Facebook Photo Picker for Android

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Select Album Screen

On a recent project, we needed a widget that would allow users to select a photo from their Facebook albums. “Surely the new Facebook Android SDK must support this.” I thought. Alas, my hopes were unfulfilled. “Well, I bet there is a third-party solution for this!”, I surmised, but again, my search was for naught. At this point I decided to roll up my sleeves and do it myself.

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want ~ Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

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The Mystical 9 patch

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want
Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

I recently encountered some blank stares from some colleagues regarding certain aspects of the 9-patch.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be all that much documentation out there explaining the ins and outs of nine patch, possibly adding to the mystique, but then again, maybe there isn’t all that much to explain.

Here I’ll outline the basics of the 9-patch, and you can comment as to whether it indeed makes simple sense… or instead, communicate your own blank stare with some scathing criticism below in the comments section.

Communicating with a software engineer

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Like any working professional, software engineers are extremely busy. There is more code to write than there is time. For this, we can be very picky with which tools we choose to communicate. A normal day can be filled with meetings, email , and then actually trying to write code. For the engineer, we have time for few things, and writing code is top priority. So, what’s the best method for getting a developer’s attention?

Here’s some tactics that will help you get in touch quickly with the guys building the next best life changing tools.

Managing from India – 5 tips

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I’m writing this post from Mysore, India where I’m working for the entire month of February.

Coming here was a nail-biter for me, but not because of typical western concerns like bedbugs, heat, smog, or monsoons. What terrified me was the idea of traveling all this way and not being able to do my job effectively. I oversee operations and finances at Grio, participate in business development, and am currently managing two projects. If anything were to prevent me from working, I would need to grab the next flight and go home – arriving a minimum of 40 hours later!

The fundamental paradox of Stack Overflow’s requirement of objectivity

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Stack Overflow requires that questions be largely objective, but is based around a voting system that would be largely unnecessary if all questions actually were. The requirement for objectivity can be readily tested by asking a subjective question and watching how quickly it’s removed, but it’s also made explicit in their blog posts:

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers.

their FAQ:

…open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site…

and the reasons a question might be closed:

We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

The message is quite clear: objective good, subjective bad.

A Software Consulting Conundrum: Providing Estimates While Staying Agile

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Software Estimates

As a software consulting firm, Grio strives to provide high quality, high value software to its clients. We embrace an agile software development methodology based on Scrum. This iterative approach provides our clients with flexibility to adapt and change their product over the course of development as discoveries are made while using the software.

This flexibility can prove challenging when providing up front estimates regarding project costs. The problem arises that providing an estimate that is too high may lose you the contract; Estimating too low can result in several outcomes:

Adventures in Unity

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Constructing our next internal video game (Whack Attack) in the Unity software system has been a joyful experience and a return to my roots as a video game programmer. Instead of dealing with tables and lists for an enterprise web application, I find myself programming mole AI and hit reactions. As an internal project, the few hours a week I get to spend making cartoon mammals run around my phone are a welcome diversion, and makes my return to client work that much more satisfying.

Unit vs. Acceptance Testing (Part 1)

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You don’t know the power of Test Driven Development

As a recent convert to Test Driven Development (or TDD as his friends call him), I was surprised to hear that there were in fact 2 kinds of developer driven testing.  The standard one that everyone knows of is unit testing:  writing little testXXX methods that test a single publicly exposed method.  But the lesser known – but just as important – are acceptance tests:  tests which verify that  a group of classes working together properly fulfill some functionality.

So this first post will take a closer look at the first type of testing, unit tests, and will go into the value it provides to you as a developer.