Introducing Biografy
Dec 24, 2017
What is Biografy? Biografy is a lifelogging app that automatically builds a timeline of each day. The Events view logs events from various apps including music, podcasts, videos, calls and chats. Each event includes rich detail such as the time, activity (stationary, walking, biking, etc.), and location/place. The Motion view lists car/transit trips, bike rides, runs, and walks. With the Map view, you can see where you were when each event occurred and gain insights like where you spend your time based on the clusters of pins.
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➦ React Native: Is It Worth It?
Nov 27, 2017
Intro When new technologies start gaining momentum in the Android community, the pragmatic (or lazy) among us eventually have to ask ourselves, “Is it worth it?” After the initial arrival and departure of the hype train, some of these become trusted tools we use in almost every app. Think RxJava and Dagger.
React Native may be on its way to earning a place in the same club. Once we get past the fact that JavaScript on Android and HTML in JavaScript seem pretty damn weird at first, there’s a lot to like.
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➦ Things I've Learned Since Moving to Berlin
Sep 23, 2017
I’ve lived in Berlin for a bit more than six months now. Here’s a list of some of the things I’ve learned:
It is possible to survive a summer without air conditioning. It’s also possible to go all summer without a mosquito bite. I don’t miss having a car. Public transit is great here so I typically only need one to haul things like furniture. And I can rent one on demand pretty easily with apps like DriveNow.
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➦ Aufwiedersehen, Houston! Hallo, Berlin!
Feb 02, 2017
Anyone who has talked to me for more than 10 minutes has probably heard me mention my love for Berlin. I first visited the city about six years ago and almost immediately resolved to make it my home one day. I’m thrilled to finally announce that it’s happening! I’ll be joining Zalando in Berlin next month to do Android and hopefully step up my fashion game a bit. Radical Agility sounds like engineering nirvana to me!
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➦ Multiple Developers, One App: How to Not Break Everything
Oct 22, 2016
This was my third time attending the Big Android BBQ in Hurst, TX and my third time to present at it. Perhaps my favorite thing about the conference (aside from the obvious BBQ) is reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. This year I’ve had the pleasure of meeting people from all over the world and learning that we know a lot of the same people. Small world, indeed.
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➦ Things That Suck About Android Development
Mar 18, 2016
I presented “Things That Suck About Android Development” at this year’s mdevcon conference in Amsterdam. It’s a great conference in an amazing city. I highly recommend it to anyone developing mobile apps.
The title is admittedly a bit sensational, but my goal was to highlight many of the painful parts about developing for Android and how to avoid/fix them.
The slides are available here on Speaker Deck. Top 10 Albums of 2015
Jan 02, 2016
I’m a bit late with my annual Top 10 list, but here it is roughly ranked by Google Music play count:
Earl Sweatshirt - I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside I was finally lucky enough to see him live and he didn’t disappoint. Another great release. This soundtracked numerous skateboard and chill sessions. Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06 His “Hell Can Wait” EP made my list last year and I knew this one would be on this year’s list right away.
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➦ Using a Third Party FAB with CoordinatorLayout
Jun 28, 2015
Before the Design Support Library was announced at Google I/O last month, I had numerous third party libraries in my projects for various elements of Material Design. I’ve enjoyed replacing the nav drawer, tabs, and parallax scrolling libraries with their support library counterparts. However, on one of my projects, we needed an expanding floating action button (FAB) similar to the one in Inbox, which the support library does not currently provide.
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➦ The Time I Interviewed at Google
Jun 09, 2015
I’ve had a pretty big secret for the past month or so; something that only my friends and family know about. We’ve all been there, sneaking around interviewing for a new job like we’re having an affair. Only this time, it was different. As an Android developer, this was like trying out for the majors. No…seriously, y’all…Google invited me to interview.
My adventure started early last month as I was triaging my inbox.
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➦ Loading a List of Objects from Firebase
Apr 06, 2015
I’ve been working with Firebase lately in preparation for adding data synchronization to my Music Library app. Their docs did a great job of getting me set up. Using the sample app as a guide, I even got Google+ OAuth working without much trouble. From there, it didn’t take long to load data into a Firebase instance partitioned by Google account. All that was left was to query the data out of Firebase and I’d be able to see the sync magic in action.
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