Posted by
Nick
on
2009-01-03
at
2:17 PM
I know, I know, I'm a terrible blogger. I've all but ignored this blog, and given up on LiveJournal as well. The last couple of months have been insane on top of insane, but I'm finally digging out of it. Between dealing with Christmas, dealing with minutia and fallout from moving here months ago, and a second contract that I really shouldn't have taken, I've had absolutely no free time. This means no side projects, no new shiny things, and no blogging.
That being said, it is now 2009, and I have a whole list of things I want to get accomplished right now. My wife is in Russia for two weeks, so I now have no excuse for not doing any of it. My first priorities are my abandoned Android application and whatthefuck.com.
ElJay is going to see a new release in a few days fixing a lot of the difficulties people are having. There's a 25% reduction in memory use, a huge increase in speed and responsiveness, and seems to take care of much of the network connectivity issues people have been coming up with. Once that's out, work will begin on a new application that posts not only to LiveJournal, but any LJ-based site, Movable Type, Wordpress, or Blogger site. It's the number one feature request besides specific LiveJournal stuff, so there will be some parallel development. I will likely be maintaining both applications separately, so those who only use LiveJournal don't have to learn a new tool, but both applications will benefit from the use of some shared code.
The old wtf has been running quite well lately. The number of exceptions being passed back to me have dropped considerably, and people seem to be using the site without too much difficulty. I have a huge checklist of crap I need to finish before I start mail bombing old users, but I have to say, things aren't bad right now. What's coming? Mostly style and behind the scenes changes. The code needs to be cleaned up quite a bit, as there is something like three years of start and stop development in there, and it needs to be tightened up a bit. Data management and cleanup needs to occur, as some older board posts are missing and/or corrupted, due to an old bug. The mobile site at m.whatthefuck.com is going to be filled out with some of the user options and an email notifier, and promoted to a top tier service out of wtf. Some basic blog functionality is going to be added as well, due to popular demand, and support for it is likely going to be rolled into the above "new blogging application".
From there? Who knows. I have big plans for 2009. As for the freebies? "Things I Hate About You" is going to get some social features, comments, and Facebook integration, TwitterGrowl is going to get a GUI, and is going to get a new storage engine and a new home site.
Things that aren't free? Well, you'll see. :)
That being said, it is now 2009, and I have a whole list of things I want to get accomplished right now. My wife is in Russia for two weeks, so I now have no excuse for not doing any of it. My first priorities are my abandoned Android application and whatthefuck.com.
ElJay is going to see a new release in a few days fixing a lot of the difficulties people are having. There's a 25% reduction in memory use, a huge increase in speed and responsiveness, and seems to take care of much of the network connectivity issues people have been coming up with. Once that's out, work will begin on a new application that posts not only to LiveJournal, but any LJ-based site, Movable Type, Wordpress, or Blogger site. It's the number one feature request besides specific LiveJournal stuff, so there will be some parallel development. I will likely be maintaining both applications separately, so those who only use LiveJournal don't have to learn a new tool, but both applications will benefit from the use of some shared code.
The old wtf has been running quite well lately. The number of exceptions being passed back to me have dropped considerably, and people seem to be using the site without too much difficulty. I have a huge checklist of crap I need to finish before I start mail bombing old users, but I have to say, things aren't bad right now. What's coming? Mostly style and behind the scenes changes. The code needs to be cleaned up quite a bit, as there is something like three years of start and stop development in there, and it needs to be tightened up a bit. Data management and cleanup needs to occur, as some older board posts are missing and/or corrupted, due to an old bug. The mobile site at m.whatthefuck.com is going to be filled out with some of the user options and an email notifier, and promoted to a top tier service out of wtf. Some basic blog functionality is going to be added as well, due to popular demand, and support for it is likely going to be rolled into the above "new blogging application".
From there? Who knows. I have big plans for 2009. As for the freebies? "Things I Hate About You" is going to get some social features, comments, and Facebook integration, TwitterGrowl is going to get a GUI, and is going to get a new storage engine and a new home site.
Things that aren't free? Well, you'll see. :)
1
comment
Posted by
Nick
on
2008-10-31
at
9:47 AM
This morning, I uploaded my first application to the Android Market. As a quick background, Android is Google's new mobile operating system, designed for smartphones and similar mobile internet devices, and similar in theory to the iPhone operating system. The Android Market allows third party developers to distribute their software through a centralized location for a small fee. As of right now, all software on the market is free, so you don't make any money on the process.
I decided, for some reason, that my first application was going to be a LiveJournal client, that is, an application that enables easy posting to a LiveJournal blog. I would be able to work with simple HTTP requests, design a simple but effective user interface, play with threads a little bit, and touch the Location Manager (GPS/Tracking) if I was lucky.
I was.
I'm happy with the final product, and it's modular enough that I can add to it later if I wanted to, or fork it to a generic blog posting tool if I felt crazy enough. You can log into your LJ account, select user pictures from a live gallery of all of your user icons, dynamically retrieve your location from GPS or fuzzy tracking, add moods or your current music. It's remarkably complete for a few days of work, and I think I want to add the ability to attach photos later on, as well as limit to certain friend groups or post to other communities. Trivial tasks in the long run, but I wanted to get it out there as soon as possible.
Click through if you want to see what it looks like.
You can click these images to get a full 320x480 view.
Login screen, pretty simple. This authenticates you to LJ, so ElJay can grab user pictures, moods, groups, etc.
Initial post screen, with a subject and a body. It starts out bare so you have room to type, but via the below menu or the Settings menu, you can set which fields it shows by default.
When you hit the menu key, this is what appears. Change settings, edit the user picture, or add fields to your post screen.
This is the post screen after adding all three fields. You can even use the built in wifi/cell mapping or GPS to get your actual or approximate location via the 'Get' button.
Userpic browser. Uses the standard image chooser in Android to show you all of your user pics. Just flick your finger to scroll through the available pictures. Hit back to cancel.
I decided, for some reason, that my first application was going to be a LiveJournal client, that is, an application that enables easy posting to a LiveJournal blog. I would be able to work with simple HTTP requests, design a simple but effective user interface, play with threads a little bit, and touch the Location Manager (GPS/Tracking) if I was lucky.
I was.
I'm happy with the final product, and it's modular enough that I can add to it later if I wanted to, or fork it to a generic blog posting tool if I felt crazy enough. You can log into your LJ account, select user pictures from a live gallery of all of your user icons, dynamically retrieve your location from GPS or fuzzy tracking, add moods or your current music. It's remarkably complete for a few days of work, and I think I want to add the ability to attach photos later on, as well as limit to certain friend groups or post to other communities. Trivial tasks in the long run, but I wanted to get it out there as soon as possible.
Click through if you want to see what it looks like.
You can click these images to get a full 320x480 view.
Login screen, pretty simple. This authenticates you to LJ, so ElJay can grab user pictures, moods, groups, etc.
Initial post screen, with a subject and a body. It starts out bare so you have room to type, but via the below menu or the Settings menu, you can set which fields it shows by default.
When you hit the menu key, this is what appears. Change settings, edit the user picture, or add fields to your post screen.
This is the post screen after adding all three fields. You can even use the built in wifi/cell mapping or GPS to get your actual or approximate location via the 'Get' button.
Userpic browser. Uses the standard image chooser in Android to show you all of your user pics. Just flick your finger to scroll through the available pictures. Hit back to cancel.