In the knowledge that I’m pretty much finished with my third year of university by the end of May, I have been wondering what i should do to fill the summer months besides play guitar, work a bit and generally waste away another summer. I have come to the conclusion i will go back to my roots.

I found my way into programming through web programming, so that means PHP, JavaScript and HTML. When i was looking through my archives of work, i noticed that i haven’t actually managed to save anything i created back in these early days, hence it would be nice to spend a bit of time making something in PHP. The first complex thing i made in the language of servers was a photo-viewing application complete with control panel & user authentication. This was my A-Level Computing project but when i switched server provides to Just Host, i must have left it behind.

And so it is, this summer I will while away the hours re-writing this PHP nightmare, in the hope that it may refresh my knowledge of PHP and get me back into the mindset for web-development (HTML 5 will be the future, so it would be nice to be up-to-date with regards to other technologies).

Another thing i intend to do is a lot of preparation for  next years Three Thing Games tournament, this is something my friends and I have entered a few times but haven’t won, this year however, we will DOMINATE THE COMPETITION. If you’re reading this and you’re any good at programming, or artwork or anything really that we could use in a game, we could do with another pair of hands to make sure that our glory is complete and total. Leave a comment below!

TL;DR – I’m re-learning PHP, also our team for next years Three Thing Game needs another person for global domination to be effective. Apply in the comments.

Lets start with music:

• 120 Days II – the follow-up album from Norways fantastic 120 Days was released  in the UK at the start of March (5 years after their award winning debut album) and it’s not been removed from my turntable since, the band can only be described as prog-electro-rock. With amazing singles like Dahl Disco, Sunkissed, SF and Osaka perfectly balancing each other out and all the time helping to melt and warp your mind through layered rhythms and time signatures. This is most prominent on SF and Osaka, which sound best when not at all sober and completely alone. It’s nice when an album that you’ve been waiting so long for doesn’t disappoint, but instead raises the bar for what can be accomplished in its genre and this album could be the definition of that. Successfully trading out the more krautrock elements from their debut album to focus more on synth-styled electronica, 120 Days have achieved what may well be my album of 2012, only three months into the year. 9/10
• The Shins, Port Morrow – The Shins are a band that everyone quite likes, James Mercer has replaced most of the old members with new, but if i hadn’t told you it’s rather unlikely you’d notice. Everything is still perfectly timed (almost clinically so on this latest album) with the only major difference I’ve noticed in playing being a bit more flare on guitar. Song wise, many critics have shown mixed feelings towards the album with tracks like “Simple Song” getting rave reviews, and others being slated for their my-first-band style lyrics. On the whole i have to agree with the critics which makes a change. The warmth and soul of many songs still exists but is horribly let down by a complete lack of lyrical ingenuity. 7/10
• Cancel The Astronauts, Intervention EP – while not an album this is a fantastic little EP containing a few of the singles we should expect on their debut album due for release some time this year. CTA are a band of many flavours, mixing early naughties pop with later indie. The first track intervention is exceptionally well produced (almost to the point where it seems to lose some soul), you can tell it’s CTA but attempting to make something that will get them (deservedly) noticed by an audience larger than that of Edinburgh  and me. The rest of the EP is just like CTA of old and i love it. manicpopthrills has a good post about the EP if you’re interested and their first EP, “Funny for a Girl” is free here. Best of luck guys! Can’t wait for the album. 7/10

In other news, I’ve just finished reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murikami (author of Norwegian Wood), a fantastic book that follows the unravelling life of a 15 year old boy who runs away from home and that of a man who can talk to cats and seems to understand the world better than anybody else in it. It’s a surreal read that I’ll probably have to go through again to get all of the finer points, but if you want something to keep your mind working at the plot without distancing you from the characters, give it a go.

I took out a two year contract with Virgin Mobile in May 2010 for  an HTC Desire, at the time a flagship phone. However last Saturday morning when I was attempting to text friends, it shut down and refused to boot past the HTC logo, offering nothing more than a few vibrations (I assume an error code).

Thankfully (or not as i was soon to realise), i had been paying for the luxury of phone insurance ever since taking out the contract. I got in touch with my insurance company LSG, who were very polite, understanding and impeccably professional. I was told that my claim was valid and that they would pass my details over to Virgin and I should expect a call about a new phone. This is easy, shouldn’t be too long without a phone. So i went to work feeling curiously naked without my old faithful HTC expecting to receive a call within a day or so. No such thing.

