy yourself the iMac and build an iOS version of BurgerStacko (it's only logical, since the images and code are already available). Then I will join iOS development."

Wait a second. Did I just agree to him buying an Apple product again? Damn. Anyway I don't like Google very much anymore (not since the Google Ad nonsense) but I have detested Apple because of the pretentious, "holier-than-thou" impression their users imagine that they project.

Updated!!!
I wish the stupid Android SDK is a human so I can slap it sometimes. Why is it so difficult to update? And then on top of that, the stupid Eclipse says I never set the stupid SDK. Wtf seriously. You think I so keh kiang go and move the damn thing around meh? Maybe I should get that stupid Android icon as a stuffed toy for my birthday, so I can stomp my fat foot on it whenever I have problems with the SDK.

The importance of a Changes.txt

Damn, it's been such a long time since I last coded that I have to search around the desktop for the Eclipse folder. It does not help that my desktop is cluttered.

Since I was very annoyed by people leaving bitchy comments instead of constructive comments on the game, I have stopped maintaining the app, not even after I patched the game for the South Korean release. However since it's been one whole year, and it's time to restart the engine. I do have some stupid stuff that I was building. Now a quick glance told me that I had 8 projects other than Burgerstacko! Winz.Should bring them to market.

Probably the driving factor is that I don't intend to charge $ for the games I build. Since I am from the school of thought "Why pay more, or even, pay at all?", I can't really expect others to pay me. And all my nonsense with Nuffnang and Google Ads, it's even funnier to expect ad money from a free app. But I am still toying with the idea.

Anyway, I must highlight the importance of changes.txt. Even though I constantly curse out Company of Heroes for changing stuff on me (like dropping my rank), changes.txt is very important because they tell me where did I last left off?

Hmm, last change was Jan 2011. Not that bad, but that was the South Korean version. Oops

When Choosing Programming Language for Projects

This afternoon an ex-colleague called me in desperation. He was due to submit a project and he needed help desperately to do the programming work. I was like huh, when he told me what programming language his team chose. PHP?

Face2palm man.

101 when doing IT programming projects. 

(1) Always choose good teammates, those who actually can do the work quickly, not the kind who talks a good game and leeches you. You can observe from the way they do their project work. Of course if you are a bloody leech, no excellent programmer is going to touch you with a ten-feet barge pole. It works both ways, unless you are a babe and/or the guy's a geek and/or you have something/someone that the guy wants. 

(2)  For chris' sakes, choose a language that the whole team knows. If the team is a group of leeches, then for God's sakes, choose a language that all your friends know. In this case, I was like, why the hell didn't you choose Java. Everyone in *censored* knows Java and Javascript. Even I can muster up a thing or two if you give me enough time. PHP? I last had a dalliance with that project when I did my FYP. It's a easy language to learn, but 1.5 month to finish building a project at the scale he wants? No way... not unless I am not working.

(3) Of course, you must choose a language that has the most frameworks, online help sources, and free IDEs, e.g. Java, PHP. Personally I will never choose C# or anything related to the Microsoft Visual Studio, but that's because I am a tight pussy when it comes to programming language. That's also why you will never see me doing iPhone programming. NIEMAL.

Excel(lent) Programming Haha

Last Updated on 21 Oct 2010

Excel Color Palettes


How do you get a macro to run automatically?

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
Run "[type here object name].[type here procedure name]"
End Sub

Escape Sequences

[source: cerritos.edu]

There was Popfly, there will be Google App Inventor, but there is Scratch

By the fun folks at MIT. Yes, MIT as in Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Scratch lets you share music, games, animation and interactive stories. Just register and try!!! I tried one of the games, seems to be running on Java Applet.

Oooh, something other than Eclipse =D

Hi ya folks who are trying to code Android apps, good news, no longer do we have to suffer the whims of Eclipse. There are five other cross-platform mobile development tools that you can use. Note you can use them for developing iPhone and other mobile OSes. But I don't really care about those. Haha.

I am also super excited by Mashable.com, which has a lot of top 10 free stuff, especially the wireframe tools. That will definitely benefit me in creating my wireframes for TopCoder, though I never win *sobs*.

Btw I have been playing CoH alot. ALOT. So have stopped coding completely and opened myself to the joys of typing German and English curse words at my teammates. Ich liebe dich, Company of Heroes. I guess that is the reason why I like the game so much, because I can use what little German words I know.

It has finally happened - Oracle sues on Java

I knew it was coming. At first I thought it was going to be MySQL, but turns out Oracle is suing Google for leveraging on Java for Android. Why didn't Google buy Sun when they had the chance? Didn't see Oracle coming from the left field?

Which may make my other prediction accurate, we are all going to have to learn Go. Hahaha, think Google will switch over to Go instead for Android. Heavens help me, I cannot even understand Wave code and I hate C++ (and C to lesser extent). Who invented C++ anyway!?

According to Go's blog, Google hasn't actively looked into moving Android into Go.

