Writing More

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I’ve decided that I want to get better at writing. I keep reading that in order to get better at writing, you have to write. Makes sense, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Write about what, exactly? I’ve no idea.

I keep trying to come up with an idea for a blog that has an overall theme that I can write about. I know that popular blogs revolve around a single idea, whether it be about productivity, motivation, writing, movies, whatever.

The problem is that my interests shift from one day to the next, and they can be about completely different things. I don’t think there’s one topic that I can learn and write about without becoming bored with it.

Here’s a short list of topics I’ve been reading about lately:

  • Speed Reading
  • Meyer-Briggs Personality Type
  • Short Story Writing
  • Non-Fiction Writing
  • Habit Changing
  • Productivity
  • Success
  • Being an Entrepreneur
  • Dieting

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that. My point is, I don’t know if my interests have an overall theme, so I’m just going to write what I feel like at the time.

mc chris Race Wars Tour

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Race Wars

mc chris is on tour promoting his new album Race Wars, and I jumped at the chance to go see him. He came to 7th St. Entry (First Avenue) in Minneapolis and we (my fiancee and I) had a blast. We had such a good time, we decided to skip town this past weekend and go see him again in Iowa City. The driving to show ratio was over 2:1, but it was totally worth it.

The night opens with Adam Warrock, who does an awesome job warming up the crowd. He’s a lot of fun to watch because you can see how much he enjoys performing. I loved his song Starving Artist, which is really inspiring. Check out his website: adamwarrock.com.

The show continues with Random, a.k.a. Mega Ran, along with K-Murdock laying down the beats in tow. Random builds the show up with his rhymes about video gaming. His set includes Player Two, which sympathizes with anyone that is forced into always playing second, and freestyling by using random items that the crowd holds up as inspiration. Check him out: megaran.com.

Next on stage is Mc Lars. Backed up by a guitar and drums, he kicks the intensity of the evening up a notch. The most literate hip-hop artist you’ll ever have a chance to see, he raps about materialistic hip-hop (get crunk!), Hamlet’s Ophelia, and Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven. He’s the perfect last stop before the ten year old, himself. Check out Mc Lars’s new album Lars Attacks! at his website: mclars.com.

Then, it finally happens. mc chris arrives on the scene and jumps right into a remix of I Want Candy (bubblegum and taffy). The show goes on, showcasing his new album Race Wars (Race Wars!), along with the classics such as Nrrrd Girl, The Tussin, and of course Fett’s Vette. Among the songs from Race Wars (Race Wars!) is Popcorn Frog (I go ribbit then I get it, I go ribbit then I get it) and my new favorite Nerd Cave.

While onstage, mc’s hilarious. He rants about his video game withdrawal since going on tour, and reminds us that his hit from the summer, Hoodie Ninja, is about shitting on driveways and jerking off in trees.

But you also see the dedication to his craft. If he misses a line from the song, he hops over to his laptop and restarts the song until he gets it right. He might feel bad about it, but the crowd just cheers even more. If we could, we would make him repeat every song.

There is also the costume contest (thanks Hoodie Ninja!). Here was Iowa City’s costume contest winner, right out of Vault 101:

mcchris Costume Contest

Business Casual Boba Fett says, "What the fuck?"

Finally, mc hangs around after the show to make sure everyone gets an autograph and picture with him. I asked him to do an additional show in Minneapolis next tour so I wouldn’t have to drive to Iowa to see him again. One can dream.

If you are still able to attend a show, I highly recommend going. The show costs around $15, and it’ll be the best time you’ve had in a while. His tour dates are listed on his site: mcchris.com.

MonoDroid: XML Layout Not Created in Resource.Designer.cs

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I’ve started diving into MonoDroid a little bit, and I was following the directions here to create a ListView. The first step is to create a layout for each of the ListView items, which I followed, but the Resource.Designer.cs file was not updating with my newly created layout.

While developing with Android in Eclipse, the resources are auto-generated by just creating the files in the layout directory, which, evidently, is not the case for MonoDroid in Visual Studio. After searching a bit, I found this BuildProcess page for MonoDroid. It explained that resource files need the Build Action property of AndroidResource in order for the Resource.Designer.cs file to be updated with the layout.

Not sure if it’s possible to change the default, but out of the box the Build Action for an xml file is Content.

To fix:

  1. Right-click the xml file in the Solution Explorer
  2. Click Properties
  3. Change Build Action to AndroidResource

Useful Eclipse Shortcuts

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I do a lot of programming on a laptop without a mouse, and Eclipse shortcuts are imperative if I want to remain productive. Even when I do have a mouse, using keyboard shortcuts is usually faster than trying to click around for what I need. Here is a list of shortcuts that I use often.

