As corny as it may sound, I’ve always wanted to get my foot in the door with my own $0.99 app in the marketplace.  As my friends, family, and colleagues can testify, I’m a die-hard Apple fanatic!  But there have been a few snags in getting my feet wet with iOS app development.

For starters, I do not own an Intel-based Macintosh, which is absolutely required for developing on the iOS platform.  My latest Mac purchase was my Dual 2.7GHz PowerMac G5.  It sports an amazing Motorola PowerPC processor.  A few months after I signed away my first born child (err, I mean purchased), Apple had this ingenious idea to switch to Intel.  And it’s been a pretty rough downhill ride with my PowerPCs from that point on.

So, I’ve pointed my direction into a different Mobile market.  Powered by another one of my favorite tech companies, Google, the Android OS has been taking the mobile industry by storm.  From phones to tablet PC’s, it’s continuing development at a rapid rate.  So after accepting that I would need to learn a new programming language, since ObjectiveC wasn’t going to do me much good in a Java world, I started looking for easy ways to get started.

My initial thought was to make a web app.  I already have an extensive background in HTML and CSS web development, so it would only seem logical to make a move in the direction.  It would be platform independent since it would reside in a web browser, but I think that simple fact was my biggest turnoff.  Web applications had a lot of restrictions when it boiled down to native device functionality.  I also wanted a native application that I can publish into the marketplace.  Something to make a little extra cash on the side, but also something that I would enjoy doing as a hobby.

My first find was Google App Inventor (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com).  It looks very promising and, most importantly, easy to use!  Practically no coding needed!  And that’s exactly what became it’s downfall.  It truly lacked a lot of the features I was hoping for (ironically the ability to publish the created applications in the Android Marketplace).  It took a little bit of work to setup at first, but it was pretty straightforward once I was started.  I was able to make a simple application called “time2eat”, which collected a custom set of contact numbers and allowed you to create a text message that you could send en masse to everyone listed (essentially letting them know it was time to eat).  I don’t even own an Android phone, so I used my parents Motorola Droid X to test it, and I was happier than a kid with new puppy when I successfully sent myself a text message!

I felt almost like Charley Kline at UCLA sending the word “login” across ARPANET.

But, the victory was short lived when I discovered I couldn’t take this freshly created App and publish it in the Android Marketplace.  Perhaps I’ll make another post someday explaining why, but maybe by then Google will have gotten their act straightened out and redesign this cool tool.

So, after this small bit of success, I wanted to dive into the Java pool and swim with the code! … Ok, so not quite in the literal meaning, but you get the idea.  I found some awesome references, downloaded the Android SDK (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html) along with the Eclipse IDE (http://www.eclipse.org/).  I was able to successfully setup multiple Android Virtual Devices (AVDs) running practically every version of Android available from the SDK, and I was set to go!  Or so I thought … By the way, I may make a tutorial about this someday, because documentation on the Internet about it seemed somewhat hard to obtain.

Java is a whole different world for me.  I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the overall development process, but it’s been quite the learning process to say the least.  For anyone looking to get started, I could easily make a few suggestions and pointers.

1. Get to know how Android works!  If the terms linux kernel, Dalvik, Java, Activity classes, etc. scare the crap out of you, then I’d suggest knowing what they are before beginning.
2. Learn and understand the Android Application Life Cycle.  From onCreate() the whole way to onDestroy().  It is vital to understanding how Applications work with Android.
3. Start small!  Almost straight out of the gate, you should be able to make a simple Hello World app.  Take tiny steps and learn how everything pieces together.

The Pennsylvania State University IT Club Helpdesk (ITCH) Workorder Management System:  Sounds like a mouthful, eh?  This is a project started in our Spring 2011 Semester for a graded group assignment (which we did exceptionally well on, by the way).  The IT Club Helpdesk on campus needed a revamp of their current database solution.  For this project, we designed the framework to a php/mysql solution enabling easy access to user management and control, along with some basic database functionality for managing client workorders for PC repair.  Although we got a great grade on the project and about 300 hours of work went into it’s design, it was actually somewhat sloppy in code structure.  Now that I have some time to redesign the system from a fresh slate, and some basic understanding of Objective PHP design, it’s time to make something much more usable and deployable for real-world IT needs.

In the next couple of weeks I will have finished the core foundation for the project, and I will be working with the team to further develop the application to better suit our needs over the course of the next couple semesters (Fall 2011/Spring 2012).  I’ll post more about the project as development continues.

