Hey folks, I’m back at it again with a fresh new blog post, so grab some afternoon java and let’s dive into some Emerging Technologies info. Taking things a step back to Wednesday last week, I was working with this nifty tool designed for third graders called AppInventor. It was real neat as it allowed you to go from nothing to a, albeit, more than often bare-bones, complete app for android. What is not so neat about it is that the android emulator designed to work with the app can make you feel less intelligent than the third graders this webapp was designed for.
Throughout class on Wednesday, I spent my time going through documentation on how to get the emulator up and running with my linux machine (yes it is mint, and I don’t care that it’s on a laptop!). After searching for forty minutes on-line, I found the only feasible solution was to perform a fresh install of the emulator and try again… damn you, AppInventor. With a fresh install on the emulator up and running on my laptop, I could finally get to work… once I figured out how to get an app from AppInventor running on the emulator. Yet, another hurdle.
This time, I was able to find a quick video YouTube for how to do it, so my headache did not evolve into a migraine. Below is a picture of the slowgoing.apk app we made in class together working on the emulator:
With that out of the way, I had a whole twenty minutes to actually try making something in AppInventor for the day, so I tried making a simple game where a meteors would fly across the screen and you had to click or touch them to make them disappear before leaving the screen… I barely got past the title screen by the time class ended, but it has a cool blue background and changes screens, so that’s cool. Here’s a shot of the title screen, button and all:
That about wraps it up for this weeks blog post. Don’t fret though, a new blog post will be around shortly enough. Until next time…
Cheers, Taylor Lundy
Cowboy Beblog 