Come Monday, impatience was setting in so I rang through to Virgin Mobile and spoke to another person who told me that they had received the details only recently and were in the process of fulfilling the order. Okay a bit of a delay, I can live with that.. their advisors seem friendly so I’ll give them a break.  I explained to them that, if the phone were to be delivered in the week it should go to my house in Hull, but if at the weekend, could they please send it to my billing address in Lincoln , after some discussion with his manager, the advisor who shall not be named told me that yes that would be fine. I also enquired at this point whether I would need to send back the old phone to which the advisor pretty much said “It doesn’t say anything of the sort here so I would assume not”. Hooray! If I can fix it I may have a phone for my Android development! At this point I was told everything was arranged and I was just waiting for delivery of my new phone.

Wednesday arrives and I’m back in Hull without a land line, thankfully Cameron rescues me with a spare HTC Trophy he has lying around. I give them another call to see what exactly is taking so long. They inform me that they were waiting for me to get in touch to choose my new phone. No one told me I would need to call back, are you just trying to DELAY this process intentionally or do you just not train staff properly in dealing with these cases!? I’m then told i need to call my insurance company to choose a new phone. This information was wrong, I call LSG and they tell me that all phone dealings are done through Virgin as LSG do not have access to their stock systems. Okay, thanks again LSG for your accurate, useful information… Excuse me while I go and talk to Virgin some more.

I call back and explain to the advisor how their business works. So they go to ask their manager what phones I’m entitled to and they offer me a choice of Blackberry phones (they’re circling the drain as a company so who would choose one of those?) or a Samsung Galaxy W which is about £10 a month less than I’m paying monthly on my contract. I ask would it be possible to get a Galaxy S II, but no it’s £5 over my current tariff. There is also an HTC Sensation at £5 under my tariff but it isn’t in stock so they don’t even mention the existence of the phone. Resigned to doom by Virgin Mobile incompetency and lack of flexibility I settle for the Galaxy W. The advisor tells me i should expect a call later in the day to arrange delivery details.

You guessed it, that call never happened. All I get from Virgin is a text at 8AM on Thursday stating that my phone is in the post with YODEL, it doesn’t state where they’re sending it but that i should expect to receive it on Friday…. somewhere, possibly in the UK.

I call home to Lincoln to say they may receive a package for me on Friday and if anyone is in could they keep an eye out. Come Friday, I wait downstairs from 7AM till 1 PM when i really have to start getting on with my pretty busy university life. I call Virgin to see if they can give me a tracking number and they tell me it was an attempted delivery to LINCOLN. Goddamn!!

I call up Lincoln and there is a note in the letterbox saying no one was home to collect. My mum was in from about 10AM with the note being left at 10:34, so they can hardly have tried delivery for long… We have a bliddy loud doorbell too so gawd knows what was going on there… Anyway, I re-arrange delivery for Monday and manage to catch the guy this time. He’s asking for my old phone, as an exchange… My HTC Desire, which I was told I wouldn’t need to send back and hence is now sat on my desk in Hull.. thirty-something miles away.

After taking 10 minutes to calm down (as you can imagine, pretty angry after this entire farce), I give Virgin yet another ring  20 minutes of waiting later, I get through. They say they will put me through to the insurance department after . However the insurance group is Virgin’s new provider and cannot do anything to help me. They put me straight back to the start and I wait some more. Now, I’m literally shaking with rage at this point and rather than subject their advisors to any unnecessary pent up anger, I ask to be put through to a manager. All the managers are busy Of course they are so they offer to have one call me back. HAH I’ve heard this before, “how long will it be?” Around half an hour is the response. About 15 minutes later my phone goes off. Finally! someone is paying attention! Nope, not a manager, its a cold call from a machine at Virgin asking how I thought my dealings with their advisors are JDH fglsikdhgiudtgosaejrhgnfdjdfn.bdktjdlng j,sdb tjkb3UIWEA5HO8TESDLZTKMH I answer the questions, leave a message expressing my anger (I was polite and again didn’t rant at them) and then hang up.

A while later I call them once more and another person takes my call. This chap is more than willing to listen to my moaning for a while and explains that in fact, LSG do require the old phone as proof that the claim is valid. That’s logical why did you tell me otherwise earlier in the week Virgin!? So I agree to have them re-arrange delivery to Hull in the week where I can give my old phone to them. They will call back to arrange times later the advisor says. My arse. So once more it’s a case of wait and see.

