Cyberherbalist's Blog

“Unable to start debugging” — What?

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Mike Clark

This was kind of odd, because I had been working through Foundation Expression Blend 4 book, and on prototype menuing application in standard Silverlight, and up until today everything went without a hitch. And then all of a sudden it started telling me that it couldn’t debug.

“Unable to start debugging. The Silverlight Developer Runtime is not installed. Please install a matching version.”

I puzzled at the unexpected appearance of such an objection, and I wanted to tell it that I had been developing and debugging Silverlight
for several weeks — so what was up with this all of a sudden? Of course, there was no-one to tell this to. I’m all into anthropomorphizing my computing machinery and all, but the day it actually answers me I know I will crossed a line into the surreal.

That last sentence was inspired from a line uttered by Tom Hanks’ character in “Saving Private Ryan”, by the way, in case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t. I’m just emitting random noises at this point.

I downloaded the Silverlight debug suite for developers from MSDN, then all was peachy-keen again.

Anyway, there we are.

Posted in Silverlight | Leave a comment

Coin Tosser Accepted and Published!

Posted on October 23, 2010 by Mike Clark

Good news this morning, and that is that my Coin Tosser app has been accepted and will be published!

I didn’t make it free, but it only costs 99 cents. Maybe I can make a couple bucks with it. We will see.

I just now checked the marketplace, and my app does not yet appear, but I found my competition. It’s a coin flipping app called “decisionmaker”, and it’s free, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Heh. Anyway, it has two reviews, neither of them particularly favorable, so I am comfortable. “decisionmaker” requires the user to move the phone to flip the coin, something which wasn’t obvious to one reviewer, and the other one says it’s too sensitive. The user that complained about the non-obvious method of initiating the flip would be happy with my app, since there’s a button there that says “Toss Coin”. The same user thought the coin being used for the toss in “decisionmaker” was rather lackluster (it’s a 1 Euro cent coin), and it was hard to distinguish heads from tails.

So, I feel pretty good that my Coin Tosser is much better than its sole competitor. And well worth the price!

Posted in CoinToss, My Apps, Windows Phone 7 Apps | Leave a comment

My First Two Apps Are Submitted

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Mike Clark

As of tonight I have submitted my first two apps to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, the App Hub. These are:

I’m going to give ConvertPlus, the most complex and “serious” app (in terms of time spent), a once-over before submission. I think this will go quickly, but I cannot be sure. I have an extensive testing protocol for it, and I will engage at least part of it before I submit.

The interesting thing is that based on YouTube hits, CoinTosser so far has gotten 238 hits, or 4 times the action of the next most “popular”, ConverterPlus, with 53. CoinTosser has garnered the most interest, even so far as showing up in a review on a Russian website. This is the app that cost me the least time. Ironic, but perhaps indicative. Everyone has tossed a coin to make a choice or settle a point; not so many have had much reason to convert from miles to kilometers or vice-versa.

So, what’s next, after Converter Plus gets submitted? Good question!

I’ve been considering making an app to help prospective and current Ham Radio operators practice to pass license exams. As a Ham myself (KD7UST), this has a certain attraction — with the highest license (for USA), I certainly don’t need the practice, but I’m interested in helping others get into the hobby and to advance in it. I’ve wondered if I Should charge for the app, or make it free and aupport it by advertising. Since the potential market for the app is probably not particularly large, and once a user has passed an exam there is no reason to go back to practice for that exam again, advertising is certainly not the way to go. It won’t be used enough by the customer to make it pay. Also, for that reason it would be impractical to permit “try before you buy,” since potentially the user could easily be finished with it before the set period of time expired. So, it has to be a paid app with no trial period.

I’d like to do something that is ad-supported at some point, however, but I’m not sure what that would be. Still thinking!

Posted in CoinToss, FractionCalc, Windows Phone 7 Apps, Windows Phone 7 Development | 1 Comment

Halleluyah! I’m IN!!

