First published app

So this was a huge week for me. I paid for my developers account on Thursday evening and Friday night I uploaded an apk to a rock paper scissors game I made. Within two hours it was on the play store Andi was texting my friends to download it. It has been so amazing to tell people about it, watch them search for it and see my name on the product and to see them download it play it and have fun.

I'm so excited, I can't wait to get more apps on the market!

Android Club is the BOSS

Android club has been going great. Two weeks ago we split up into small groups to develop Halloween themed apps. So far we have an augmented reality app that paints ghosts onto the camera, a spooky doors guessing game app, and a haunted guess-my-number app.

We're all really excited to be making progress and working with the graphic design majors. Hopefully we'll be able to open up a google developers account to publish the apps before Halloween!

Sprite Handling

We are working on sprite handling in game programming. It's pretty exciting. The last few weeks we've been learning about double screen buffering, animations and collision detection. I'm working on the first project for the course now, which is a scaled down invaders game, and it's so much fun.

Can't wait for PACMAN!

Android Debugging

So after 30 minutes of debugging Android I realize that you can't assign an int to a text view without casting it as a string first. Frustrated but VICTORIOUS!!!

Code Camp

So today I went to silicon valley code camp. I went to a couple of great sessions. I learned about making mobile games with html5 and then secure hashing and password protection. Then I got to go to a Google glass demonstration by some guys over at Wakanda, super cool! And now I'm finishing up the day with some intro to game programming in eclipse. Absolutely awesome day with awesome people

The world is flat

After one of my professors mentioned a book in a lecture, "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, I decided to download the sample from Google play and check it out. Just from the first thirty pages... Wow. It's definitely a little nerve racking. The whole book is about globalization and the first part talks about the Indian city of Bangalore, which is equated to India's Silicon Valley, as a utopia in the middle of the desert. Friedman talk about the outsourcing of labor and that it really turns the world in to a flat market where anyone can compete with anyone... from anywhere.

What this means for me as a computer science student is that I'm not just going to be competing with my graduating class in the US for a job, but every graduate across the world for a job. So I ask myself, how will I compete. Right now, my answer is that I have smooth enough soft skills to work with people. I believe that my selling points and hiring points are that I can work with people one-on-one and that is how I plan on competing in a globalized industry... at least for now.