This year, twelve teams joined the competition, producing in 8h all kinds of crazy games. Our game took 2nd place, we made top-down “tank vs tank” with multiplayer up to 4 players, with tanks controlled from a smartphone. The source code can be downloaded from bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/gosuwachu/igk-2013/src. As always time was short, but we managed to do everything that we planned and even a little bit more. Game was written in C++ and cocos2d-x.

I just want to congratulate to all the teams that started this year, and I hope that we will meet again next year!

Keep your inbox small

When I first started using GMail, I used to keep all my emails in inbox. I quickly figured, that sometimes when I get an email I should do something about it, like pay my bills. Keeping all the emails in inbox makes your life harder, as you don’t know which of things you have already done, and which not. Solution to this problem is simple: if you have an email that requires some action from you, leave it in inbox until it is finished, after that just archive it. This way you can postpone tasks, and never forget about them. You will also know what have already been done.

Do not delete emails, archive them

Keeping track of all of your emails is important. You never know when you will need some information again. Obvious example is when you need that login and password to some service that you get when you first register there, but you may also want to know if you if someone is waiting for you to reply, or to prove that you have done what you have been asked for. It is especially important when working with clients. Send email after a meeting, summarizing everything you came up with, and ask people to verify, if everything is correct. If after few months someone will get back to you, saying that you haven’t done something, you will have that email. It works, and we use it a lot.

Use shortcuts

You just came to work and already have 50 new messages? An hour for digging through wasted? No. Learn keyboard shortcuts for the most frequently used actions. My favorites are:

[, ] – archive and move to previous/next message
j, k – move to previous/next message
c – compose new message

Small thing, but will save you a lot of time in the end.

Search

Google has great search engine, which also works for your emails. Instead of going through list of 5,000 messages, try to use search. You can use advanced search options to find things easier, here is the list of all the options: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7190.

# extension for paging mercurial output
[pager]
pager = LESS='FSRX' less
attend = annotate, cat, diff, export, glog, log, qdiff, hist

[extensions]
# extension do display log in graphical way
graphlog =
pager =

# alias for pretty printing mercurial log
[alias]
hist = glog --template "\033[31m{node|short}\033[0m \033[1;34m<{author|person}>\033[0m \033[32m({date|age})\033[0m \n\t\t{desc}\n"

We first enable and configure pager extension which basically allows you to scroll through the command output, it works pretty much like hg <your command> | less. Then we enable graphlog extension, that makes hg log to print nicely formated graph of branches, merges, commits, etc. Finally to additionally color log output we do some magic, and define our own hg log with custom template. Final result of running hg hist looks like this:

The same can be done for git. Here is equivalent .gitconfig (thanks to Wojciech Erbetowski for this):

[alias]
	hist = log --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset%C(yellow)%d%Creset %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset%n%w(80,8,8)%s' --graph

Happy coding!

I had the opportunity to integrate and work with CocoaLumberjack in my latest project. It is very nice logging library, with few useful features that makes it worth using:

• multiple outputs, you can direct your logs to be printed in the XCode console, system console or whatever other place you want by implementing one basic protocol (that’s actually what we did to have apphance logging in production builds only)
• ability to define log level: error, warning, info, debug, verbose. It is even possible to define logging level, not only for the entire applications, but also for selected files in your project
• it is faster than NSLog in most cases

// Add custom logging outputs:
[DDLog addLogger:[DDASLLogger sharedInstance]];
[DDLog addLogger:[DDTTYLogger sharedInstance]];

// Convert from this:
NSLog(@"Broken sprocket detected!");
NSLog(@"User selected file:%@ withSize:%u", filePath, fileSize);

// To this:
DDLogError(@"Broken sprocket detected!");
DDLogVerbose(@"User selected file:%@ withSize:%u", filePath, fileSize);

Library definitely worth recommending. Check it’s repository on GitHub for more info: https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaLumberjack

Pocket Translator

The design of the application adjusts to your theme settings, and really makes it your personal translator, suitable for both vacations and business trips.

Features:

• translates 50 languages, including Japanese and Chinese
• translations of single words with alternative meanings
• pronunciation tips
• common phrases
• send translations by sms and email
• off-line history

Happy New Year 2011! I wish you to be at least as good as the last year

Let’s look which of the things I have planned to accomplish in 2010 were done and which weren’t.