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Mike Clark

As I noted in an earlier post, I was a trifle late in getting in my request for consideration for early-access to the Windows Phone 7 App Marketplace, so I was quite philosophical about my chances of being able to get my apps into the system for consideration. I do think I missed the “first wave”, but a few days ago I was surprised and pleased to get an email from the Windows Marketplace people. It said, in part:

Congratulations! You have been scheduled to receive early access to the Windows Phone 7 app submission process on Monday, October 18th. Once access has been confirmed we will send you instructions on how to submit your Windows Phone 7 apps or games via App Hub, the new Windows Phone 7 developer portal

Like I said, I was pleased, except that there was a slight glitch. While I could sign in to the App Hub, it did not let me get into the parts of the place that would enable me to actually submit my apps. In fact, I had noticed that I couldn’t access some parts of the App Hub that I should have been able to get into anyway (as best I could tell), and had posted some cries for help into the forum they provide, but without any usable result. I decided to try one more time, and so today I posted another piteous plea for assistance, hoping some Microsoftie would fix my problem, and, in fact, a little earlier this evening somebody did respond and indicate that he had had the same problem, and gave me a fix that had been given him last week. I applied the fix as instructed and WOO HOO! I was IN! I was Accepted! Inclusion! Mahvelous.

So now, I can and am about to submit my apps. I am so Happy!

Posted in My Apps, Windows Phone 7 Development | Leave a comment

Windows Phone 7 Developer Launch Event

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Mike Clark

On Monday, October 12, 1010 is the Windows Phone 7 Developer Launch Event! It’s going to be a simulcast from Mountain View, California, and if you can take the day off then it’s a good idea to do so. It starts at 8:45 am PST and lasts for “300 minutes” — I believe this translates to 5 hours. Register now! See the link below (or on my sidebar).

It’s coming very shortly, so if you want to register better get on the stick!

Posted in Windows Phone 7 Development | Leave a comment

Introducing: the ConverterPlus App

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Mike Clark

ConverterPlus

And now for the more ambitious of my Windows Phone 7 apps (thus far), my measurement conversion app: ConverterPlus.

I’ve uploaded a demo to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1Lj8E_xMc

This app converts between US Customary, British Imperial, and Metric (SI) systems for mass, length, velocity, volume and area, and between Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin for temperature. It also converts decimal to fraction values (and vice-versa). It also features a standard four-operation calculator and a fraction calculator.

Posted in ConverterPlus, My Apps | Leave a comment

There’s Always Gotta Be Last-Minute Bugs

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Mike Clark

I was busy preparing my ConverterPlus app for initial publication tonight, when I ran through a few tests in preparation for making the YouTube video I was going to post about the completed app, when my test brought up an unexpected result in the Decimal-to-Fraction converter. Oh my freaking goodness! The result should have been 11 ¹/₁₆, but it was 12 !! This was for the “nearest ¹/₁₆th” conversion. Both the “nearest ¹/₈th” and the “nearest ¹/₃₂nd” were As Expected, but not ¹/₁₆th. Great, because I really did want to debug one more problem.

So you won’t see the ConverterPlus app in YouTube tonight.

Just thought I would mention it.

Posted in ConverterPlus, My Apps | Leave a comment

Got some good attention!

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Mike Clark

The CoinToss app got some attention on 1800pocketpc.com:

http://www.1800pocketpc.com/2010/10/07/cointoss-app-for-windows-phone-7.html

And the CoinToss app’s initial YouTube video has gotten 138 views as of this moment. Cool!

Posted in CoinToss, My Apps | Leave a comment

The Fraction Calculator App

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Mike Clark

The very next of my three apps for Windows Phone 7 is my Fraction Calculator. It adds, subtracts, divides and multiplies fractions. Fraction arithmetic is the bane of schoolchildren and college students alike. FractionCalc is the solution!

I’ve posted a video demo of the app on my YouTube channel, and you can see it at this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vgZ35vuvxU

Here’s what it looks like:

The Fraction Calculator

Posted in FractionCalc, Miscellaneous, My Apps | Leave a comment

The Coin Tosser App

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Mike Clark

The process of getting things ready for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has Microsoft accepting select apps for advance consideration in the Marketplace. Developers with apps ready to go have been invited to present information about their apps via email. The deadline was today. In fact the deadline was at noon, and I missed it! Yikes. For some reason I thought the deadline was the end of the day, but I clearly didn’t read the notification closely enough. Oh, well.

The thing is, I rather suspect that there were some very sophisticated apps waiting to be submitted, and I can content myself with the assurance that my apps probably wouldn’t have been up to these standards. Anyone for sour grapes?

But still, I sent the email to the requisite destination in the hope that perhaps I might be granted some kind of forebearance. I’m actually going to submit three apps. The first of them (not the first to be started, but the first to be fully completed) is my Coin Tosser app.

The Coin Tosser

I’ve made a video of this app in action, and I’ve uploaded it to my channel on YouTube. See here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmRqKG3BRP4

I will be posting information on the other two apps shortly.

Posted in CoinToss, My Apps, Windows Phone 7 Apps | 3 Comments