Category Archives: Android

I started to poke around in the Android development world.

Bought a book (which I’m liking so far) on Android development “Hello, Android” – part of The Pragmatic Programmers series of books. http://www.pragprog.com/titles/eband/hello-android

When starting out, don’t bother with the Emulator. Although it is easy to get going, it is just way to slow. The going approach is to use a device (which sux) or do what I did, get a VM of Andorid-X86 going and do most of the base development against that – which is fast, easy and portable etc. I’m doing any testing against the emulator (cause you can quickly move to different device types and OSs – including the Samsung Tablet!).

Another tip I just found was that you can’t update the SDK via the Manager if you are running Windows 7 – you’ll probably get the File not found – Access is denied error. This is due to the stupid Windows permissions thing of not letting users full access to Program Files. Anyways, simple solution is to launch with “Run as Administrator” – solved and it works.

Back to coding…

This is a sad story – a story of great loss…

It was around 7:00pm on a Sunday evening. My wife and I had just travelled 2 hours back from visiting family. I was catching up on emails when my Wife’s phone rang, but the call was missed. My wife retrieved the missed call, only to find that it was me who was calling – but I was sitting next to her, and my Google Android HTC Dream was not in my possession.

At first, confusion filled the air… who has my phone, where was it last left? Did we leave it behind?

My wife decided to call my phone – she said “It’s ringing – can you hear it…??“. Nope, certainly wasn’t in the car nor around our study where we would normally leave such a gadget.

We both wondered if I might have left it with our family we just visited.

No, I was certain I had the phone with me when I arrived home, only a hour ago. I started to trace my steps… I went into the Kitchen… I went outside to greet and play with the dog… and I then placed the phone on the patio table… Oh crap !!

I ran out to the patio to find the dog – “B.J.” was laying on the patio floor, casually chewing a vibrating $700 phone.

I calmly removed the wet phone from the dog’s mouth. It had massive chew marks, many broken keys, and a massive cracked LCD no longer showing any signs of working. The phone was kinda working – but clearly no longer usable.

Edit : perhaps this is Karma?

RIP

Google Android Dev Phone 1

a.k.a HTC Dream or G1

11/01/2009 – 05/04/2009 (84 days).