Webmann

STO Bus Finder

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:30:00 -0500

Hey, so, my first Android app!

Here it is, for anyone that's interested: STO Bus Finder

It's a simple enough app, and I'll be adding to it more as time goes on. Essentially, the busses in my area have a service whereby you text in a number corresponding to a bus stop and they send back a text with the times that the next busses will be passing by. What the app does, then, is that it sends the text for you and then recieves and formats the reply.

The main feature is that you can store favourite stops so that with only a couple taps you can know when the next bus to work leaves, or how soon you would have to leave work to catch the next bus.

I mostly made this app for my own convenience, and use it frequently, but given it's convenience I felt it expedient to give others the opportunity to try it out.

Future plans for the app include the capability to automatically populate the favourites list with frequently fetched stops and (most definitely) better french translation.

File Renaming Wizard

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 19:30:00 -0500

Alright, so this will most certainly be useless for anyone that doesn't work in a certain division of Service Canada, but I figured that I'd talk about it here anyway.

With no further ado, I was subcontracted to create a desktop application that allows for easy renaming of multiple files to comply with the new branch-level naming convention. (By my brother who works there; well, we both work there now, although I'm in an entirely seperate division of it… but still)

If you wish to see the application, you can get it here: FileRenamingWizard.exe

(Edit:) Alternatively, if you want the source you can get that here (complete with open-source license): FileRenamingWizard.zip

The file renaming wizard is coded in C# with WPF used for the front-end display. It quite simply renames files that are dropped into it from Windows Explorer with input from the user, while accepting multiple files (which if it didn't it would be kinda useless) and also fetching files from directories dropped into it.

Another significant feature is that it provides a preview screen for any word, html, or text documents and gives a button to open any other types of files.

Some screenshots:

The initial droppable window

The processing window

Status Update

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 08:00:00 -0500

Hello again, long time no update! I've been busy with work, and more recently with school, so I haven't been taking time to update the blog.

As far as software projects go, I've made a couple fixes to the STO Bus Finder, such as having the enter button fetch the times instead of just making a new line, that I plan to release soonish. I'm finally taking a course in Android development so hopefully I'll be able to improve a lot of other things with it too.

I'll be having a lot of school assignments this semester that if I might post about if they seem awesome enough and I find the time to do so. Noteably, our final project this year is to create a system that will be used by the college so that might be a thing I mention.

Other than that, there's a couple more independent projects that I'm planning on creating, but I don't want to reveal too much about them now (in case I change my mind about them).

Anyhow, that's about it for now; hopefully there will be more to follow soon!

Bus Finder Updated

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 08:00:00 -0500

Alright! So I finally found some time amidst the schoolwork and updated the STO Bus Finder app a bit. Most notably, the updates include:

The enter key on the phone's keyboard now fetches the times and closes the dropdown of recommended stops
The clear button on the 'Bus Stop' text field (the little blue 'x') is slightly larger and therefore easier to press
Under settings, the option to clear the automatic favourites was added

The new update should be on the Play Store soon, I just have to upload the new package and update the listing (to list the changes and satisfy Google's new requirements for Play Store listings).

I've discovered that the server my site's on doesn't seem to like dishing out certain files such as the images on the art page. It might just be a problem with my code or configuration file, but either way I hope to have that fixed soon.

Miscellaneous Updates

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:00:00 -0500

The STO Bus Finder app reached 15 users! Yay! Celebration! And so forth!

There will be another update to it soonish, as I found a small bug that can occasionally crash the app (although it doesn't cause any actual damage, so I'm not in too much of a rush to fix it). I'll probably take care of that during Christmas break once I don't have to deal with exams and assignments for a while. I hope to also update the screenshots and add some French ones when I have the time.

Also, I found the problem with the art page! Apparently the webserver is now case sensitive, and the difficulties arose from having an uppercase 'S' being where it shouldn't have been. It's fixed now, so feel free to peruse my art. I'll be shrinking and/or optimizing the images quite a bit during Christmas break, especially for the mobile site since the image files are currently quite massive.

This week, my File Renaming Wizard was featured in ARMA's IM Days, having been presented as part of a successful IT solutions case study. More about IM Days can be found at their website if you're interested in taking a look.

There are a couple Android apps I've made for school assignments that I'm considering placing on the Play Store. One of these is a game of hangman (complete with optional fighting stick men), and another is an RSS feed reader that's currently in production. Both of these would probably be free, since similar things are readily available and the chances of me beating the competition seem fairly slim. Since we've been developing primarily for tablets, I would have to adjust them to also display well on phones.

Finally, I recently finished the statistics part of my Program Exit Assessment, so if you would like to have a look at it, I made a PDF version of it available here.

New App

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 15:12:22 -0500

May I present to you… my latest Android app!

Isn't it beautiful?

It's called RSS Fetch and it's basically a simple RSS feed reader. It allows users to read RSS feeds from their favourite websites and notifies them when they're updated (if automatic updating is enabled). It has a very clean and simple interface that makes it easy to use.

It's not on the Play Store yet, since I'm still working on fixing a few bugs and finishing the localization, but it will be rather soon. Rather than placing a price on this, like I did on the STO Bus Finder, I'm making it free with a tiny ad banner at the bottom so that there's still some profit from it.

