Using the APIs

So I actually just used the Android APIs to figure out how to get the y location of a touch event, as opposed to using a sketchy stack overflow answer. I'm totally starting to get over the Android learning curve.

Long Term Problem Solved

So, this may not be the least incriminating blog post ever, but I have to start by admitting that, about a year ago, I downloaded some software (for educational purposes I promise). And in order to do so I had to manually change a certain host file so that a certain program would loop back to itself when it went to the internet to check to see if it had been verified.

Needless to say this small change was just that, small, and I went to almost forget about it. A year later, and now that same software is available to me through my university at no cost at all. Unfortunately, I had had the longest and hardest problem of trying to figure out why I couldn't install it properly. I was sure that I was using the correct activation code, but the program kept spitting it out. I sent a couple emails, asked some friends, and even went to IT, but to no avail. Until....

Driving home today I had a flash of intuition, that of the file I had changed when installing the program the first time. Could this be the source of all of my frustration? I went to the depths of google, found out how to find the file I changed all those months ago, went to it and what comment do my eyes behold? "# verification blocker code " Ahhaaa, I said to myself. Commenting out the lines of following code I saved the file and raced to the activation screen for my software, inputted my code and finally.. viola! It accepted!

Now the software is installing and boy does it feel so good.

Bachelors thesis in progress

I got to meet with my client for my bachelors thesis project (or capstone project) today. I'm working with my university's Center for Student Success to develop a time management Android application.

The concept for the app is that students build a micro schedule (timeline) for themselves before they start working. The timeline could only be about an hour long, but during that time the student says, "I'm going to work on this assignment for 25 minutes, this assignment for 15 minutes and this assignment 20 minutes." The app lets them build the timeline and then prompts them to move on to the next take when their time runs out.

There are a lot of design things I'm really excited to implement with this project and I'm really hopefully that this style of working will work well for different types of students. The bulk of the capstone will be getting students to sign up to test the app through finals to see if it is useful for them.

I'm really excited to be in development and to start getting sign ups for testing.