July 13th, 2011 / 1 Comment » / by Austin Rasmussen
Are you managing your application preferences like this?
SharedPreferences preferences =
PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
Editor prefEditor = preferences.edit();
prefEditor.putInt("myPreferenceName", 42);
prefEditor.commit();
Well, there’s a much simpler way to manager application preferences that is built into the Android framework!
Read more…
June 25th, 2011 / No Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
In my previous article, TEMPer USB Thermometer Scheduled Task/Service, I discussed a Windows utility that I made that could periodically check the room temperature using a USB thermometer. I thought that a cool extension of this would be to use it to decide when to turn my window air conditioner on and off. In order to control the air conditioner, I’ll be using the VexedLogic.X10 library to communicate with an X10 FireCracker to send the on and off commands.
June 19th, 2011 / 1 Comment » / by Austin Rasmussen
I have been looking around for some type of thermometer that I can attach to my computer for a little while. My main purpose is that I’d like to control my window air conditioner unit since it doesn’t have a thermostat on it, and I’d like to try and conserve some energy by cycling it on and off according to the ambient temperature (that’s for the next article though).
June 8th, 2011 / 1 Comment » / by Austin Rasmussen
In my previous article, .NET X10 CM17A (FireCracker) Control, I described a library that I created that controls X10 devices. The result was a console application that can be used to send commands to individual X10 devices, as well as a .NET library that is reusable in other .NET applications.
While this article is more of an overview of the Windows Task Scheduler, it also describes one of the practical uses of the FirecrackerCtl.exe console application from the article.
For example purposes, I’d like to control my living room lights in the morning during the weekdays.
June 4th, 2011 / 4 Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
Last year I started to explore different home automation possibilities and stumbled upon X10. This looked like a cool solution since it doesn’t require any new wiring in the house, which I couldn’t do anyways since I’m renting. It was also quite inexpensive, and there were plenty of sellers on eBay selling them for cheaper than X10.com.
My main purpose for this was just to control the lighting in my living room. Since none of the lamps are on light switches, I was looking for a better way to turn them on and off. With X10, I am able to use a remote to turn the lamps on/off and also brighten and dim them, which totally beats needing to turn each lamp on individually.
This was great, until I discovered… Read more…
May 20th, 2011 / 2 Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
=================================== Schema referenced by Map 'BizTalk_Server_Project1.Map1' has been deleted. The local, cached version of the BizTalk Server group configuration is out of date. You must refresh the BizTalk Server group configuration before making further changes. (Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn) ------------------------------ For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47400&ProdName=Microsoft+BizTalk+Server+2010&ProdVer=3.9.469.0&EvtSrc=Microsoft.BizTalk.ExplorerOM.Resources&EvtID=IDS_ERR_FIND_SCHEMA ------------------------------ Program Location: at Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn.Nodes.ApplicationsFolder.BuildApplicationCache(AsyncStatus status) at Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn.Nodes.ApplicationsFolder.LocalRefresh(Object o, ResultsChangedEventArgs e)
I must say, this is probably one of the most frightening BizTalk errors that I’ve experienced. It’s not the error itself… it’s because when this happens, all of your deployed applications seem to disappear. The Applications tree won’t expand if you attempt to view them in the Administration Console.
May 14th, 2011 / 4 Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
Initially, the web service response that was seen in Android Lists V: Accessing and Consuming a SOAP Web Service II was parsed using SAX. I discussed that the way SAX can be used in Android is identical to the way it is used in any other Java application. This is useful because a SAX implementation can be reused between a Java desktop application and an Android mobile application without any special tailoring to make it work for Android.
There is another SAX option that is provided by Android. It offers a few shortcuts and a cleaner looking syntax than typical SAX handlers.
May 7th, 2011 / No Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
In a previous article, Android Lists V: Accessing and Consuming a SOAP Web Service II, I discussed the various options available for parsing XML on Android and showed how to implement a SAX handler. The SAX handler was used to parse the response of a SOAP web service into StockQuote objects for use in the ListView in the StockList application.
An alternative to using a SAX handler to parse the response is to utilize the XmlPullParser. In this article, I’ll show how we can substitute XmlPullParser for the SAX handler that was previously used.
April 30th, 2011 / 9 Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
Continued from: Android Lists IV: Accessing and Consuming a SOAP Web Service I
When we left off, we were able to see the result XML that was retrieved from the SOAP web service that was called with the StockQuoteFetcher. Now it’s time to parse that XML data into Java objects, so that the data can be used within the StockViewer application.
April 23rd, 2011 / 6 Comments » / by Austin Rasmussen
This one issue has turned out to be a lot more difficult and complicated than one would imagine it to be. You’ll most likely run into this when you try to upload a file greater than 4 MB using ASP.NET.
