SantaNav uploaded.

Just uploaded my first Android app. My neighbour’s daughter couldn’t put it down.

 

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.everytale.santanav

 

 

Designed by me, suggested features by my sons.  Free artwork and music from the web and programming in Java by me.

Will I ever blog here properly again.

Yes I will blog here again, particularly when I talk about Android Dev, Game Project Dev, and programming of video games and robots.  But for the time being; check out my latest #AltDevBlogADay posting.

 

Another #altdevblogaday post

I was going to write another short article about the Raspberry Pi computer and some of the work I’m doing on writing a children’s manual for it. That will have to wait for 15 days, because…

…, I’d promised a friend of mine that I’d post some thoughts of his about lazy game design. The debate I hope it will open will undoubtedly improve the creativity in video games in coming years.

Have a read at:

http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/10/27/game-design-b-minus-should-try-harder/

We need to educate for our Video Games and VFX industries

Good introductory video on:

http://www.iochannel.tv/

Not much about computer science; just a focus on art & game design on computers (with a smattering of maths and physics). All good skills for computer games and VFX but games will need pure computer scientists too; particularly for tools development, system engineering, code optimisation, concurrency & multiprocessor architectures, artificial intelligence, and online products (security, databases).

IMO

Computing Education in Britain, 2011

I recently wrote an article about the state of British computing education for the game development community. A lot of the community already know about the issue but, I am guessing, there are more that have not and especially across the rest of the world.

Please read my article on #AltDevBlogADay and leave a comment there.

Computing in the UK – it is more exciting than ever

After reading Eric Schmidt’s criticism of computing education in the UK, there is now a wave of enthusiasm to remind people that the UK is a exciting place to learn how the technology of our present really works.

Here are a few links which you need to read if you too are interesting in UK Computer (video games and robots!)

• “Mr Willetts said today’s 15- and 16-year-olds were already computer literate, having used computers since early childhood. They needed to move on from being consumers to producers of new IT products.”   http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ee58426a-df9a-11e0-845a-00144feabdc0.html

• BCS welcomes move by David Willetts to transform ICT school curriculum.  http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/41835
• ‘Come and join us’ - http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/hi-tech/12719-university-tech-chief-slams-governments-computer-scientist-stance

Google’s Eric Schmidt criticises education in the UK

I haven’t posted for a while.  I’ve been busy on a new project but I thought this article too important to avoid posting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

 Schmidt said the country that invented the computer was “throwing away your great computer heritage” by failing to teach programming in schools. “I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in UK schools,” he said. “Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but gives no insight into how it’s made.”

Here is the full lecture:

http://live.mgeitf.co.uk/eventVideos/1130968839001

His comments about education are about 43 minutes into it.

How to set a transparent GLSurfaceView

If you want to set a GLSurfaceView to be transparent, the solution is quite simple but takes quite a bit of trial and error
to get there. Here is my trial and error to save you doing it too.

In the android documentation it states that it is possible to make a GLSurfaceView transparent by a call to

getHolder().setFormat(PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT);

This might have been true once but on my device (HTC Desire, with API 8) this can cause the rendering to just look corrupted. It basically appears to be two badly coloured images of what I’m drawing.

Most of the material I found on the web states that you need to use setEGLConfigChooser to select the correct surface format that includes transparency. I guess calling setFormat(PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT) isn’t doing anything to the OpenGL surface.

Common consent appears to say that the desired format is as follows:default
glSurfaceView.setEGLConfigChooser(8, 8, 8, 8, 16, 0);

This gives 32 bits, 8 bits per channel including alpha although the default is 16 bits without alpha (RGB656)

However just calling this will cause my phone to crash. This is because the format is now out of sync with whatever getHolder().setFormat(PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT) gave us. So instead I needed to call

glSurfaceView.getHolder().setFormat(PixelFormat.RGBA_8888);

Finally, the last and least documented requirement is to call

glSurfaceView.setZOrderOnTop(true);

You can easily check this works for you by modifying the SurfaceViewOverlay example in the APIDemos that are supplied with the SDK.

Before it calls

glSurfaceView.setRenderer(new CubeRenderer(false));

Add the lines

 glSurfaceView.setZOrderOnTop(true);
 glSurfaceView.setEGLConfigChooser(8, 8, 8, 8, 16, 0);
 glSurfaceView.getHolder().setFormat(PixelFormat.RGBA_8888);

So, the cubes will appear on top of the hideme buttons when you make them visible.

I hope this helps anyone struggling with a transparent GLSurfaceView.

Bye Bye Virginmedia, Hello B.T.

I’ve switched from Virginmedia to B.T.   Who knows if this will be a good thing or a bad thing but it is one thing, … a Thing!

Anyway, I now have a wireless hub from B.T. and my original Belkin wireless router.  So, last night I decided to wire my Belkin router to the Hub and switch it to be an Access Point.  This means I can have WEP on the Belkin (for my son’s DSi) and leave the BT unchanged.

It was quite easy in the end but there is one caveat.  Basically the default static IP for the Belkin router is 192.168.2.254.  That is, when you select “Use as Access Point” on the router it will show you this as the default IP before you save the settings.  If you leave this setting you won’t be able to access the router again later (without a factory reset) because the B.T. is set to use 192.168.1.xxx for it’s network addresses.  The best advice I can give is to do what I did in the end (after two factory resets) and set it to 192.168.1.32

So all my devices that were using the Belkin still work without change and I have a BT hub with BTFon/Openzone and thus Wifi internet almost everywhere in any city in the UK.   Plus, one additional benefit that I can select ANY land-line telephone from Argos and know that it will work on the telephone line.  Virginmedia telephone lines are not compatible will all telephones and there answering service is limited to 3 rings (unless you pay each month for more!).  We were always running for the phone before the answering service kicked it and couldn’t get a answerphone because NOT ALL PHONES ARE COMPATIBLE.

PLUS PLUS, B.T.s latest offer means I pay nothing for the next 3 months and the overall monthly charge is a lot less (mainly ‘cos I dropped the TV element of the package).

Complete reinstall!

My main hard drive was making funny noises for the past couple of months and it finally started to crash the computer while trying to read some sectors.  I keep regular backups so this isn’t so much of a problem.  I’ve installed a new hard drive (a full half terrabyte replacing a tenth of a terrabyte previously).

The only problem now is that I’ve had to install Windows 7 again, Avast anti-virus & Chrome, Thunderbird & Lightning, Firefox, Steam (obviously), StarcraftII (obviously), Java JDK, Eclipse IDE, Android SDK, TortoiseSVN, TortoiseHG, Microsoft Office, Printer driver, etc. etc. etc.  I won’t go on!  But I did reward myself by playing through the whole of Portal again in under 2 hours.  In comparison to Portal 2, I thought it was a lot slower than I remember.  The moving platforms were annoying after the wonderful light-bridges of Portal 2. The dialogue was still on the button, but knowing the jokes and story twists wasn’t so good the second time around.