From
An angry Android developer-wannabe

Syntax Error on token *something*. Identifier expected after this token

Hey fellow Noobs,

If you encounter this error when coding, this means... that entire line of code is not in any method. Move it into one and your problem is resolved.

Also,

if you are used to doing your stuff in MSSQL and MySQL like me, don't forget to Commit; when you are using Oracle. Otherwise it will only be stored in local cache, and nothing gets ahem commited to the database tables.

Burger Stacko in Beta Testing as of Today!

Hi Everyone, I am so pleased to announce that I have finally summoned the remainder of my brain cells and completed the coding for Burger Stacko (you know the original long sad story of how I lost my hard disk, and backed up the wrong Eclipse workspace, thus losing my entire working copy)?

As of today, Burger Stacko is in Beta Testing mode!!! So far it has been 3 hours, and my team of hardworking friends armed with their Android phones are still helping me break my game. Too bad about the shit graphics, but it cannot be helped. These images, drawn in Microsoft Paint (and a mouse) are from my initial Flash game built in 2005.

I am thinking of setting up a team of app breakers. I have a G1 Developer (upgraded to OS 1.6), and my friends have Samsung Galaxy (1.5) and Milestone (2.1) respectively. Would love to find a Droid X owner using Froyo if possible. Interested parties, please contact nibblezware @ gmail.com. Thanks!



On another note, according to my friend, Google has come up with a Interface Builder, which helps speed up Android App building. Checking on Google Labs has revealed that it is called App Inventor. It is not for general release yet, but you can ask for an invite. Speaking of which, I still haven't gotten my Google TV invite... Sigh. What is App Inventor you may ask? Think Micro$oft Popfly, but significantly higher survival rate because it is owned by Google.

Excellent Android Tutorial Sites

Last Updated on 27 Feb 2013
For Beginners:
How to set up Eclipse and Android (written by yours truly a very long time ago)
Google's App Inventor (you may need a phone for this, unless they changed the situation since I last logged in)
Errors when developing Android (weird stuff and other Android epic failures that I encounter, growing list)
Gingerbread Tutorial 

Media Player tutorial and others
Assist Screen Layout with DroidDraw Actually I prefer its xml widget guide
Learning the different Android Layouts
Android Common Tasks
Why Android
Android Colors (from Google). E.g. android:textColor="@android:color/black"
and of course The Developer Guide SDK reference at Google. Duh.
How to access your SQLite dB from command prompt

General Tutorials:
MobileTuts - tutorials for mobile development, not limited to Android
Robert Green - Dude behind Battery Powered Games LLC. He has a help forum.
Tutorial for Android- A blogger Almond Mendoza helping fellow Android coders 
Getting started in smartphone development (mostly books, can ignore)
The New Boston (including education?)

Tiny Tutorials:
Passing values between activities
Read and write to XML file
Write to XML file in SD card
How to do the iPhone flip
Horizontal progress bar

APIs:
Facebook SDK for Android (latest update)
Scoreninja
Peerdroid

Books:
Learn Android
Pro Android book

Examples for reference:
Timer Example
Multi-touch example
Project 2030

Publishing your app:
How to prepare your android app for publication
Adding EULA to Android app

Other useful sites:
Free sounds for applications
http://opengameart.org/

Physics 2D
- Tutorial for Box2D (useable for Android) Download Box2D.
- APE (not usable for Android, unless you grab the java version - for my own reference)
Flash tutorials 

Blogs & Forums:
Android Coding from Berlin
Cactus Apps
Show me the code!
RIAgora
Java Code Trips & Tips (excellent bug removal tips)
Reddit 

Projects:
http://replicaisland.blogspot.com/

Oracle PL/SQL queries 3 - How to see invalid view or other objects in the database

To find invalid view, table, java class, procedure, etc in a table, use 'select * from all_objects where object_type = 'invalid';

Oracle PL/SQL queries 2 - How to see list of tables in your database?

Since some programming languages' command for desc is !== database command for desc, you cannot use 'desc <table>' to see a database table's columns when coding.

Instead you should use, select * from user_tables;

If you need the column/size of a specific table:

select * from user_tab_columns where table_name = <table name>

Oracle PL/SQL queries 1 - How to see the indexes created in your Database

Assuming that you are given the user role - 'whatever' and your database is called 'arschloch', if you want to see what indexes are created on which tables in the 'arschloch' database, use:

USER_IND_COLUMNS - COLUMNs comprising user's INDEXes and INDEXes on user's TABLES (user being 'whatever' in this context):
INDEX_NAME
Index name
TABLE_NAME
Table or cluster name
COLUMN_NAME
Column name or attribute of object column
COLUMN_POSITION
Position of column or attribute within index
COLUMN_LENGTH
Maximum length of the column or attribute,in bytes
CHAR_LENGTH
Maximum length of the column or attribute,in characters
DESCEND
DESC if this column is sorted descending on disk,otherwise ASC

i.e. select index_name, table_name, column_name from user_ind_column where rownum <5;