Android Application Development has always been a fun hobby of mine. Most recently, I got my hands on Illumination Software Creator (which, by the way, is absolutely awesome!). Wanting to get my hands dirty with playing connect-the-dots and making an Android app with practically no work, I found everything to be extremely limited as far as the internal building blocks go. And most disappointingly, it creates depreciated <AbsoluteLayout> XML by default … *Ugh!* … Wanting to get a simple LinearLayout implemented, I dived into the Custom Blocks feature, and found some relief.  Since Illumination Software Creator won’t allow me to edit the XML manually, I pitched it all together and made it call a function that adds the layout elements programatically.  The only problem I see with this is being able to add UI elements (like buttons, etc.) in a modular manner instead of hard-coding them into the Custom Block.

Below is the code I’m using for the Custom Block.  If anyone knows a better way to do this, I’m eager to learn!

Block Name: LinearLayout
Category: Layout
Input: Open
Target: Android

Import Statements:

import android.widget.LinearLayout;
import android.view.ViewGroup;

public void LinearLayout() {

LinearLayout layout = new LinearLayout(this);
layout.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
Button button = new Button(this);
button.setLayoutParams(new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT));
button.setText("my button");
layout.addView(button);
setContentView(layout);

}

With that said, I’ve also started another project … getting Linux fully functional on one of my PowerPC macs. Currently, I have Fedora 12 working almost flawlessly on my PowerMac G5, with a few quirks and problems I have yet to resolve. I am planning on moving this project off my G5 to reinstall OSX 10.5 Leopard back onto it (I need a reliable system for school), and use my PowerBook G4 instead for my Linux experimenting. Although it doesn’t seem quite as exciting on my laptop, as it lacks the luxury of my 30″ Apple HD Cinema Display that my G5 has consumed my desk with. I think it will still be a worthy system to recon with.

Experimenting with the various PowerPC Linux distributions, I have found one that raises the bar above the rest … Fedora! As popular as Ubuntu is, it’s PowerPC support is absolutely horrendous (at least with my experiences). I haven’t even been able to get Ubuntu installed properly, because it has serious issues with not just my graphics card, but the windfarm controls on my G5. Fedora has graciously taken hold of my G5 and runs impressively fast. But with every great thing, there are several issues.

I have no sound. Not only that, but I have no clue how to get sound working properly on the system. An lspci results in no card information either. Any and all help here would be greatly appreciated.

There is also an issue with my graphics card. Occasionally, my system with lockup and not allow me to do anything forcing me to cold boot. Sometimes, the screen will go crazy, while others it will just appear to be frozen. Then there are times where the monitor just completely stops receiving video all together, and I’m left staring at a black screen.

Other then that, I’m loving the idea of being able to tickle my tux side and enjoy the freedom of pure open source technology. I’ve always been a *nix fan at heart, which is one the reasons I love my Macs (which are BSD based, btw).

The database is powered by CoreData, and I even have Product Registration implemented using AquaticPrime as well (I know, it’s a little early for that, but oh well).  There is still a ton of work to do until it is functionally a genealogy application, but it’s coming along very nicely.  Considering this is my “spare time” killer and I’m nowhere near the skill level of a professional programmer, I’d say it’s pretty awesome to see it working as it is now.

Future Additions:

• Full GEDCOM support, both Import and Export.
• Sparkle Updater integration.  Update: I now have Sparkle integrated and working great!
• Compatible with Mac OS X, both PowerPC and Intel architectures (32 and 64 bit).

I’ll be making a website and support section for the application in the future, but for now if you have any suggestions, you can comment below and/or send me an email to bchynds@mac.com.

The BWToolkit is a great framework to alleviate some stress on designing a great looking user interface.  It’s functionality and ease of use has made it really worth the effort to get compiled on my PowerPC.  The developer (Brandon Walkin) provides an i386 version of BWToolkit.ibplugin 1.2.5 on his website (http://brandonwalkin.com/bwtoolkit/), but I’ve taken the time to compile a working PowerPC version on Mac OS X 10.5.  The following file (BWToolkit.ibplugin) was compiled, tested, and working on my Dual 2.7 GHz PowerMac G5.  Enjoy!

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who know binary and those who don’t.

Yes, it’s an old techie joke, but the same concept applies to the world of Twitter. I’ve had my twitter account for a while now, but never really used it that much. I’ve actually never really found much of a need to, until I got my iPad and the new version of Twitterific was enough to grab my attention again. So, I figured I should probably get up to speed with the blogosphere and actually slap that puppy on my sidebar for you (my viewers) to checkout.

You can FOLLOW ME on Twitter too!

I have a few other things I’m working on with my website. I’ll be creating a unified Downloads section soon, so getting all the goodies I have spread out through my posts will be easier to find. You guys must really like that Fur Library, because it has over 14,000 downloads so far.  Insane!