I'm making the RSS Fetch app work in three languages - English, French, and Spanish. I'm hoping that this will allow me to reach a larger audience with it. I haven't finished the Spanish translation yet, and I still haven't started the French translation, so that's where most of the delay in getting it on the Play Store is coming from.

I'll post an update once the app's on the Play Store with a more complete feature list.

RSS Fetch

Mon, 18 May 2015 18:12:22 -0500

My previously mentioned RSS Fetch app is finally finished and on the Play Store!

RSS Fetch is a simple RSS feed reader that helps people keep up-to-date with their favourite news sites and blogs. I have it translated such that it's available in English, French, and Spanish (although the French translation's mildly sketchy).

As promised, here's a feature list of what the app can do:

Feeds are added by specifying the URL of either the feed itself or a website that references it.
Feeds can be automatically updated
Notifications (with optional vibration) can be shown when new posts are found after an automatic updates
Users can have multiple RSS feeds at a time
Posts can be shown either in their own view with swiping between them, or split beside the list of posts (in landscape)
JavaScript can be enabled in the post display (disabled by default)
'Tis free (at the small cost of small ads across the bottom)

I'll be updating it very soon, since the title of the show post page is currently "Show Post" instead of the name of the feed (a completely accidental feature that appeared when I implemented swiping between posts). That fix will have to wait until after the exam I have tomorrow and my presentation the day after, but hopefully I'll find other things to fix with it.

A Long Hiatus

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 19:00:00 -0500

I recently left to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, I shan't be continuing any of my programming endeavours or updating my blog for the next two years. If you're interested in what I'm currently up to, you can follow my travels through my weekly letters on my Facebook page.

Also, since the STO Bus Finder won't be updated and will probably become obsolete, I've made it free! When I get home I'll update it to fit the new system if it's changed.

That's all for now, see you in two years!

I Have Returned

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 14:30:00 -0500

I'm back!

Also, merry half-Christmas!

After two years in Albera, I've returned to the East and am enjoying being home. I didn't do an excessive amount of programming while I was gone, although I was a pretty big influence in bringing uniformity to our mission's reporting system. I was tasked with creating the new reports to be used in the leaders' monthly meetings; this also involved introducing automation to the reports, which made gathering and presenting the information much more simple and efficient. As our resources were limited, this was all done in Google Sheets, which brought many challenges but also some nifty opportunities.

Right now I'm in the process of discovering changes that happened while I was gone. I've discovered a few things that broke in my absence as well; notably, my laptop is having some serious issues so I'm trying to see if it can be fixed, and also my RSS Fetch app doesn't seem to be working on my phone at the moment. I'm still trying to figure out if it's an issue with the phone or an issue with the app, but either way I hope to have it fixed soon. (UPDATE: It turns out the issue was with an outdated build configuration. This has been fixed and pushed to the Google Play Store.)

Otherwise, life continues and I've begun my search for a job, which I hope to find by September.

A Short Report

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 17:30:00 -0500

Ahoy!

I have a job now! That's exciting! I also live in Montreal now and am just finishing up a french class. Life is busy.

RSS Fetch has been unpublished for the time being since I haven't had time to keep up maintenance for it (Android has outgrown it, I'm afraid), and STO Bus Finder has been placed on the back burner since I no longer use the STO Buses so it's lost its relevance to me. If anyone wants to take up maintenance on it, I'd be happy to pass it along. I do, however, have a new app called Tell Me I'm Pretty which also has a free version that will happily give you compliments.

I have a new laptop now! My Macbook Pro, which has served me faithfully since 2011, finally succumbed to a common issue with its kind where it overheats and breaks its logic board. I brought it back to life for a few months after it completely died by putting it in the oven, but the display gave out again so I've had to move on. For the first time in my life since the Mac Tower of old first entered our home, I have an Apple-free existence (my 1996 iMac is at my parents' house and my iPad is sorely under-used).

That's all for now :)

All good things come to an end

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 17:25:00 -0500

Hello again! After 5 years of intermittently updating this blog (and more years than that maintaining this site), I've come to the decision to officially retire it from active maintenance.

What does this mean for the future of this site? I won't be adding blog posts for the forseable future, and I won't be keeping any of the other pages up to date. For now I'll be leaving everything as-is, as I believe the content has historic value and I'm investing my time elsewhere. There are already some broken links on the project page due to changing Google Play policies leading to the removal of a couple of my apps from the play store.

A major influence for my decision to stop maintaining this site is that I started another site, schlachter.xyz, for my mobile apps (and to have somewhere to put the privacy policies and legal information for them), and I've found maintaining two extremely similar sites to be a bit much considering the amount of free time I have.

I have plans to migrate more of my projects page to schlachter.xyz, as well as perhaps writing a couple articles (details of my exploits into baking my MacBook seems like it would be interesting). I haven't figured out the best way to integrate these into the new site yet, but I'll probably end up expanding the apps page into a more generic project page. Regardless, I don't have any plans of returning to a blog format.

Check out my new site if Android apps and legal documents interest you (I'll understand if they don't), and if I don't end up picking this site back up down the road then adieu.