So in conclusion, if / when you take out a phone with Virgin, i recommend ignoring the insurance offerings because all you’ll get is a week of utter disappointment and anger followed (possibly) by your new phone (not even at the same price as your old one!) which a delivery man will tantalisingly wave in your face before taking it away again.

Okay, that last bit may have been a bit of dramatisation, he didn’t wave it in front of me, in fact he was as confused as I was. The rest, is completely true.

Oh, and if you’re reading this Virgin, you can apologies at any time by calling me on my mobile number and offering me that Galaxy S II at a heavily discounted rate. Because that’s the only way I’ll be remaining with you come May.

To avoid these kinds of problems in the future, you really have to put some more time into training your staff, they’re friendly and well mannered people but half the time they don’t seem to have a clue about how your business works.

I’ve been attempting to make use of Windows 8 on one of the spare PCs littered around my house since it became available as a developer release, and having done my best to live with it for a few months i thought it would be nice to share a few comments and perceptions.

First of all, lets take a look at the major change. UI.

No, my name isn't tim, neither is this my photo

Here is the screen you’re presented with when you first log in to a Windows 8 machine. Doesn’t look much like Windows XP, Vista or 7 does it? In a (successful) attempt to bring their Metro design philosophy across to a desktop operating system, Microsoft have re-invented the wheel. While this new interface looks visually appealing, it offers very little in the way of new functionality. You can launch your applications and order them (oddly like the old desktop in that sense), but applications can now display “Live Tiles”, which pull useful information gathered from within the application and display it right in your line of site, meaning you don’t necessarily have to open up the weather app to see a forecast.

Through extended use of Windows 8, it soon becomes apparent that this new start screen might as well be nothing more than a Metro application in itself, (in fact, i’d prefer it that way, but i’ll get to that later), a visual layer getting in the way of any meaningful desktop activities. I can understand where Microsoft are coming from though, in a market where desktop is shrinking and giving way to increasingly mobile way of life, they need to come up with a way of getting into (forcing their way may be a better way to look at it) the new market.

Heuristically, the new interface is most definitely optimised for touch input and here is my first real gripe with this incarnation of Windows. In an attempt to make a product for touch devices (tablets & the like), Microsoft appear to have forgotten that the majority of the world see Windows as an operating system designed to run on a desktop computer (with a mouse & keyboard). It seems that they’ve put their current core audience in second place to an emerging market in the hope of satiating both. On the contrary, the lack of support for a mouse on the first screen you interact with baffles most experienced Windows users and sets you in a less than optimal frame of mind. Things don’t get much better in the Metro apps themselves where right-clicking often does nothing and occasionally brings up a context bar that you would expect to be exposed all of the time. I realise that complaining about individual applications is not worth my while, because developers will need time to realise the best ways to design their applications to fit into this new environment, however when (like me) you have 22″ of display hooked up to Windows 8, there really is no need to hide away basic functionality in the same way you would on a phone, where screen real-estate is at best limited.

Underlying this thin layer of Metro minimalism you’ll be surprised to find Windows 7. No really, hit the Desktop launcher in the Metro start screen and suddenly you’re transported into what for all intents and purposes is Windows 7. Now, to me initially this suggested that Microsoft were only half-heartedly bringing Metro to the desktop realm, but after a bit of thinking, this seems less and less likely.

As i stated above, Ballmer & Co need to make a break into the mobile market and they’ve made a good start on this with Windows Phone 7, a very good start. But to truly get a footing in the future computing market, they need something that will run nicely on tablets and they’ve strangely decided to adapt a desktop operating system to suit this role.

I guess what i’m trying to get across here, is that there is a big trend at the moment for touch input to be the preferred method of interaction with a computing device and while this works wonderfully on mobile devices where size really matters and the primary uses are simple communication & content consumption, it does not translate well to a desktop OS where you also have to contend with heavy data entry such as using Word, or Visual Studio. As such, touch can probably be seen as a fad in desktop design, simply there because it can be and not because it’s a solution to some giant problem of HCI.

“So what alternative would you come up with Jack?”. A good question. Personally, i would rather see Windows be a predominantly desktop operating system because it’s very good at being just that. It’s good at heavy workloads & multitasking because it’s been designed like that from the ground up. With the introduction of Metro, you’re in effect trying to build two separate OS’s within the same package where (i imagine, but who knows what’s in the distant future,) very rarely is there a need to switch between the two. So perhaps taking Windows Phone 7 and using that for all touch based devices would be the better solution to this [kind-of-a-but-not-at-all-really] problem.