Plans for 2010:

• write an application for Android (I am android os developer, I have understanding of system internals, and of course I have written few applications for Android, including low level system components)
• enrol in an English course (it was 4 months advanced English course in Profi-lingua)
• go for vacations to Greece (it was Croatia, not Greece, but it was fun nevertheless
• learn how to work in the team (I have worked as contact person for team of 8 people, managing communication between teams in London and Warsaw)
• finish my studies (still working on it)
• switch to English on my website
• release few open source projects
• go for the Game Developer’s Conference in Siedlce and win

Few additional things that I have managed to accomplish or learn:

• buy Windows Phone 7 device, and start developing software for this platform
• go to London several times and live there for 3 months
• participate in world-scale mobile project, and play there important part
• learn a lot about Facebook API
• release my first application to Windows Marketplace and start earning money from my own work and ideas
• meet amazing and inspiring people during my stay in London
• learn how to use linux & console and appreciate it a lot!
• start to use git and mercurial
• do everything from command line
• finish big backup & restore & synchronization project

It was quite a lot, huh? I would have never thought that I will do so many things if you were told me this at the beginning of 2010

Plans for 2011? Let’s see:

• go with Gosia to London for few months, this time between June and September
• increase income from my private development to 1000$/month
• learn design patterns, and how to make good design
• learn test driven development
• learn professional project management and scrum methodology
• go on vacations to Italy(?)
• enrol for an English course

Looks like this year will be again quite busy. Looking forward for what unexpected will happen!

Lets do short update what happened lately:

• Great application for Android has been released – it is called MobileTab, and allows you to browse phone’s content on a PC, all you need is a web browser.
• My Windows Phone translator has been submitted to certification. It features translation between more than 50 languages and has built-in game that helps you with learning. Stay tuned, I will definitely post something when the application will be released.
• These are my last days in London, I am going back to Poland on 23th December. What can I say… I will miss it, hope to visit in again for few months in the summer, will see.
• Damian started his blog: http://www.androiddev.pl/

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

My handset is HTC HD 7 from O2, bought as Pay & Go, and it is unlocked so I can use it with any operator.

After two days of using it, I can say that I am happy about it. It is more personal than previous phones that I have used, and with better touch interface. The things that I like the most are: email client!, calendar!, people hub!, lock screen, home screen You can read reviews about those things on the net already so I won’t write about them.

Probably you expect me to do some comparison with iPhone and Android… well Windows Phone 7 is completely different, from UI perspective, there is no too much graphics, most of animations are text based, with some 2D animations. Email, calendar, contacts are definitely the best ones that I saw so far. Big disadvantage? Internet Explorer which shows pages like it would be feature phone, with very poor browser… but that is not fault of IE itself, more of web pages that threat it as not that powerful, but now they should, so I think that it will change in the near future Browser is very light, without not necessary buttons, and UI, leaves a lot of screen for actual browsing.

On Windows Marketplace is few hundreds apps, but still many missing like… Google Translator, Google Talk, Skype, 3D games, etc. but it is good news for developers, right?

OS is version 1.0 and you can see it… it lacks youtube, not too much settings, few things in UI that can be imporeved. Microsoft promises updates so I am optimistic, because it looks very promising. I would say that in a year it can be real competitor to Android and iPhone.

]]> http://blog.mobiledev.pl/2010/10/24/windows-phone-7-short-review/feed/ 1 http://blog.mobiledev.pl/2010/07/15/meld-improved-version/ http://blog.mobiledev.pl/2010/07/15/meld-improved-version/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:06:45 +0000 Piotr Wach http://mobiledev.pl/?p=391 Continue reading →]]> I have started working on my own project on sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/meld-modified/. It’s based on well known tool for merging and comparison of files and directories Meld.

My goals:

• better directory comparison
  • show/hide new/modified/deleted files on every pane
  • hide not modified directories
• save/load current session

http://picasaweb.google.pl/wach.piotrek/Londyn#

From this point I can say that I have became mobile system developer It is new, exciting experience. I am looking forward to continue my work in this area. Stay tuned for posts about mobile systems development.