Author: Joe

Categories
Development

PhoneGap Build Andriod versionCode

Just went to submit updates to an app in the Google Play store. Worked out all the annoying bugs, of course forgot my key password (NEVER forget your key password), and finally got to submit it to the Google Play store.

When I got the message that my Version Code must be greater than the current value. I was quite stumped at this point as I did increase the version number in the config.xml file.

After some research I did notice that in my config.xml that I had set a versionCode value. I have absolutely no recollection of this at all, and am beginning to guess that I must’ve just copied and pasted it from an example config.xml file at some point. As the previous versionCode doesn’t really follow my typical numbering conventions.

Either way, I just incremented the value there, and re-submitted and all seems well.

Categories
Video Games

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

Oracle of AgesI’d purchased the Oracle of Ages several months ago as part of some promotion Nintendo was having for the 3DS. So I figured recently would be a good time to finally give it a shot and kill some free time with.

I’ve been a huge fan of Zelda games since probably 1986, and have really played through almost all of them by now. Oracle of Ages despite being originally released in 2001 for the Game Boy Color was still a lot of fun to play. The graphics are very dated by todays standards, but the puzzles and exploration is still a lot of fun. The whole Zelda formula has yet to get old for me.

I do recall when this came out way back in 2001 and a lot of the kids who would come into MegaPlay where I worked at the time tell me how great of a game it was. I can’t recall most of their names now, but if I randomly run into them all grown up now will surely have to agree with them.

Just as solid as the Oracle of Seasons which I played a few months back, and really holds it’s own today despite it’s age and the platform it was originally made for.

Categories
Books

Help for the Haunted

Help for the HauntedI’m pretty sure I had seen a positive review for this one somewhere recently, but can’t remember where or when. Maybe I was glancing a magazine at some point and came across a review, no sure. Either way I figured I’d give it a shot.

It was pretty interesting, and I must admit the the ending was a bit of a surprise. Didn’t really see all that coming at all.

It was kinda a mixture of a ghost story, mystery, and thriller I suppose to me. Different from the past couple of things I’ve been reading and that was a good thing.

Categories
Books

The Racketeer

The RacketeerAgain I didn’t really have much of a plan when I visited the library looking for something new to read. Conveniently the super fine librarians of Linwood had setup a popular books of 2013 area. Or at least it was called something similar to that.

There were only two books in the section that I hadn’t already read (yes, I have turned into quite the reader the past few years). So I went with The Racketeer by John Grisham. I have heard of Grisham, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

It is a legal thriller. Not quite sure if this was my first legal thriller or not, but it was pretty solid. Guy is framed, gets out, then pulls one over the federal government. Pretty solid concept.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. Not too much couldn’t put it down or had to read just one more chapter enjoyed it, but still pretty solid. Once again the library has steered me well.

Categories
Development

Google AdSense Responsive Ads

I was pretty excited when I realized that Google AdSense was offering responsive sized ads. Kinda surprised it took me so long to notice it, but I’m not exactly raking in insane amounts of AdSense dollars at the moment.

Their Smart Sizing option is very convenient in that it will automatically detect the container elements width and then serve up an appropriate add based on that. While this is really slick and convenient I was getting much too tall ads due to the layout of my blog.

Luckily they do offer an Advanced mode, where you can modify some CSS Media Queries to request specific sized ads based on browser width. This was perfect.

In my case I wanted 3 sizes.

  • mobile devices (320px x 50px ad)
  • browsers with widths over 1400px (300px x 250px ad)
  • browsers with width under 1400px (120px x 240px ad)

So, I just adjusted the CSS Media Queries as such, and all seems to be working pretty well.

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.my-ad { width: 320px; height: 50px; }
@media(min-width: 500px) { .my-ad { width: 320px; height: 50px; } }
@media(min-width: 800px) { .my-ad { width: 120px; height: 240px; } }
@media(min-width: 1400px) { .my-ad { width: 320px; height: 250px; } }
Categories
Development website

Sea Isle City Website and Mobile Apps

Sea Isle CityJust wrapping up some work for Sea Isle City on a new website and some mobile apps as well. The website is www.visitsicnj.com and the mobile apps are available for iOS and Android.

This was a rather large project, and working with the folks at 7 Mile Times was a pleasure yet again. They are extremely organized and great to work worth.

Kim provided an excellent design to build upon and Patty was fantastic is organizing content and keeping things rolling along. It was pretty great.

We built the site on a very stable CMS that made it very easy for the admins to manage the site. Training them literally took minutes if that, given the simplicity of the CMS.

The calendar presented some interesting issues. They wanted the events grouped into months, and working with dates/events can always be a challenge. After much trial an error a solution was found, and it didn’t require much overhead at all to execute.

This is not the first website I have worked on with these folks, so we’ve got a bit of a formula down and it really showed.

A mobile app for both the iOS and Android platforms was to be developed as well. Given the nature of the apps, we decided to build on the PhoneGap/Cordova platform and them create builds for each respective platform from that.

Mobile development is still a bit of an adventure for me, but this one did go a lot smoother than my last. Just having more hours under my mobile app development belt as well as improved libraries/info on hand really helped out.

We are pulling info from the website view web services we created, and the mobile app is consuming those JSON feeds to populate the app. It really is pretty amazing  one everything is setup and producing and consuming the web services. Pretty amazing, slick, and efficient.

While we of course hit some bumps and hurdles along the way, I’m glad to say we did meet our deadline and on budget! Not bad for such a large and complex project!

Still have some minor loose ends to wrap up, but all in all this was a very exciting and rewarding project to work on! I’ve learned much and we’ve put out a very solid product(s). The clients are extremely happy and have been the utmost pleasure to work with.