Beginning Tizen Development on the Gear S

I’ve been reading about Tizen, the mobile OS co-sponsored by Samsung and Intel, for almost 2 years, but I’ve waited to begin learning Tizen development until I could obtain a commercially available device. The Gear S is the latest in Samsung’s smartwatch line (Cnet has a detailed review) and at Uncorked Studios we have a […]

my first demo: an apple II story

While cleaning out my closets today, I ran into this drawing I proudly made after presenting my first work of software on Oct 25, 1994. I was an enthusiastic 13-year-old member of the Portland Apple II User’s Group, which met monthly on the Tektronix campus in Beaverton. Of course, in 1994 the Apple II was […]

AsyncTasks, Runnables, Handlers, and Threads, oh my!

Not every Android app has to deal with multithreading, but any app that needs to contact Google, Facebook (or any other web-services API) or load data from a local database needs to consider how to properly handle method calls that are not guaranteed to terminate in any reasonable period of time. (The Android Developer’s Guide […]

The many joys of LEGO

I have a few permanent LEGO/Duplo items around the house, including this plant stand, so it was cool to see that an architectural team took LEGO decor to a new level. LEGO is the best toy I can think of for introducing kids to engineering and physics ideas while encouraging creativity. And of course, there’s […]

Ride In Style 1.0

After many months of development and testing, I’m excited to announce that the first beta of my first Android app, Ride In Style, has been released to the App Market on behalf of Pinpoint Pickup! I’m sure there will be many more challenges to come as the app is deployed to different types of devices […]

Assessing Password Strength

Using strong passwords is an essential aspect of securing our identities and accounts that we access over the web. There are already several online tools available to help us score the strength of our passwords, some great examples being Password Meter and Password Strength. Now there’s a new tool which uses a tiny slideshow of […]