Comments for Toni Westbrook dot Com

Comment on 5 Reasons for Putting Your Personal Code Into Subversion by Toni

Toni — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:29:28 +0000

First off: Chris is the man for many reasons - two of which include: being a damn good engineer, and a Ghostbusters fan. So you should also listen to him - he has a lot of svn experience.

Definitely a good point about non-source files as well - I keep all my electronics related files in subversion (CAD designs, schematics, firmwares, FPGA synthesis resources, etc), and documentation as well. And actually, it would be neat to see more svn plugins for non-programming related apps out there.

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 6 by Darwin

Darwin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:20:42 +0000

*edit to post above - the resources go in the ’src’ folder/filter not the package one, late here and the way it’s laid out fooled me

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 6 by Darwin

Darwin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:03:44 +0000

Figured it out, it was actually kind of obvious just a little different than what I’m used to. Had to throw the resource files (images/music) in a folder (just made one on c:\ for simplicity) and then right click on your package->import->general->file system. Once I got to that point I just navigated to the folder that I had my resources in, checked them all off and hit import. I originally imported them to the project root but that didn’t work, once I moved them over a couple levels to my package ‘folder’ they compiled into the COD no prob. There may be a quicker way to do this but after messing around for a while this worked for me, the “/” for the music was in fact needed as well.

Thanks for the response and the best tutorial I’ve found so far on this subject! I still have a few kinks to work out where I went and modified the code a bit, but it seems to be a success other than that.

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 6 by Toni

Toni — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:06:49 +0000

Hi Darwin -

I know using the Blackberry JDE I just dropped resources (including the midi file) into the root of the project, and then the getBitmapResource/getResourceAsStream methods were able to find them (I had used a leading slash for getResourceAsStream, not sure if it’s necessary but make sure you have it if you haven’t tried that).

I haven’t worked with Eclipse using Java before, you may have to set a property of the resource to be included with the package if such a property exists (I know you have to do this same type of thing with Visual Studio and ASP.NET applications).

Let us know if you find a solution for this when working with Eclipse.

Comment on 5 Reasons for Putting Your Personal Code Into Subversion by Chris

Chris — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:49:27 +0000

Having worked worked with Toni, I can confirm that he has botched many programs. Of course I am kidding, but he makes a great point with subversion. I would like to add that it is also very useful when dealing with items other than source code. I am currently using it for OpenOffice files while writing a massive amount of documentation for Search Lucene API. Although I am the only person writing it, subversion allows me to easily work in multiple locations on different computers without accidentally overwriting my changes. I even have my girlfriend on subversion for her lesson plans, and it has saved her more than once in retrieving information that would have otherwise been lost and gone forever. SVN has an advanced binary comparison algorithm, so changes are stored efficiently inside the system. The bottom line is that Toni is a smart dude, so listen to him!

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 6 by Darwin

Darwin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:36:07 +0000

I’m getting an error with the music. I’ve provided my own midi but I’m not sure where to put it so that it gets compiled into the COD file. Commenting out the music calls I’m getting a null pointer exception. Loading screen works fine but I think I’m having issues with the resources loading correctly. I’ve tried dumping them in every possible path with no luck. Any suggestions? Using JDE 4.3 and the latest Eclipse plugin so it should work out just fine.

Any help would be tremendous. Thanks!

Comment on Creating a Blackberry GPS Tracker by Toni

Toni — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:46:45 +0000

Richard - this is mainly directed toward programmers, so if you don’t have much experience in development, it would definitely be a good idea to snag one already made. I don’t know of any specific ones, but I tried googling “blackberry gps logger” and did find one mentioned, you might want to check that one out.

Cliff - are you using a Verizon BB 8830? I know until recently they didn’t open up the GPS functionality to third party applications, which would probably cause it to freeze up like that - I think Verizon released a new official version of the OS that might allow third party use. If you don’t have a Verizon let me know. As for the simulator, I’m not sure how it exports the virtual GPS or if the attributes specified for Horizontal/Vertical Accuracy/Power Consumption etc are the same, so I wouldn’t rely on it too much.

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 2 by Toni

Toni — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:41:15 +0000

Thanks for the kudos, guys, I’m glad it’s helping people.

Bullghost - trackwheelClick, keyDown, keyUp, etc are all methods of the “Field” class and any classes inherited from it. In this fashion, you can make each field react differently if it receives a keyboard/trackball action. Managers are derived from the Field class as well, so if you’re extending a Manager class, like we did with CustomManager above, you can simply add a “trackWheel” method just like we did above for _startButton. I’m not sure if that answers your question - let me know exactly what you’re trying to do so I understand better.

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 2 by bullghost

bullghost — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 14:35:53 +0000

yes iam agree with sine, much2x helpfull then any other on internet,
i have a question
can we add event on custom manager
to handle the input , like trackwheelClick, or other key event ?
can you please make the example .

Thank You toni

regards,
bullghost

Comment on Creating a Blackberry Game - Part 2 by kmd

kmd — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:52:09 +0000

Finally, a straightforward tutorial that doesn’t assume I’ve been programming for 10 years. Thanks for this.