An Android App In 8 Hours
Inspired by the duo that whipped up an iPhone application within a single weekend, I attempted an Android application within a day. Didn't succeed though - last count there are still 3 open bugs. But what I did manage to do was get a beta out for my friends at CodeAndroid Malaysia to test. A few hours after that, it was in SlideMe, with major bugs fixed.
The application is called - for the lack of a better name - KL Traffic Cam. It's part of a bigger project to provide an Android client for ITIS but due to time constraints, I came up with this. The application is free - as in beer and speech. Yes, you can get it at no cost at SlideMe and checkout its sources from Google Code.
KL Traffic Cam is a community effort by CodeAndroid Malaysia, developed and maintained by your truly. Read more at CodeAndroid Malaysia's blog.
Using Smartphones To Augment Your Brain
The hype nowadays is to use smartphones as social and communication devices. But believe or not, these small little devices function as handy note takers. Use them to store sensitive information such as bank account numbers, credit card information, EPF account numbers, insurance details, etc. Many software exist that stores data encrypted and password protected. Since you're bound to have your phone with you, this'll turn out to be real handy. They also work great as your electronic memo pad. Anything that needs writing down can be scribbled, written or captured on your phone (checkout Evernote). Notes are uploaded automatically to a server and accessible on a PC or another device. Pretty handy. And I'm not the only one that thinks so. Check out Palmdoc's latest post.
Conversation of an Engineer and a Manager
Management: How many feet do mice have?
Reply: Mice have four feet.
M: Elaborate!
R: Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet.
M: No discussion of fifth appendage!
R: Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail.
M: What? Feet with no legs?
R: Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse.
M: Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages?
R: Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body.
M: Does not fully discuss the issue!
R: Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail. Each leg is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail is not equipped with a foot.
M: Descriptive? Yes. Forceful NO!
R: Allotment of appendages for mice will be: Four foot-leg assemblies, one tail. Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets.
M: Too authoritarian; stifles creativity!
R: Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system. Also attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and ornamental in nature.
M: Too verbose/scientific. Answer the question!
R: Mice have four feet.
Bashing Bash
Despite being on Linux for quite many years now, I've always come to regard bash (and bash scripting) as somewhat of an arcane magic. No idea why though, just is. To me, it's even scarier than C++ (but that's given since there were 2 semesters of C++ back in school). True enough, a few months back, there was this tiny bit of thing I needed to do in bash and I sucked at it. Specifically, I was modifying (and fixing) someone else's script. Not fun. Got it to do what I needed it to do, but re-evaluating how certain things were done, I'll be happy if the script is forever buried.
Not any more. Thanks to a few articles over at IBM DeveloperWorks. No idea why I never came across these very useful articles before. The 3-part articles titled 'Bash By Example' (part 1, part 2, and part 3) helped tremendously in helping me understand basics of bash scripting. I'm pretty confident now that I'll be able to rely on bash to do many simple tasks that Java is overkill for.
Also some neat stuff on bash itself, see 'Bash Help'.
Makes one wonder if bash is so easy and useful, maybe the other scripting languages (ruby, python) is worth exploring seriously too. Hmm...