Help me move up!

Well, if you were ever curious what 132 hours of art, coding, and audio look like in Android, check out v1.1 of Slot Madness.  It's FREE, fun, and features a leader board of the top 50 grossing players.  All the front end and back end was set up by me and everything I learned was from grinding out tutorials and years of watching mybringback and thenewboston.  Please check it out and rate/give any suggestions you want so I can make it the best out there, or at least try.  Thanks, Kenneth.


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a54.studio.slotmadness

Math Class Free

I recently released an app called Math Class that I developed to help coax my daughters into studying their math.  One of my main objectives was to have it work verbally, visually, or both to help quiz them.  Without delay I wrote the program up and everything went without a hitch, until after I released it.  That's when my nephew said that he tried it and it doesn't talk.  This can't be, I tried it on a multitude of devices from every OS version and they all worked..  Hmm, after not much digging I found out that TTS wasn't included on every device below 4.1.  The bummer is that now I am having to spend time adding the ability for users to download TTS if needed.  It is always something isn't it.  Any way, I am working on a making the icon a little more revealing and an update for those that don't have TTS installed.   At any rate, enjoy the app and download Math Class for your Android/Amazon device.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.a54.mathclass&hl=en


http://www.amazon.com/a54studio-Math-Class-Free/dp/B00ED2UCLS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376323368&sr=8-1&keywords=math+class+a54studio

Android Malware Attack

Recently I updated Chrome for my Windows 7 home PC that I develop on and got a little surprise with it.  I can only conclude that downloaded with it was a sneaky little booger called Mobile App Sync.  This appeared cause a malicious app called AppCaster to download to your Android device, which in return opened a portal for all kinds of nasty.  Every time I would plug my phone in and go to sleep, apps would download on their own.  No wonder why it is so hard to get traction faster in the market for small developers when some advertisers are using malware installers to boost their numbers.

So if you see this, delete it with authority unless you enjoy backdoor access to your phone!


Then find this on your PC and delete it.  Just as a side note though, this did not have an uninstall option on it and had to be uninstalled through the windows uninstaller.  Imagine that!

Dialog/orientation change memory leaks...

Well, today I kept battling a memory leak in my opening screen for Perspective when rotating the phone.  A quick search yielded plenty of references to orientation changes when rotating.  There were quite a few work arounds, but I found a simple one that really made it simple for me so I figured I'd share.

To fix the problem in my PopDialog class that extends a Dialog, I added a

static PopDialog pd=null;  

Then I added this just after the onCreate

  pd=PopDialog.this;
  MainActivity.opened=true;

and finally I added this method

 public void dismissing(){
if(pd.isShowing()){pd.dismiss();}

}

OK, that's the hard part.  Now in my main activity, I referenced it like this

 PopDialog popdialog;
 private static boolean opened=false;

after onCreate in that activity

popdialog=new PopDialog(this);

and finally in the onPause

@Override
protected void onPause() {
super.onPause();
if(opened){ popdialog.dismissing();}


}
I forgot, add this to the button you call the Dialog from because sometimes it doesn't call onCreate.

opened=true;  

This way when rotating, it always has the proper reference to the active dialog and calls to dismiss it destroying it.  I had to update it a bit by adding the opened in there.  This is won't let it call dismiss before the dialog is created.

Search, settings, and power....

I needed some icons for Perspective and these are what I came up with in Fireworks cs6.  The below links are saved so that they should pull up with all layers attached for easy editing or whatever you want to do with them.  If you use them, feel free to download some a54studio apps:)  Added a more holofied version those that want them.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBZXI0ZU9DMmxsUVk/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBb1FHTGozLVkyX2c/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBYXlMTWZZeW9jMVU/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBLUV0RGxhUW5DeGM/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBWVh6X1dqek1nSnM/edit?usp=sharing

Stock font and app exclusive font.

One thing I always see is people referencing font.  I think what some don't realize is that if you don't set your font in your app a run time, it will automatically run as whatever font the user has enabled on their phone.  So, if you built the app in SANS_SERIF and had it looking spectacular, they might see it in MONOSPACE and the experience just wouldn't be the same for them.  Also, I could rarely ever find anything pointing at using the stock font on the device so I'll include it here.  There are more advanced ways to do this via xml files etc, but if you know you want custom font right from the start it is no problem.



As usual thanks for reading and please check out my newest photo editing app for Android called Perspective!!!  

Facebook and GooglePlus Icons

I was just simply looking for some nice icons and everything I kept finding was a low resolution image.  Here are a couple ones I did in Fireworks CS6 so they can be easily modified as vectors.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBQ1NHaWZTWmVxMHM/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBUW1QLWJZQ0U4M00/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1I8VfqhLQvBZ3RkeDIzdm5IUDg/edit?usp=sharing

Binary, bits, bytes, short, long, and integer.

Recently I took a class on networking and had never really put any thought into binary, but found it interesting.  As some know, a byte is 256 bits of information in the range of 0-255.  Below is considered an octet because it is 8 bits, yeah, 8 bits like your old NES.  Below is the breakdown of how it works.

Ok, now that we understand the byte, we can understand how to use a byte in java.  Still the same 8 bits of information, but a range of –128 to 127 for a total of 256.  Makes sense, let's continue.