However, Microsoft really.. REALLY want to push out this Metro design language & all of its XML-based goodness and if they really want to do this on a Desktop computer, they should include it as a secondary alternative. A friend of mine, Cameron suggests another alternative and I agree. They should offer Metro apps up in exactly the same way they do with a regular old Windows Forms app, with an icon on a desktop (or start menu, or task bar etc). I really do like the way Metro looks, in fact my next phone is going to be a Nokia Lumia in all likelihood, so i’m not adverse to the concepts and designs being transported into Microsoft’s desktop products, but they need to be adapted to cope with the way people expect a desktop OS to work.

If in the long run, Microsoft want to completely remove the standard Windowed environment from desktop computers, Windows 8 should probably be looked at in a different light. Instead of a fully fledged operating system think of it as a hybrid between Metro and Windows Forms.

It’s worth noting that historically, computers offer a command line based interface to them too. Microsoft offers Console even today in Windows 7 as a secondary alternative to the GUI that has become commonplace. Before GUI’s of course, everything was done through commands and people didn’t have issue with that (perhaps unaware of other ways of working). However when the windowed environment came into being and the mouse became available, desktop computing was revolutionised. Perhaps this is what Microsoft are hoping to do with Metro & touch based input. Perhaps in the future, Metro will be the de facto standard for Microsoft desktop products with the desktop we see today relegated to nothing more than an application in the same way that Console is today. In which case, i apologise for being very short sighted.

This generally manifests itself in messages as above that show up when you try to add event callbacks in line:

[crayon-4fb92a2678e71/]

Pretty simple code that makes a reference to a button on display and attempts to add an event for onClick. This code is 100% Correct

TO FIX:

1. Make sure you’ve included all the necessary headers:
   [crayon-4fb92a2678eb0/]
2. Right click on your project in the Project Explorer and go into Properties (alternatively Alt+Enter) on the project.
3. Go into Java Compiler and change the “Compiler compliance level” to 1.6
   
4. Apply & Close allowing Eclipse to clean then build your project.

With that, your error should be gone.

Basically, Eclipse will happily build and install your application to an Android device (virtual or IRL)  but it will not launch it. You may find that the debugger will throw up an error or two when the app (that you’ve manually started while swearing modern technology is overrated and more hassle than it’s usually worth) fires off an exception, however you won’t get any logcat results to look through (one of the most useful tools in an Android developers kit).

It took me numerous hours and at least three cups of tea to figure out this one. But before i give you the answer, here’s how i attempted and failed to fix it. After a quick Google of the problem  the nearest match i could find through Stack Overflow was a suggestion to uninstall everything Android development related, so out went Eclipse, ADT and any plugins i had to make my life a bit easier. I began to download everything again and made a cup of tea, of course what with living in Hull, when i got back to my desk about 5% of the download had actually made it from a server through KCOM pipes and into my hard drive. If you’ve downloaded the tools yourself, you’re probably quite aware that they are not particularly big, perhaps under 1Gb in total size but there isn’t a single internet joy that KCOM cannot ruin. I promise you now, if you plan on moving to Hull to do Computer Science the only bit you’ll dislike is the speed of internet once you’re out of The Lawns.

So i re-installed all of these tools (this part at least, didn’t take too long as I’m running a rather delicious new rig) and loaded up the project, clicked debug, ADT installed to the phone and nothing else happened. At which point my mental state could accurately be described as “ASDOIHJ ESIULHG BKAEUHRKEUGHAWRS FJNE<SDGHIKUGWR  IE HT UIWEG T”.

After another cup of tea, i decided to check out the project build settings as these too can sometimes get a bit unstuck. I couldn’t see anything particularly worrying about the settings but one thing I did do that fixed the problem is described below.

TO FIX

DO NOT UNINSTALL ECLIPSE ET AL YET.

1. Go into your debug configurations (accessed by clicking the little arrow next to the bug and selecting Debug Configurations).
2.  Select Android Application and drop through into whichever config you’re attempting (foolishly?) to use.
3. In the Android tab, where it says Launch Action, set it to the starting activity of your application. Do not be duped into thinking “Launch Default Activity” actually works, sometimes it does but mostly it’s just there to confuse and aggravate you… A lot.
4. Apply & Close
5. If you’re still not debugging correctly then you may proceed to attempt a download of the tools over the “broadband” at your house in Hull.

