daniel bigham.ca

Watching kids get smarter
July 17, 2012

This year for family day (February) we went for a walk on some trails with two year old Eli (and Emily and Charlie)... Eli was fascinated by the contrails left behind aircraft and he enjoyed looking up and spotting as many as he could find. At one point he had identified four contrails in the sky all that the same time. He called them "tails".

A few days ago we were driving along and he asked me where the tails come from. I talked about the engines, and he remembered the big blue engines on the plane we took to Florida, and that what comes out of the engines has some water in it, and way up in the sky the air is really cold like winter time, and the little bits of water freeze and create the white stuff that we see.

Last night he chose the encyclopaedia as his bed time story.

Whenever he picks the encyclopaedia, he always turns to the page on aircraft and ooh's and ahh's about the different pictures.

As he looked at the pictures, he asked me where in the plane the water goes. I said, well, there isn't really much water in the plane, but there is lots of gas.

At this, he was confused, and I couldn't figure out why he was do adamant that there should be a bunch of water in the plane. Then it all made sense... he said something like "but the tails get made from water"!

Wonderful to see the wheels turning up there.

Internet Commenters
July 15, 2012

Today I read this article on The Verge, entitled RIM: developers still 'amazed' by BlackBerry 10, not leaving platform.

The article itself seems fair. It's slightly negative, but it doesn't reek of the ridiculous negative slant that I grew accustomed to from Gizmodo.

What gets me are commenters. How bad it is probably varies from website to website, but it never ceases to amaze me how negative and disrespectful people are. I liken it to road rage -- where vehicle boundaries create a kind of abstraction so that people relate to one another as if it weren't actually another person. Likewise with internet commenters -- people often come across as being extremely rude and disrespectful, way more than people typically are in real life.

In this case, I added a positive comment to the article:

I have been deving BlackBerry apps for the last year and a half and have loved it. I made an app and submitted it to all of the major platforms out there and earned 100 times more on BB than on iOS. I've made about 20 PlayBook apps so far and have earned over $200/hr for my efforts. I went to BB10 jam and had a great time, and I've had a great experience deving for BB10 so far. It would be great if more devs checked out BB10 although I'd be smart to shut up so there is less development competition for the millions of BB10 owners in the next couple of years.

And I got this lovely reply from a "Dan Gleibitz":

Which app? Flix? That would be because iOS already has a Netflix client which is free and far more full-featured. And doesn't rely on a host PC.
Your other "apps" are more like utilities to replicate functions that are built into the other OSs or covered by quality apps. The problem here is that you may be hoping that these shortfalls persist into BB10 so that there is a market for your work, but if they persist, BB10 will be well behind the competition and a poor consumer choice.

Ugh. I especially love the part where he writes "apps" in quotation marks as if to question whether my efforts are worthy of the term "app".

All of his specific comments miss the point because the app I wrote for all of the platforms is "Baby Names" which isn't Flix and isn't one of my utility apps, but regardless, what kills me isn't what he is saying, it's how he's saying it, and the negativity that undergirds his reply.

While I'm very thankful that sites like "The Verge" have cropped up which aren't full of articles that carry immature negativity and slant, it makes me sad that it is almost impossible to stick one's neck out in a world of negativity, make a positive comment, and not expect to get slapped by negativity and disrespect.

BB10: How to add a splash screen
July 10, 2012

The following instructions use PNG images, but JPG images work as well.

Right click bar-descriptor.xml and select Open With, then Text Editor.

Look for:

Note that this comment still refers to the 1024x600 resolution of the PlayBook, but we'll want to use a resolution of 1280x768.

Splash Screen for Landscape-only App

If your app is only intended to be used in landscape mode, then replace the commented out splash screen markup in bar-descriptor.xml with:

<asset path="splashscreen.png">splashscreen.png</asset>
<splashscreen>splashscreen.png</splashscreen>

Obviously be sure to drag and drop your splash screen image into the root directory of your project.

Also, in the <initialWindow> section of bar-descriptor.xml, add:

<aspectRatio>landscape</aspectRatio>
<autoOrients>false</autoOrients>

Splash Screen for Portrait-only App

The <splashscreen> tag allows you to specify both the landscape and portrait splash screens. To do that, you separate the file names with a colon. (:)

Since we only want the portrait splash screen, we want:

<asset path="splashscreen.png">splashscreen.png</asset>
<splashscreen>:splashscreen.png</splashscreen>

(Note the colon prior to the file name)

Obviously be sure to drag and drop your splash screen image into the root directory of your project.

Also, in the <initialWindow> section of bar-descriptor.xml, add:

<aspectRatio>portrait</aspectRatio>
<autoOrients>false</autoOrients>

Splash Screen for Portrait + Landscape App

The <splashscreen> tag allows you to specify both the landscape and portrait splash screens. To do that, you separate the file names with a colon. (:)

    <asset path="splashscreen_portrait.png">splashscreen_portrait.png</asset>
    <asset path="splashscreen_landscape.png">splashscreen_landscape.png</asset>
    <splashscreen>splashscreen_landscape.png:splashscreen_portrait.png</splashscreen>

Obviously be sure to drag and drop your splash screen image into the root directory of your project.

Also, in the <initialWindow> section of bar-descriptor.xml, add:

See also:

Some documentation of the <splashscreen> tag

Search terms:

"bb10 splash screen", "bb10 splashscreen", "bb10 how to create a splash screen", "bb10 creating a splash screen"

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