<![CDATA[Spider Flock - Blog]]>Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:02:10 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Days Until V1.2.3]]>Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:43:07 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/07/days-until-v123.htmlA user requested that I add years to the count down displays. Given that I should have add that feature a while ago and now someone was asking for it I figured I had better get another update out.


It has been a while since I did an update to Days Until but it still rates as my most popular app. I am always happy to hear about any bug reports or suggestions. Oh an please rate me kindly on the market place :)]]><![CDATA[Ponder This V1.1]]>Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:49:49 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/07/ponder-this-v11.htmlJust posted an update to this little game. I have increased the size of the grid you have to press to make it easier for people to get the correct square. As a side effect I had to decrease the size of the target grid.


I have slight concerns that this may make it harder to match up the items as the grids  are no longer the same size. You sort of have to use you mind to figure out which square maps to which one with the aid of the visual positional clue.]]><![CDATA[Ponder This]]>Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:42:44 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/07/ponder-this.htmlWell I finally get to release my second android game. Yay!

Ok it is a fairly simple one, a logic game where you try to get two grids to match. It can be quite difficult on harder level on the larger grids. 

I hope you all enjoy.

As this was my second game I got to re-use some of the code from Monster Match. In fact I am gradually building up a little library of utility code that should hopefully let me release games at a faster rate. Well what really happens is the game become slightly bigger so take the same time to develop.

I love writing games and have a few other ideas for some simple ones in the future.]]><![CDATA[V1.21 of Days Until]]>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:39:38 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/06/v121-of-days-until.htmlJust a quick post to say I have updated Days Until so you can now set the colours of the bars separately for each event. It is just a small update mostly to help me get back into the groove of programming on android :)


Update: And then the following day I had to do another update to fix a force close I had introduced - oops]]><![CDATA[Slow Progress]]>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:06:55 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/06/slow-progress.htmlIt has been a while since an update. Things have been pretty slow here in terms of development.

In part this is due to be hit by illness for a week or so and in part because my laptop decide to messing me around. Inkscape and a few other applications went a bit haywire. I decided the easiest thing to do was just reinstall. I run Linux (Ubuntu) and the install all when on fairly easily. I had not realised how much other stuff I use in every day use so a few evening were lost in just installing stuff and we have a reasonable connection speed for the UK. 

After a few problems with setting up the development environment I am ready to start coding again. It feels like it has been quite a while since I have got my teeth into android development even if it is only a couple of weeks.

First up is doing another small update to DaysUntil, then I have to decide on the next app to create. As mentioned previously I have prototyped some ideas but the strongest contender is not really suited to a mobile phone so I decided to cancel it. So I am back to the ideas stage, I am leaning towards creating another game hence the reason I wanted to get Inkscape working again.

Inkscape is an excellent vector drawing package that is totally free. I use it for a fair bit and while it take a little while to learn it does contain a good number of features. Google for it.  

]]><![CDATA[Yet Another Version of Days Until Released]]>Wed, 05 May 2010 15:09:51 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/05/yet-another-version-of-days-until-released.htmlI am please to announce another version of Days Until has been released. This little update adds the ability to display weeks in you countdown to events. For some reason I expected this to be harder to add than it actually was.

Looking ahead I think the next release will contain a few more UI improvements. Every time I attempt to improve the UI it get better but then after a while I notice ways to further refine it. 

As some readers of the blog may know I was awarded a free Nexus One from Google for getting an app above certain threshold of downloads and ratings for Days Until on the android market place. After quite a long period the phone has finally arrived. So thank you google and thank you everyone who took the time to rate my little app. It is nice to finally see Days Until running on a proper phone

I should add I do read comments people post and most features added over the past few months have been either driven by them or from people who take the time to email me with suggestions and often questions. As a developer who does this in my free time it certainly helps my motivation when I get nice comments and suggestions.

]]><![CDATA[Force Closes In Days Until]]>Sun, 18 Apr 2010 14:55:04 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/04/force-closes-in-days-until.htmlWell  the initial results were in from Flurry and they were not good reading. Apparently 2% of all session resulted in a force close. I call force closes either hangs or crashes and will probably slip back into that terminology sometime in this post.


Wow 2% is pretty high! It was not something I could really leave, it needed fixing. Trouble is I could not reproduce the hangs and flurry by default does not give you much to go on. I was just about to embark on a close look some large chunks of a program which would have been a time consuming job when a user emailed to say he was getting force closes and he did a series of actions that he listed. 


So Instead of being a massive task I was able to zero in on the code causing his problem and produce an update in just a couple of hours. I am hopping this one bug was the cause of many of the hangs I have been seeing.


The next couple of days should tell me if that hope is correct or not as I should see a reduction in force hangs as people upgrade. If it does not fix a significant number of the hangs I will have to go over the code very closely and see if I can spot any other problems hiding in there.


Apologies to those that have been getting those force hangs I fix all the problems I can find. ]]><![CDATA[Version 1.17 of Days Until]]>Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:55:15 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/04/version-117-of-days-until.htmlWell that did not take as long as I thought it would. I seemed to get a few evening clear where I could work on Days Until fairly uninterrupted. Perhaps because the rest of the house hold were ill with flu.


The latest version adds a fair number of user interface tweaks. This should make it a lot easer to create,delete events.


The other addition is I have added Flurry to Days Until. Flurry is a little thing that collects data on the usage of the app. It does NOT do anything bad like send me what you are counting down to. It just records when you run the Days Until plus a few other statistics like what version of android you run but most importantly tells me when some bad happens like a force close. 


This is what I am most interested in. I get some comments about force closes and that indicates some are slipping though my testing. Flurry should let me find the ones that get past and make for a more robust app.


]]><![CDATA[Another Days Until Update]]>Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:49:13 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/04/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit.htmlWell I just pushed out another update to DayUntil. In this small update I have added the ability to select the colours of the bars. I spent a fair amount of time attempting to figure out how to best do this. In the end I decided that supply a set of preset colours seemed the best solution for now.


I also spent a good few nights fixing up some more crash bugs. I tracked the major one back to a bug in android rather than being a programming mistake. The android team had it on their bug database so there was no need to report it. In some ways it is nice to find out it is not in my own code for once.


I am going to dive straight back into DaysUntil and attempt to sort out the user interface a bit. I have had some complaints that is it hard to use. I have to agree the user interface has evolved rather than been designed.]]><![CDATA[A Busy Time]]>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:05:09 -0800http://www.spiderflock.com/1/post/2010/03/a-busy-time.htmlI took a week or so off from android development. It was my birthday and we had a chill out time and a weekend away from the children. Grandparents baby sat for us. We got to eat dinner in restaurants in a calm and restful way and even managed a trip to the cinema.


While we was away an iphone developer contacted me and via this blog and asked me to change the name of my latest little app. It clashed with his app called Pizza Calculator. Well we are in to different markets and the apps do two different things but I was more than happy to change the name of my app. His app looks pretty cool by the way. Google for iphone pizza calculator if you want to know more.


I have also pushed out small updates to all my little apps updating the Admob advertising. No extra features added, just a refresh to keep everything current. Days Until will get a new Admob codes when I push out the next update.  And that won't be long as I am in the middle of testing it all works.]]>