I have started to dig into my old code and freshen up the code a little bit to get some things running again. I had a lot of responses to my original thread when I started to get a dell tag warranty scan up and running http://www.paularquette.com/?p=95.
I have an application out on the Android Marketplace that does a simple warranty fetch. I want to add more functionality to it but I’d like to see what kind of interest there is. I don’t have a lot of free time and I put the 99 cent price tag on the application to help pay for my time. This application is now free, with a planned pay version in the near future.
I’m sitting here with a newly assembled desk to get my computer and Internet back online. There are some people that you have never met that you still seem to have a strong connection with. Steve Jobs was one of these people…
I’m a PC guy and have been since I started messing with DOS and Windows 3.1 12 years ago, even though our first family computer was a Mac. Steve, I’m sitting here speechless… I can’t say it any better than you did in your speech at Stanford in 2005. I’ll let you talk for yourself…
Steve you will truly be missed more than I can express :’(
I’m just starting to get into Android Development with a previous background in HTML, PHP, MySQL, Shell Scripting, and some PERL. I do not have any background in Java and I have started to read up on some of the basic Java principals.
I have logged on to http://developer.android.com and I have my development environment setup and running as Google recommends (with Eclipse and Android ADT plugin). I do have to say there is a wealth of information out there regarding development for this platform.. it is too much to take in.
I do feel that I am finally getting some solid footing with this platform. Learning a new programming language or development environment is not easy for me and I need to take a couple cracks at things before I finally start to feel comfortable.
One of the first video’s I watched was from GoogleDevelopers on YouTube and was called “I/O BootCamp 2011: Beginner’s Guide to Android”. I found this video very helpful, I have included it below:
The next video I watched (it is about 2 hours long) is a video from UserGroupsatGoogle on YouTube. This video starts to actually get into the development environment of throwing labels and buttons on the UI of Android. This video also starts to get into the Java back coding to make the buttons perform whatever function you want it to do (In this case add or subtract from a label). Due to my lack of Java knowledge I found this video to be a perfect start for me. You can watch this video below:
I hope to add more as I continue my endeavors with Android Development. It is easier sometimes for the beginners to teach beginners because we are on the same technical level.
I have had quite the leave from the Internetz! I will be cleaning this site up and getting things back online. I’ve recently purchased some Cisco equipment and I’m planning on taking the CCNA this summer. I had my CCNA back in 2004 and I let it expire in 2007. I plan to take the CCNA and CCNA Security exams this summer, with the hopes to go for the CCNP by next summer.
I’m currently working on setting up a MacBook Pro 15″ that is brand new this year with Snow Leopard & Windows 7 64-bit. I had originally launched the boot camp assistant through Mac OS X and installed Windows XP. Windows 7 was needed though and I had to ditch Windows XP. I launched the boot camp assistant one more time and while I was installing Windows 7 I made a bad move. I had deleted the partition that boot camp had created for me and I made my own. This caused no problems until I went to use VMWare Fusion on the Mac side.
VMWare needs the boot camp partition that the assistant creates. VMWare will not be able to find your Windows install otherwise. I had to re-partition the drive to only Mac OS, and then start this process all over again so VMWare would recognize that there was a Windows install on the boot camp partition.
Other than that minor mess up, things have been running very smoothly here and I’m thinking about upgrading to a MacBook Pro the next time I buy some hardware.
The Army has released a new communication tool for friends & family. Friends & Family can now send a letter online and it will be downloaded, printed, and sent to the soldiers for FREE. If you have their downrange address you can set up an account and send a mail message over to them.
It looks like this service is only working for Afghanistan currently but it looks like they have plans to expand it in the future.
I’m really starting to wonder what is going on with RIM as of late. I’ve had a blackberry device of some kind for the past year and I never remember having any crazy outages like these. There was an outage lasting a few hours on Dec. 17th. Now we are in the middle of another outage that is affecting all of North & South America. I’m really beginning to wonder what is going on with Research In Motion.
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and safe travels to wherever you may go. My Christmas present to all of you techy people out there is that I once again have my dell script up and running. You can not submit large quantities of dell tags at once as the page will timeout (i.e. > 200). See where the happy medium is to go fetching dell tag information. http://devel.paularquette.com/main/search3.php
Questions, comments, suggestions, write me below.
Since the basis of the script is go out and download all the HTML from Dell for every single dell tag you enter the nature of this process is very slow. I’m currently working on trying to speed up the process for parsing out all of this HTML. Until a better method comes around I’m going to have to fix the site every time Dell makes a decent change to their web site.
