Live wallpapers

Something that I only really found out quite interested me after I got my archos was the android live wall papers. I've just been looking at this tutorial and it looks like a quick and easy enough project to do in the near future, once I'm finished with this one. I'll be able to apply some of my 2D game physics knowledge to try make a bit of cash or even just stick it up on the android market for free or something.

Progress

After about a week I've finally got back to messing about with Android. I'm still making my way through the tutorials, developer documentation and sample source code but I feel like I'm making some progress. I've just bought a second hand Archos 101 (android 2.3.1) tablet from a previous college lecturer which I will use as a test device.

Obviously when developing for a tablet there are some things you have to consider, for instance the larger screen. I think I can use this to my advantage by ensuring the gui I create is robust and will work well on multiple devices. All of the tutorials so far that I have gone through implement the GUI using XML which will aid development of this app across different phones.

I've also got my hands on a book called "Starting Android Tablet Application Development" which is aimed at people beginning developing with Android. I've only really had a glace through the first couple of pages of the book, and what I've read so far has been more insightful than the Android documentation. I have to say I'm looking forward to really getting in to this project now.

Android fundamentals

I've been reading for a bit and I like the way Android operates. The activity tasks and back stack and the activity life cycle is something I will probably find myself coming back to look at in the future. The more I read the more I'm finding it similar to J2ME which is a good thing.

The four main component classes that you extend (Activities, Services, Content Providers and Broadcast Recievers) will make the design a lot easier and the ap better structured. For now I can see the use of both the Activity and Service classes and later on if I want to integrate some kind of image processing element I forsee the use of the Broadcast Receiver. I'm looking at code examples now whilst I make my way through the documentation.

Getting started

Now that I've decided on what my first project for this blog is going to be it's time to get down to business. As I have never worked with android before, the first step is to actually read some of the documentation, of which there is plenty of. From what I've seen before it's quite similar to J2ME in the sense that there's a bit of boiler plate code that's bare minimum for setting up the graphics device and appending stuff to it. I don't think it's going to be too difficult to learn!

In terms of the IDE, I'll be using Eclipse. So far, I've downloaded the Android SDK and I've installed the ADT Plugin for Eclipse, which has now just been configured as of this moment! I'm going to spend the next couple of hours learning the basics of the framework before I start up on designing how this ap will function, at which point ill draw up a few class diagrams and do a few pretty flow charts and stuff.

First project!

After a good weekend of Rugby,Moto GP and GAA I guess it's time to actually get down to business. I'm going to kick start this thing off with a project that I've been thinking of doing for a while. There's a handy little tool for checking your lotto numbers on the lotto.ie website. The tool allows you to enter in the numbers you have on your lotto ticket, it then checks the numbers against the winning numbers and tells you how much you've won.

My project involves the recreation of this lotto checking functionality as an android ap. I would first like to develop this ap as a means of familiarizing myself with the basics of Android development which shouldn't be too difficult as I have quite a bit of experience with J2ME.

Once the initial functionality has been implemented I will look in to what image processing frameworks and api's there are available for android and see if it's possible to implement a system where you can simply take a picture of your lotto ticket instead of manually entering in all of your numbers.

First post

Hi and welcome to my new blog! Ironically, I have never been really that interested in blogging before, nor am I now. I find the whole process a bit tedious, however I was watching the film "The Social Network" the other day and in that film Mark Zuckerburg was keeping a semi personal/development blog which he used as a mirror for reflecting upon ideas he had at the time which in turn aided him in implementing these ideas in to reality. Don't get me wrong, I'd highly doubt anything as big as Facebook will come of this blog but since I am constantly coming up with ideas for mobile aps, websites and other bits of technology that I never actually get around to doing anything about or else I start but never finish.

The purpose of this blog will be as a tool to aid me in recording, designing and developing these ideas. It is also my hope is that this blog will be keep me motivated as I learn to use new technology such as the android SDK. I'm not sure how often I'm going to update this blog, but I'll do my best to keep it quite frequent and semi-interesting.