CPUC Tester

VICTORY IS MINE!!!

I just got over a huge hurtle for my work programming a standalone internet speed tester. Me and a co-worker have been sitting at the computer for three hours and we were finally able to get the tests to successfully run and print their output to the application window.

We have a situation where we have several objects communicating with each other and we were running into problems because we were having multiple instances of the same objects. First we tried to make everything static but we found the better solution was to pass the objects to each other through their constructors and then save the reference to them.

It feels so good to be over this hump and I know this project is going to wrap up nicely.

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.

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.