clothing

Sorting Standard Sizes

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2 months ago
by jjohnson in

Last week I was finishing up some stuff to do with size/color selection on the product detail “page” of the Android app I’m building. This turned out to be pretty complicated. The overall solution is bigger than the scope of this post but basically, the detail page should display all of the colors and sizes available for the product. If the customer selects a color it should filter the other lists, somehow marking the sizes that are sold out for that color. It should do the same thing for sizes, filtering colors if the customer selects a size. It More >

occupy-camp

Why the Occupy Camp is Misguided

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2 months ago
by jjohnson in

Every time I see press about the Occupy folks (which is constantly) I groan inwardly. There are so many problems with the world, our government, our cultural et al right now that it is painful to watch such a large movement about something that makes so little sense. I also am frustrated at the popularity of socialism in a country that, not too long ago, fought hot and cold wars to stop it.

First let me say that I have one of “those friends” on Facebook that is always posting poorly conceived political platitudes that directly insult the opposing More >

die-callout

TPL vs Async, What’s the difference?

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2 months ago
by jjohnson in

 

Prior to working on a MonoDroid project for my employer, I had near-zero experience with multi-threaded programming. On mobile devices, if you hang the UI up for more than a few seconds (varies by platform), the OS will tell the user your app is unresponsive and offer to close it. Thus, it becomes very important to move potentially-long-running process out of the UI thread and I have been forced to dive into multi-threading whether I want to or not

Earlier this year, before I started More >

pessimism

The Case for Pessimism

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2 months ago
by jjohnson in

I recently read an article at popsci about optimism. Like most of Popsci’s stuff, it’s over-hyped and exaggerated but the basic premise is that humans have a tendency to be more optimistic than realistic, somehow believing that the odds don’t apply to us. If that were true it would mean that somewhere there are some really unlucky outliers that bring the average way down.

I’m a self-proclaimed pessimist, something that can be rather irritating to my wife. And most people would say that pessimism is a negative thing. But I think there More >

grimwar-logo

Grimwar 2 via CodeIgniter

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2 months ago
by jjohnson in

I built Grimwar.com in 2009 because my friends played Magic the Gathering frequently and talked a lot about a collection manager that would allow them to see each others’ collections, save deck builds and create wishlists. It started as a simple database of cards but slowly grew into a fairly-full-featured site. The problem is, it started without any real vision for UX or code and thus things were just tacked on as fast as they could when people had new feature requests. It became a pain in the rear More >

fable3-wallpaper

Fable 3 and User Input

0
3 months ago
by jjohnson in

It’s been too long since I posted. I have had a lot of stuff going on. Work is really busy because I’m working with a variety of unfamiliar technologies that require a lot of new learning. Home is really busy because we have two kids, a baby and I’m always coding something up when I actually have spare time! I have a lot more to post about mono and Android development but I wanted to take a little side trip to talk about something really important in game development: user input.

I recently purchased the PC version More >

monodroid

Mono for Android Tips

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4 months ago
by jjohnson in

I’m currently working on an Android shopping application for my employer that is built in .NET using Mono for Android by Xamarin. You don’t need to click any of those links, they’re just for reference

This is a collection of random hints, tips, observations that I have encountered while working on this project. If you’re wondering whether to use Mono in your project some of these comments may give you an idea what it’s like to work in Mono for Android.

    More >

    NetWeekly: Edition 3

    2
    5 months ago
    by jjohnson in

    First of all, today is my 30th birthday. I was born on Wednesday, September 2nd, 1981. As far as I can tell, nothing else that was that interesting happened. However, interesting stuff happened this week. And I’m here with another edition of NetWeekly to kill your productivity with stupid links:

     

    More >

    amazon-cart-dropdown

    Amazon: Redesign in the Works?

    0
    5 months ago
    by jjohnson in

    I must have landed in a test group today because I’ve got a brand new Amazon. I visited their home page today to discover this:

     

    What!?…no left nav and the header is all…light. It’s a lot cleaner than their current, button-laden circus.

     

    The persistent browse links are gone, replaced with a dropdown.

     

    The sign-in area is also packed into a dropdown.

     

    The cart dropdown is nice. I like the big, clean icon showing the number of items. Also notice the different sections on the homepage (Where it says “Airport Mania 2″). That’s More >

    So You Want to be a Programmer

    0
    5 months ago
    by jjohnson in

    It seems like a lot of people that I talk to are at least mildly interested in programming for a variety of reasons. I assume, if you’re reading this, that you’re either a programmer who’s curious what I have to say about the learning process, or you’re a noob (I mean that in a friendly way) that doesn’t know where to start. In this age, programming is incredibly important given the amount of technology we are surrounded with. It’s a valuable and useful skill whether you use it for fun or profit. The best part is…you can learn to be More >

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