Ctrl+Shift+l – Show Shortcuts

Navigation
F3 – Go to Definition
Alt+Back – Back
Alt+Forward – Forward
Ctrl+l – Go to Line
Ctrl+m – Maximize/Minimize Active View or Editor
Ctrl+Home – Go to Beginning of File
Ctrl+End – Go to End of File

Productivity
Ctrl+1 – Quick Fix (i.e., create method if you are calling one that does not exist)
Ctrl+7 – Toggle comment
Ctrl+d – Delete line
Ctrl+Shift+f – Format
Alt+Up – Move Lines Up
Alt+Down – Move Lines Down
F2 – Show Tooltip Description

Debugging
F11 – Debug
Ctrl+F11 – Run
F5 – Step Into
F6 – Step Over
F7 – Step Out
F8 – Continue
Ctrl+Shift+b – Toggle Breakpoint

Emulator
F6 – Turn On/Off Trackball
Ctrl+F12 – Switch to Next Orientation (Portrait, Landscape)

java.lang.RuntimeException: Stub!

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I recently tried to run my junit tests to ensure that I didn’t break anything after monkeying around with my code, and I ran into the following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: Stub!

Here’s my code that runs my tests:

public class RunTestSuite {
    public static void main(String[] a) {
        TestRunner.run(suite());
    }

    public static Test suite() {

        TestSuite suite = new TestSuite();
        suite.addTestSuite(MyClassTests.class);
        return suite;
    }

}

The stack trace pointed to line 8, so I didn’t know what to make of it since I just had this setup correctly, and TestSuite is a JUnit thing.

Googling mostly resulted in issues with using an Android Test Project (I’m not) and running the tests in your desktop’s JVM instead of the actual device’s (see here).

Eventually, though, I found this post that informed me that the JUnit library needs to be at the top of the test project’s build order.

Here are the steps to change the build order in Eclipse:

  1. Right-click your test project
  2. Click Bulid Path->Configure Build Path…
  3. Click the Order and Export tab
  4. Select the JUnit reference
  5. Click the Top button

EasyMock Exception NoClassDefFoundError

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While trying to set up my JUnit test project in eclipse to be able to mock the dependencies of my classes under test, I was receiving a java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError exception on the call to EasyMock.replay(myMockedObject). Included in my build path were easymock-3.0.jar, objenesis-1.2.jar, and cglib-2.2.jar.

I eventually found this site, and saw that I needed cglib-nodep-2.2.jar in my build path instead of just cglib-2.2.jar. Odd that EasyMock didn’t mention that .jar specifically.

Injecting Android Context into SQLiteOpenHelper with Roboguice

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If you have done any database work for Android by extending SQLiteOpenHelper, you have also had the experience of passing a Context down through the layers of your application to your database adapter. This is annoying because while you want the focus of your programming efforts to be on your application domain, part of your application design is focused on forwarding a framework-specific variable. Fortunately, roboguice comes to the rescue with just a few handfuls of code.

First, you’ll need to create an application class that inherits from RoboApplication:

public class MyApplication extends RoboApplication { }

RoboApplication contains the method protected void addApplicationModules(List<Module> modules) that you can override and add any modules that you’ve defined to the List, so you can add the following to your application class:

@Override
protected void addApplicationModules(List<Module> modules){
   modules.add(new AbstractAndroidModule(){
     @Override
     protected void configure() {
       requestStaticInjection(DBAdapter.class);
     }
   });
}

The method requestStaticInjection() injects static fields that have the @Inject annotation into the specified class. Therefore, we can add the following to our database adapter class:

@Inject private static Provider<Context> contextProvider;
private Context mContext;
public DBAdapter()
{
   mContext = contextProvider.get();
}

The last piece of the puzzle is for your Activities to extend from a Robo*Activity (RoboActivity, RoboListActivity, etc.) which will hook up the static injection:

public class MyActivity extends RoboActivity  { }

Now, whenever an instance of the DBAdapter is created, roboguice will inject our current Context into contextProvider before calling the constructor:

DBAdapter dbAdapter = new DBAdapter();

Another way to inject a context provider into the DBAdapter is to use the usual guice injection strategy of creating an interface, implementing it, and configuring an AbstractModule. This approach requires more overhead, but perhaps creates a cleaner solution. I might write another post detailing this method if there’s interest.

Thanks to Donn Felker for clarifying some points.

My Blog

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Well, I never thought that I would actually start a blog. I don’t even like the word “blog”. It’s like a mix between some trendy marketing term and the sound of someone vomiting (blahhg). Oh, wait, that sound is just me after reading the majority of the blogs online. Usually some self-absorbed person who thinks that I want to read their inner-monologue detailing– Ugh, I can already start to feel my slide to the dark side. Let me get through this post, and then we shall never speak of this again.

I initially started looking into a blog because I’ve been developing more for Android lately, and I’ve found that the amount of information that the web contains on the subject isn’t as plentiful as some of the other technologies that I use, like .NET. I thought posting about my Android tribulations could simultaneously help me learn more about the subject, and help other developers solve their issues that I have already encountered. I also hope that writing about Android will motivate me to remain passionate about it. I will often start some endeavor with great interest and passion, but the interest inevitably fades with the passion right behind it; it seems writing could be a good way to keep that interest and passion going. Finally, I’ve always wanted to improve my writing, and this will give me that opportunity.

While most of my posts will revolve around Android, there undoubtedly will be some on other topics that I’m interested in. From software to poker; from meditation to driving tactics. I hope someone finds something of interest.

Now, let us never speak of this blog post again.