The Problem with Jet Lag

The problem with jet lag is that it scrambles my brain. I am awake. I feel good. I think all is well, but I make poor decisions; I get disoriented; and I just can't trust my brain.

I enjoyed making the ParisMap app from App Inventor 2 this week. I tweaked it to meet my needs as I am currently in the UK on training. Unfortunately, I shut the gate after the horse got out. I feel my app could have been useful to me prior to my walking 16,000 steps through the streets of London in an attempt to find a bus stop. Had my maps been working correctly - or better yet - had my brain been able to better interpret google maps, I would have realized it was easier to walk back to the Hotel than find a bus stop.

On a side note, my sister and brother-in-law were talking with me at my niece's wedding. My sister and her husband are developing a website for the Alpine Nature Center. They have done a wonderful job uploading and organizing content. They were expressing the desire to have an Android app associated with the Nature Center to help people make better use of the hiking trails and learn to identify the flora and fauna found in Lambert Park.

This app directly relates to their needs. In addition, my sister just made travel books for her family's upcoming trip to Israel. An app such as the ParisMap app could be developed to contain the information in her book while also providing access to interactive content that could be helpful on the trip.

I look forward to discussing these solutions with her when I get back stateside.


Here is a screen shot of my app:

And as always, here is a QR code where you can download the app.

CatFish and Stress

I need to finally acknowledge that I do not handle stress well. While I did party it up quite a bit last week (including traveling 3 hours for a concert, returning early the next morning to get to work on time, leaving work early to catch Black Panther before I dashed off to catch my son's Poetry Jam, cleaning house the next day, getting my hair cut and my toes polished...) Maybe fighting off stress is just another term for "paying the piper".

I spent president's day meeting with a couple of lawyers to prep for my expert testimony on Thursday. That left me Tuesday and Wednesday to review the four extra phones they wanted me to cover as well as research an obscure app used by the defendant. Luckily I didn't have much time to research before today - because an hour after installing the app and running tests, I got an email saying the defendant took a plea deal.

Yay! I won't have to spend the day in court before I catch a flight to London (work related). Miraculously I am completing my homework on time. My stress level, I feel, has negatively impacted my creativity-- but I was still satisfied with this week's app once I completed it. My major concern is that I don't feel as if I understand all of the coding. In the past, I have been able to tweak multiple items as I understood what the coding was doing. I think there was a good chunk of this app that I would not be able to recreate independently. I did challenge myself by creating a pause button. I had to figure out how to pause each process without causing the process to stop functioning.

I left the main character (the cat) in motion as she was a little bit more of a complicated sprite. I also left the health bar running as I was concerned at pausing all of its processes.

Don't Text and Drive

I ran the digital forensics on this case. This is heart breaking for everyone involved: the woman who lost her husband, the children of the mother who went to jail. She was running late to work, her boss was texting her.

I ran a phone where a teenager drove off a steep embankment and died. The text she was trying to read was from her mother.

I don't want to analyze anymore texting and driving phones.

Last week I was listening to an NPR report that cell phones are conditioning us just as Pavlov did to his dogs with his bell (NPR reports that it was a buzzer and not a bell). Often the curiosity to look at our screen when the buzzer or bell sounds is too great for humans resist.

The no texting app, not only responds with a wait message for whoever is texting, it also reads the text aloud, satiating the drivers curiosity. I had some fun with the app this week. I had tickets to go see Jake Shimabukuro this week (about 3 hours away) and I ran the app on the drive up to Provo, UT. The GPS portion of the app is interesting. I expected it to give gps coordinates when an address was not near by, but it just listed location as "unknown". Still, the evil side to this type of feature would be to incorporate it into spouseware thus enabling stalking.

MoleMash

I am starting to feel more comfortable with App Inventor. It is not taking me long to find the right boxes or snap-ins anymore. I am also enjoying the time I spend in it creating. My kids are pretty supportive as I bounce ideas off of them.

I am really interested in developing some indigenous apps. One of my older sons is studying the language. Language apps could help his kids. All of my children are into their native legends. My head is spinning on how one or two could be adapted to an app platform.

I think my kids are really liking this idea, because they are starting to give me suggestions.
My youngest insisted on doing some artwork for me on this app.
He used Adobe illustrator. He had me take pictures of him in different poses and then he traced the photos to make the png. I was amazed at how adept he was at this. It took him under an hour.

I still get frustrated with the app process. I don't know if I am limited by my knowledge of the app2 program or if the app2 program is by nature more limited than designing apps in java or another computer language. I imagine it is both right now, but probably more me than the design program.

In the end I am somewhat satisfied with the result. I put a snip of music to start each screen, however, the GaryOwen them (for the Calvary) cuts itself short. I made each clip around 10 seconds long, but the GaryOwen tune cuts out after a couple of seconds. I don't see how to manage that within the software. And even more frustrating, it didn't do that during testing.













I also completed the MoleMash from the book. I added sound effects and a background.

EasterEggPaintPot

I spent way to much time on this App. I had a really hard time letting anything go. As always (circumlocution) several methods exist to accomplish the desired end. Originally I thought I would need to make six different screens in order to provide six different egg backgrounds for my colorers. I even went so far as to copy all of my bars into the backpack. The idea of six different screens annoyed me so much, I looked again at the "set drawingcanvas background bar". I had looked at it before, but couldn't find any puzzle pieces that would allow me to connect a specific image. I looking through my previous apps, I realized that the "text" field was actually for setting custom variables. I was able to simply write what I wanted as the image back ground.

My other issue was centering. Most of that was fixed by appropriately selecting automatic sizing, or fill parent.

I think I may do another custom paint pot in the future using original drawings. A powwow or Native themed paint pot sounds cool.