2012-08-08

SICP free content

I have to recommend the amazing MIT Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) lectures and book.
It gave me a whole new understanding of software and programming.
It continually inspires me.
The ideas have helped me to understand new technologies, languages and frameworks and put them into a larger context.

Just try not to be scared off by the lisp ;)

The book is available for free :
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

You can even watch the video lectures:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/video-lectures/

Other notes on the course are here:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

2012-06-26

open source graphic design tools

I recently worked on an iPhone app, and had to do a little bit of graphic design.
I didn't have the money for the adobe suite and needed free/open source versions of photoshop and illustrator, for bitmap and vector graphics respectively.
This two programs are well worth the download:

bitmap : http://www.gimp.org/
The new single window mode makes this app far more usable.

vector : http://inkscape.org/

2012-05-31

from iphone to android

notes from 2012

business applications
talking to rest api using json
JSON (de)serialiser http://code.google.com/p/google-gson/

rest library
http://code.google.com/p/resting/wiki/TwoMinuteTutorial
http://download.java.net/maven/2/com/sun/jersey/jersey-core/
all suck, just use the basic classes : org.apache.http.client.HttpClient

emulator boot time is good after initial startup (installation).

setup:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html make sure to include 2.1 (>95 percentile)
http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html#installing

design:
http://developer.android.com/design/index.html

go trough all tutorials in order:
http://developer.android.com/resources/browser.html?tag=tutorial

having to install kies to get the android usb driver for debugging sucks.
http://www.mkyong.com/android/android-debugging-on-real-device/

tabs in fragments :
http://arvid-g.de/12/android-4-actionbar-with-tabs-example

2D scrolling:
just use webview instead
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6127696/android-local-image-in-webview
http://blog.gorges.us/2010/06/android-two-dimensional-scrollview/

SharedPreferences etc, de/serialisation sucks for custom objects.
So I'm using gson, to convert everything into json strings.

The action bar is in a state of change. There seems to be 3 different ways of showing menu items.
Old devices with  the menu button holding a full list of menu items.
New devices with the menu items being split between the action bar and the menu button acting as the overflow.
Newer tablets with no menu button showing the overflow menu as a vertical "...".

2012-02-06

Async now part of Scala

Something very much like my async-scala post has been included in Scala 2.10
http://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/pending/futures-promises.html

The 'await' has been replaced with on "onSuccess" method, which I'm not a fan of;
but making it work with for comprehensions is just awesom.

2012-02-01

for all those programmer/theoretical physists


Some of my favorite hobby topics combined with perl programming:
"quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the very fabric of the space-time continuum"


http://yow.eventer.com/events/1004/talks/1028

I might have to try to implement some of these things in scala; might give the rods a miss though ;)