Ågevik

Library based project in Eclipse installs two APKs

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:57:00 +0200

I almost missed this in my first library based project. Luckily I usually wipe a device clean for the final test before publishing and saw that when I installed the app I got two new icons in the device! In addition to the icon of the app I was testing I got an icon for the library project it was based on. On closer inspection I saw that two APKs had actually been installed. Well, that's not the result I was looking for so off to Google I went.. and discovered not many people had written about this. And none of the solutions worked for me.

Then I started thinking, the android docs says a library project can't be installed. So why was mine being installed..? Turns out the library project started life as an app, and still residing in the bin directory was an old APK which I decided to delete!

Now I get this error:

I don't know why it tries to find the APK for the library project, a bug in Eclipse perhaps? But since everything works as it should now I'm not going to spend any time digging deeper and just ignore the error. Next time I'll start the library project as a library project and see if that eliminates the problem all together.

While sad for Facebook, I kind of agree

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:47:00 +0200

I have long hated the USPTO and US patent law. Many (software) patents granted in the US are not only ridiculous but can't even be applied for in many other countries. I read this article today, while I don't really want Facebook to die a horrible death it might actually do a lot of good. Politicians cannot be relied upon to take the right action, the consumers must stand up and say stop. This was never the reason patents were invented in the first place. They were implemented so that companies would be able to earn back research money before a product was copied and also, in some measure, to reward creativeness. Yahoo's patent suit against Facebook is neither.

Patenting obvious (yes, UPSTO lawyers, they are obvious to computer litterate people) methods of getting things done on a computer should not be allowed. At all.

Back when 25,000 lines of code actually got you somewhere!

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:43:00 +0200

This takes me back.. Wizardry was one of my favorite games when I was a kid. I have all of them lying in a storage area behind my office, had to get them out and look at all the maps. Got the sudden urge to dig up something that'll actually run them. I think one of my old PS/2 50 or 80 should do the trick; if they actually start, must be 15 years since I turned one of them on last time!

The boxes even have all my old maps in them! Should be a piece of cake! Wonder if I can find my old characters on one of these disks too..?

And as the title says, those were the days. The system I'm working on right now has almost 10,000 lines of just javascript. I don't dare to add up all the C# and SQL code as well.. and it is nowhere near complete..

Updating widgets for multiple blogs on BlogEngine platform

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:40:00 +0200

Making it possible to have multiple blogs in one application is great in some cases, I sometimes use BlogEngine more as a CMS than a blog and run a second blog as an actual blog associated with the primary site. With that said I usually run everything in separate applications as a matter of course, I like compartmentalization — one site going down shouldn't bring the rest of them with it.

Now, running mulitiple blogs has some issues — themes, widgets and extensions need to be multi-blog-aware! When I was updating my code I realized some widgets are better left not updated. As I only run multiple blogs that are closely related in one application I decided to make some widgets unaware. Like the newsletter and tag cloud widgets, in those cases "data exchange" is a good thing!

Nivo Slider for BlogEngine

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 10:55:00 +0200

I was looking around for ways to spice up one of the sites I work on, found the Nivo Slider (which isn't that hard to find really, so no cred there). Then I found the Nivo Slider extension for BlogEngine, while it is a good piece of work it does have some flaws.

The admin page doesn't show up until you've loaded a page with a control on it; which means if you only have it in posts you have to post your first post with a slider before you can configure it.

It uses Nivo Slider 2.0; the current version is 2.7-something.

Lots and lots of options aren't configurable; for instance the effect, timings, etc.

I decided to correct some of these issues before adding it to my sites. Due to time contraints I decided to fix only the last two issues, I also decided not to create a NuGet package and post it to the gallery. I did however pack it up and it will be posted when the site is completed and published.

Android Market becomes Google Play

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:45:00 +0200

Came across this today. I guess this is a good move for everyone involved, sure Android is a strong brand now but Google is even stronger. Just too bad that here in Sweden sites called "Play" are extremely strongly tied to television on the internet. But then again, who really cares about 9M swedes..?

And no, it's not really seamless — at least not if you want to be up to date! I know we reference Android Market in help files, documentation and promotional material.. so.. time to go do a search-and-replace in all the Eclipse projects!

Fully functional

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:39:00 +0200

Seems like the scheduling adaptions are working correctly! Have had no problems the last couple of days.

That means I'll start posting the code here in a little while. No, I won't make a fork-or-whatever over at codeplex, haven't got the time right now to read up on the proper etiquette and all. But as BlogEngine is free I don't mind sharing so everthing you'll need will be here. If you feel like posting it to codeplex — go ahead, but please let me know.

Also, I might not update this code when the next version of BlogEngine is published, that depends entirely if that version has any features I really need. Like localization of posts.. that'd be nice.. *nudgenudge*

BlogEngine permalinks and SEO

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:32:00 +0200

Something to think about when making BlogEngine themes: http://blogengine.codeplex.com/discussions/276306

Not a big issue since BlogEngine does a 301 redirect to the "normal" URI, it is however pretty unnecessary as I see it to have multiple entry points to a single blog post. And it sure does look ugly.

I'll update all of our blogs at my earliest convenience.

Android smartphone security

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:16:00 +0200

Just came across this, as I have a smartphone (actually, everyone at my company does) I'm going to give it a try. We use Avira as our main AV engine here at the office and using the same supplier on the phones would be great.

After reading the reviews I'm a bit hesitant, though. It seems to be still really beta.. Reportedly not even working on Android 3 and we'll be getting Ice Cream Sandwich on all our phones I a couple of months. Doesn't hurt to try though!

Note to self

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:11:00 +0200

When setting up a BlogEngine blog on your own web server do not forget to open up your firewall to allow trackbacks to be sent.

This blog is hosted in the Niviac datacenter along with many other web sites. However, I can now see that I forgot to allow this web application access through our firewalls.

Several things will fail if you do not allow the BlogEngine instance access to the internet — trackbacks (as mentioned), many extensions (twitter, bitly, etc), the BlogEngine theme gallery. But please do remember to allow only the specific web site access and not your entire DMZ!