Written 18th February, 2013Implementing a search activity into your android application can be quite a breeze. If you're working with search in an ActionBar, the framework usually handles the load of the code- all you have to do is define your search menu item in the ActionBar. This simplification comes with some issues though.
The Problem
Often while implementing a search, we want to pass contextual data along with our query. This is actually covered in the Creating a Search Interface article on the Android Developers site, but the code provided does not work with a SearchWidget. Traditionally, we would override the onSearchRequested method, but since the SearchWidget dispatches the search intent, we don't really have a way to intercept the intent and pass additional data.
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Written 7th November, 2012If you are a reader from the GTA, you have probably heard about the PRESTO card. Just recently, GO Transit has announced that December of 2012 will host the last monthly pass sales. This means everyone riding the GO will require either a PRESTO card or paper ticket purchased from a ticket machine or teller.
This is great news as it pushes the state of transit in the GTA in a forward direction while unifying systems at least with a common way to pay, if not more. Now that everyone in town will have one of the shiny PRESTO cards you are so proud to carry around, why not make yours a little different and stand out?
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Written 8th October, 2012Introduction
DaRoms.com has been a favourite side-project of mine for years. It was actually my first foray into the Web; started when my high school classmate and I wanted to create a method for our peers to share files for use on the school computers. It has evolved an incredible amount over the years and gone through periods of enormous popularity filled by gaps scarce of visitors.
Thanks to some really dedicated fans and a huge interest in emulation during the site's growth, I was able to venture down some pretty strange alleys, some successful, some disastrous, but always came out learning something important. I believe DaRoms has taught me more about the web, granted me more heart attacks, and many more lessons-learned than any of my other projects.
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