Getting information on the sd card

I figured this ought to be linked around a bit to raise it's profile given I had some trouble finding it out myself.

http://www.maximyudin.com/2009/01/05/android/reading-of-internalsd-card-memory-status/

A nice example of how to get the size and available free space on the sd card / external storage.

ufoHunter2

So I've finally finished updating ufoHunter for cupcake. It now runs on openGL so it should run a lot smoother.

The basics:

Tilt phone around to move and tap the phone to fire missiles.

The missiles will explode when they reached where you tapped.

Watch out missile explosions will hurt you too!

Tips:

Missile explosions will destroy other missles, use the chain reactions to maximise your score.

Missile explosions will destroy incoming enemy fire which can be handy to make a little space when things get busy.

Killing multiple enemies at the same time will give you a score bonus so co-ordinating your attacks is vital to maxismise your score.

ufoHunter

The basics:

Use the trackball to move.

Swiping your finger across the screen draws a beam of energy which will hit any enemies near it when you release your finger. 

Killing multiple enemies in a single shot rewards you with a score mulitplier.  

The longer the line you draw the more ammunition you use up.

How to fire

Tips:

You don't have to draw a straight line with you finger, try different patterns to maximise your kills.

Different enemies take different numbers of hits to kill, to maximise your score try to kill as many enemies in one shot as you can.

Some enemies are more dangerous than others, it might be worth attacking those first.

mapWeasel updated

I noticed this week that the nice people at traffic Scotland updated their feed to include latitude and longitude information.  The upshot of that is I can now add their information onto the map in mapWeasel.  Hoorah.

Speaking too soon

Turns out you still can't use the in built media-player for playing audio.  At least no in the way I want because it stops if the media player loses focus :(

Two steps forward, one step back

Finally found a way to integrate podWeasel with the built in media player on the G1 last night.  Which means the next version won't have to use the build in player.  Hooray for extra functionality!

I'm also adding a basic RSS reader, it'd be much easier if webkit did a decent job of rendering XML files but it doesn't which is a shame.

Progress is going to be a little slower than I hope because I hyper-extended my elbow at the weekend so bare with me.

Going Pro

At long last paid applications have reached the UK.  Which means that people over here now have access to the Pro versions of my various weasel creations.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed by the initial reaction to the Pro versions, I don't know why but I just sort of assumed that it would fly off the shelves so to speak.  Sales have been steady and in all honesty I'm flattered that people have spent their money to use my stuff at all.

I plan on continuing support for all versions of the applications  but the Pro versions will be my primary concern whilst I try and dream up another project.

What's in a name?

There is a theme with the names of my applications: podWeasel, mapWeasel, beerWeasel ... see.

Why so Weasely?  I'm not really sure, it seemed appropriate somehow for an application that scurries around downloading stuff for you.  Same with the mapWeasel and it turns out a beerWeasel is a straw that you put in bottles of drink so you can drink them faster, handy.  That and the fact that a friend made we a sweet icon.

What's next?  Who knows but I'm sure it will be weasely.

beerWeasel

The most recent of my development projects beerWeasel tracks your blood alcohol level over time.

The app lets you select your drinks and then, using the Widmark formula, calculates the amount of booze in your blood giving you a rough indication of how drunk you are and if you're still legally able to drive.  That said, it obviously shouldn't be used as an actualy indication of your intoxication because it's only and estimation and I don't want to get sued for people being stupid.

This is the first application that uses animations to move between views and, with the help of an arty friend, nice images.

podWeasel

The application which started it all.

When I bought my G1 I dicovered that there wasn't any software on it for doing RSS agregation or podcast downloading.  Being the kind of person that likes to tinker with code I figured that I might as well have a bash at making my own as, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson, 'How hard can it be'.

Turns out quite hard really.  After the industry standard amount of swearing and headscratching I managed to blunder my way to what could optomistically be called version 1.

I released it onto the marketplace where it received a fair few downloads but was basically hampered by it's limited abilities.

Long story short podWeasel now stands at the version v2.1 mark and has become, if I do say so myself, a fairly nifty little application.  It's now capable of waking the phone, establishing a wifi connection and downloading podcasts before going back to sleep until it is needed again.  You can tell it when to check your various feeds, it will even list those which you've downloaded and mark those which are new.  There is even a very basic media player.

I learned a heck of a lot getting podWeasel where it is now and I certainly enjoyed the experience.  The most important thing, from a more business perspective is releasing an application before it is really ready does more harm than good in the long run.  This is especially true on the marketplace where the ratings and comments are persisted across versions.

mapWeasel

Available to people in the UK, although only actually useful to those in Britain, mapWeasel is a simple beast.

It reads the traffic incidents from the highways agency and displays them on a map along with your current position.

Hopefully I'll be adding in information for Scotland soon, assuming that the people in charge of the highways agency there actually update their feed like they said they would.  I was surprised when I found out that they had the geo-positioning information available but for some reason didn't bother adding it to their feed.  It's easy to get behind the times I guess, still.

Hi everybody

With the Android marketplace on the cusp of offering paid applications I figured that now would be a good time to share my experiences of developing applications for the G1.

Hopefully it will also provide somewhere for people to leave comments if they download my applications.

I might end up posting other random stuff about programming or gaming, who knows.