Now, with that in mind, let's compare it to a short.  Yeah, I know, short isn't that common, but is 16 bit, or 2 octets.  This means it has a range of –32,768 to 32,767.  Below is the double octet that represents it.  Notice how the number keeps doubling in the next octet.

Since that makes sense now, it only makes sense that an integer being 32 bit, is basically 4 octets that will continue doubling until it reaches a range of  -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647.

At this point you can understand that a 64 bit long has a range of –9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807.

byte=–128 to 127;
short=–32,768 to 32,767
integer=-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
long=–9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

Scale text in code, regardless of screen size/density

While tinkering with TextViews, sometimes I just needed scale-able text for every device, every density.  I scoured Stack Overflow and various places, but couldn't seem to land in the right spot.  It would really show when running on a Kindle Fire and seemed like there should be a simple solution, and in some ways it is.  You can set text sizes in XML files which isn't bad, but I wanted to control it by percentage in code and basically on the fly.  Hiding in the shadows of a question, I found this lonely unchecked answer by Mark-1688382n

"I have played with this for quite some time, trying to get my font sizes correct on a wide variety of 7" tablets (kindle fire, Nexus7, and some inexpensive ones in China with low-res screens) and devices.
The approach that finally worked for me is as follows. The "32" is an arbitrary factor that basically gives about 70+ characters across a 7" tablet horizontal line, which is a font size I was looking for. Adjust accordingly."

Mark-1688382
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2596452/how-to-scale-resize-text-to-fit-a-textview/14242816#14242816

I didn't really want to modify it much because it worked fantastically, so I just added a few tweaks.  I could have swapped my incoming var with the 32.f, but got used to the way I changed it for all intents and purposes.  Here is the way I call it.

    smallT=getFontSize (this,1.2f);
    medT=getFontSize (this,1.80f);

and here is the code to let her rip.  You could really modify this any way you wish if you wish to scale your text to an exact percentage of the screen.




Hopefully this can help someone if they need scale-able text.  As usual, feel free to show your support by downloading my apps from the android,blackberry, or amazon market under A54studio.

A54studio on Amazon

A54studio on Play

A54studio on Blackberry

SQLite Cursor explained

As I started on my Soccer Stat Master app, I realized immediately that Shared Preferences would NOT be the way to go no matter how bad my illusions of grandeur were.  This led me to SQlite which went surprisingly smooth until I started messing with the cursors.  A lot of my pulls from the db were a little complex so I needed to really understand the cursor function.  My first dive used this.

Cursor allrows  = gameDB.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM "+ PLAYERTABLE, null);

This was fine and dandy, so I used this to query what I needed.  Below shows how to add to either an array or an arraylist just for reference.  Anyway, the point is the cursor is aimed at row 1 and row 3.  Seemed simple enough.


     if(allrows.moveToFirst()){
      int t;
            do{
                names.add(allrows.getString(1);
            name[t]=allrows.getString(1);  //NAME
                time[t]=allrows.getInt(3);  //TIME
                t++;
            }
            while(allrows.moveToNext());
        }

Now, here is where it got tricky for me mainly because I didn't understand the relation at first so I hope I can save someone else the headache.  For my next call I just wanted a single item.  Rather than pull the whole db just for that, I decided to use this.  



Cursor allrows  = gameDB.rawQuery("SELECT AGE FROM "+ PLAYERTABLE, null);

My thinking was that if I call allrows.getInt(2) it would get that row, but what didn't sink in was the cursor had already grabbed that row.  After repeated errors, it hit me.  The reason I was allowed to used the numbers earlier was because I was using the WHOLE db for cursor position.  A simple change to 0 would fix this problem because the cursor was honed in on a row.


     if(allrows.moveToFirst()){
       int t;
            do{
           
               age[t]=allrows.getInt(0);  //AGE
                t++;
            }
            while(allrows.moveToNext());
        }

Eventually I really needed to hone in on one by a variable added in.  At this point I was beginning to grasp what was going on.  Here are a few solutions for the same situation.  Also, maybe they can help you understand how the cursor works by comparing them.

Cursor allrows  = gameDB.rawQuery("SELECT AGE FROM "+ PLAYERTABLE, null);

   if(allrows.moveToPosition(cursorPos)){
       int t;
            do{
           
               age[t]=allrows.getInt(0);  //AGE
                t++;
            }
            while(allrows.moveToNext());
        }

This would be the same as..

Cursor allrows  = gameDB.rawQuery("SELECT * FROM "+ PLAYERTABLE, null);


   if(allrows.moveToPosition(cursorPos)){
    
                     
               age[t]=allrows.getInt(2);  //AGE
             
        }

or even this one which hones in immediately..


Cursor allrows  = gameDB.rawQuery("SELECT AGE FROM WHERE ID='"+cursorPos"'"+ PLAYERTABLE, null);



     if(allrows.moveToFirst()){
          do{
                          age[t]=allrows.getInt(0);  //AGE
                      }
            while(allrows.moveToNext());
      }

Hopefully this can help clear up cursors in sqlite.  Feel free to show your support by downloading my apps from the android,blackberry, or amazon market under A54studio.

A54studio on Amazon

A54studio on Play

A54studio on Blackberry

Got round stuff?

Need some Sphere images for buttons or whatever?