The Android logger has always annoyed me, it tends to do just the bare minimum, a message is printed but no details regarding method invoking the print and no formatting support. And all those TAGS. We basically end up with lots of repetitive code.
That's why I built AppLog, a simple and smarter logger for Android. It makes the TAGS optional, supports String.format and makes type handling easier.
AppLog is available on GitHub if you want to try it out.
https://github.com/marteinn/Android-AppLog
Feedback and ideas are of course much appreciated.
Ten Google Play Tips/tricks
I wrote a blog post with Google Play optimization tips for Android called Ten Google Play tips/tricks for the frojd.se blog. It touches mostly store listing and best practice dealing with comments and updates. Feedback is if course super welcome, just drop a comment below!
I (love) Discogs Checksum And Implementation Example
The checksum for the fallback "I (Love) Discogs" discogs uses when image requests are faulty is c58c26d726f1a8e0f3436db79a8122a0.
I also wrote a quick example on how you could check for it (in Python).
Tastypie: Reusing The Resource Serialization Outside Api
I needed to use Tastypies resource serialization outside the api context, so this is how you do it.
Got any suggestions? Fork it.
Summary Of 2013
This is my first year in review post, it has been a crazy year so it is much needed.
Work
Lets start with work. In the end of 2012 I started working as a developer at Fröjd and a few months after I left the startup I co-founded in 2012 (things just didn't meet my expectations).
Programming
Flash
I started my career as a Flash Developer and made my living on it for ten years, but projects started to shift in 2011 and 2013 was the first year where I didn't touch Flash at all (honestly I didn't touch Flash much in 2012 either).
Objective-c
After spending a few hackdays at work with Xcode I took the time and sat down, evenings and weekends, and really got into objective-c. Being an old Flash dev really helped to speed things up and it's easy to build custom components (I'm looking at you Android). Not my favorite platform but you can do amazing things.
Android
Picked up Android in late 2012 and continued to spend time with java and Android. The platform has matured a lot in the past year, compared to when I got started, trying to see if it was even possible to build a good looking app.
Python
Used Flask on a few projects, really liked it. Didn't spend as much time with Django compared to 2012. Still love it though. Amazing community.
JS
Got into require.js and amd loading. Played around with mustache. Got to do some heavier mvc stuff with Backbone.
PHP
Spent a lot of time with PHP at work. Tools are maturing, like composer and hhvm. WP-Cli for Wordpress is also nice.
Projects
MadeInStockholm
After ending my previous startup endeavour I co-founded MadeInStockholm, a lean startup that I work with on my spare time, right now we manage three products:
VinylWall
Shipped originally in September 2012 for Android and has gotten so many updates
since then, we also launched a iPhone app in the summer and a gamification system. It's just the beginning.
Silo
A side project that has spun out from VinylWall needing better searchable data, it's a music data api built in Flask based on Solr. More stuff will happen here.
Russian Dance
Brought back Russian Dance from the dead and gave it a well deserved App Engine platform update and tons of js fixes.
Open source
Started to spend more time contributing to the os community, but so far only to my own repositories.
Jetty+Solr Fabric Boilerplate Built a fabric boilerplate that lets you install and configure Solr+Jetty on a Ubuntu box.
Madeinstockholm.se---Website
Used madeinstockholm.se as an example on how flask freeze works
My dotfiles
Since I have two workstations now, I started to unify my settings and gather them in a repro.
Also took the chance to open source some of my old Birth frameworks.
Rio
A very lightweight component framework.
View Machine
A RobotsLegs add on, inspired by Djangos route management.
2014
And finally, these are my goals for 2014.
- Mobile. Play more with ios and android.
- JS: Play around with angular, tdd and browserify.
- More Django.
- Learn more git. There are so many inner workings I would like to get to know.
- VIM. So much to learn.
- Open source: contribute more.
- Play more with Linux and my raspberry pi.
- Attend more meetups.
- Convert this blog to Pelican...
- Ship ship ship!
Thats it for now! Follow me on @marteinn_se
Vinylwall 2.0
We have been hard at work and it's finally time to say hello to VinylWall 2.0 for Android and iOS.
This version includes the following features:
- A profile page that will give you a better overview of your collection.
- Badges: A achievement system that rewards collectors with badges depending on a combination of records, artists and record formats. You can find them under your profile page.
- Easier collecting through our very own Silo music api, that delivers more relevant searches. - Sorting: The iOS version shipped initially without sorting, it's added now.
Got feedback? Ping us on @vinylwallapp
Fabric Boilerplate For Jetty+solr
Interested in getting started with Solr+Flask? This is a boilerplate that I built that might get you off the ground. It's a fabric script that helps you to setup Java, Jetty and Solr on Ubuntu (tested on 12.04). It also creates and initializes a Solr core based on provided schema files.
You can find it Jetty+Solr Fabric Boilerplate
PS: Got ideas or improvement tips? Talk to me on @marteinn_se
Case: Static Site Generation Through Flask+flask Freeze
After releasing MadeInStockholm.se i thought to myself, this can be a good example on how you can generate a static site through Flask. So behold, Madeinstockholm.se---Website on GitHub.
It features SQLAlchemy, Flask-Admin, S3 deployment (through Boto) and some Grunt, everything should be covered in the readme. I had tons of fun building this, so enjoy!
Android: Checking When Listview Has Reached The End.
This goes among the same lines as my InteractiveScrollView class for android, that fires a event when the scrolling has reached the end. This does exactly the same thing, but for ListView.
I actually wrote this a while back but forgot to put it up here. Anyways, if you have any comments/ideas. Fork it!
Debugging Tastypie Using Django Debug Toolbar
I'm a big fan of Django Debug Toolbar and wanted to debug my Tastypie based api using just that, after some googling I found the following implementation. It's exactly what I needed, where api result are wrapped in html and therefore triggers the toolbar through middleware. Problem is that the solution is hardcoded. So I took a more flexible approach.
Got any suggestions? Fork it.