The problem (I believe) is that Eclipse builds up a list of static integers in its own class called R. The R class is updated every now and again to reflect the latest changes to your own source code and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to compile resulting in further build errors often with Eclipse pointing you in the complete wrong direction.

TO FIX:

Make sure that there are not any references to

[crayon-4fb92a2679f51/]

at the top of your source files. Sometimes Eclipse thinks it’s helping by putting these here. It’s really not.

If you’re still getting strange build errors with odd bits of code being highlighted then make sure your XML layouts are syntactically correct. As with most things, this can really confuse Eclipse too.

Recently, I’ve been thrust into the world of Android development, what with my project, some coursework and a few things that have taken my fancy and it has to be said, only about 40% of my time is spent doing useful things like coding, or designing the XML layouts. So here, i will write a new feature that explains any issues i’ve found and how to fix them, not only in the hope that Google / other responsible parties will come along and do something to resolve them, but also just in case anybody else happens across these problems.

I know this highly unoriginal set of posts can be found all over the internet, but sometimes, just writing or talking over a problem can be the key to resolving issues. And sometimes it isn’t.

Naturally I’ve spent many hours trying to decide whom should get my hard earned money for the next couple of years and the choice comes down to Nokia and Sony. The new Nokia Lumia series look absolutely fantastic, their build quality is supreme and the Lumia 800 hums along very nicely with surprisingly up-to-date hardware for a Nokia phone. The only issue i have (if it can be called such) is that i have not yet lived with Windows Phone, I’ve played with it a few times but haven’t had a month of primary use to see if it’s something i could live with. This is an issue as here in the UK it’s not uncommon to have contracts that last 18 – 24 months which is a long time to be stuck with an OS you don’t like.

The alternative offerings that Sony have released without Ericsson (did you know they’ve split ways for a few billion dollars?) look stunning too, the Xperia P especially is a fantastic bit of design and comes with Android which I’ve been using for a fair while now and have to admit is very usable. Sony’s new range of phones was released at MWC this year and since then i’ve been stuck trying to decide which one i would like to use more.

In the first semester i struggled my way through compilers and languages where we had to make a compiler for a made-up language, i don’t know if you’ve ever tried to write a compiler but trying to bend your mind around the error messages you get from tools like bison and yacc range from “okay, i almost understand that” to “what the hell? shift reduce my ass!”. However i was rather pleased with the outcome of the project and for once genuinely felt i had learnt something new and useful. My other module was Data Mining, which was about as interesting as it sounded, we were provided with some anonymised data and told to find patterns that would allow us to analys & occasionally categories. While i did learn some new techniques and i can definitely see why it’s a large, very useful and continuously expanding field, i mainly learnt that it’s something for people who like statistics. Lots of statistics.

Now we’re into the second semester and I’m much more in my element studying distributed systems and mobile platform development. These are the kinds of things i enjoy as they have a direct & clearly visible impact on the software we produce. Mobile development especially takes my interest as we are forever moving into a “post-PC” world where more and more people interact with technology in ways other than a mouse and keyboard (and no i do not mean Microsoft Kinect, which while a fun and intriguing interaction with computing has some way to go before being genuinely useful).

My project as some of you may be aware is to develop an Android application that plugs in to the Mantis Bug Tracker system for simple mobile use. When i started the project there were no other similar pieces of software available, but as of my time of writing there are two, one an official HTML interface provided by Mantis themselves and the other an exceptionally well thought out Android application. However, when finished i intend to make mine free of charge.

Here’s the main menu, i don’t want to show off too much more at the moment as it is most definitely pre-alpha. But you can see the kind of setup i am hoping to achieve.

In other news, i recently bought myself a turntable (Technics SL-12010MK2) which despite being VERY old and a bit bashed about from club use still sounds fantastic with an Ortofon M2 Red on it. It now takes pride of place on top of my media stack which compromises of said turntable, Arcam CD73, and Sony PS3, hooked up to B&W 685′s via a Sony DA-3600ES amp. Fantastic i assure you. For the next upgrade I’m thinking of getting a new center channel for my setup (currently using a naff Logitech center) and it will either be a HTM61 or HTM62 depending on how many dollars i can find at the time.