Christopher Souvey's Blog

Been working on Android App #2 – an OtherInbox client.  For those of you who don’t know, OtherInbox is “the cure for email overload” (designed to separate out and organize mass-mailing-style emails from your regular inbox, leaving only personal emails).  If you want an invite, just leave a comment on this post (I have more invites than readers of this blog).  I finally got some time to get started on the app and have thrown together just over half of the interface.  At the moment, the app isn’t actually usable, as it does not connect to the network, but the interface itself is working.  Once I’ve finished up the UI (hopefully fairly soon), I’m going to write up a background service to make it all work (with support from the very helpful OtherInbox team – Thanks!).

Here are some screenshots of what I’ve got so far:

About 3 weeks ago, I bought a T-Mobile G1 (the Android-based “GooglePhone”).  I’ve been working in my free time for the last 2 weeks on learning the Android SDK so I could write some programs for it.  The first program decided to write was a program for musicians.  Yesterday (November 15), I finally got the first feature–the metronome–in a working state.  I uploaded by application to the Android Market (same idea as the iPhone’s App Store, but until Q1, everything has to be free).  Now nearly 24 hours and 3 updates (suggested feature additions and bug fixes), my app has 2175 downloads (1638 active installs) and 110 reviews (with an average of 4/5 — there is not a single app with a 5/5, the highest so far is 4.5/5).  I’ve already received 9 emails about the application.

Not bad for the first 24 hours of my first Android app (and first Java app in a very long time)

In fact, in one day, this app has gotten more users than all my previous programming projects combined!  And its not even close to done yet!

I’ll continue to post updates on this and my (hopefully many) future apps.

When I read this story, I was so disgusted that I have to vent and post about it.

In China’s opening ceremony, they had a cute little girl in a red dress singing the national anthem. But she was lip-syncing. Ok… fine, that’s reasonable – she was only 9 – plus everyone lip-syncs these days. Except it wasn’t her voice.

It was the voice of Yang Peiyi. Yang was originally scheduled to sing the anthem but was cut at the last moment because she wasn’t pretty enough. Yes – they replaced her because she had a chubby face and didn’t have nice teeth.

“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression” said the the ceremony’s music director.

This is absolutely sickening to me that China would go this far to create (what is now clearly an illusion of) perfection (it was also revealed this week that the footstep fireworks seen on TV were actually computer generated and inserted into the live feed – although, I don’t have an issue with that, and the fireworks were actually set off – China was just worried they couldn’t capture them all live).

I don’t even know how to express how repulsed I am by this without just yelling out swear words…
Read the full LA Times Article and see pictures of the 7 year old who wasn’t perfect enough for China.

Here is the first official Josh’s Epic Failures comic.  In light of it being about Josh’s failures, I’ve decided to go for quantity rather than quality (as should be immediately evident).  If I tried to make it look nice, I couldn’t possibly hope to cover a reasonable fraction of what Josh does wrong.  Plus, I’m both using this to learn Illustrator, which I currently don’t know very well, and to get a little practice for my severely lacking art skills .

Disclaimer: This is not a work of fiction and any lack of resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  In all seriousness though, all these comics are based heavily on reality and are adjusted slightly only to fit better in the paneled comic form – no extra stupidity or jokes are added (and if I ever do, I will be sure to make note of it in the post).  

Decided to jokingly start a little web comic about the daily failures of our IT intern Josh, so here is a quick intro/preview of what’s to come…
I’ll try and publish a comic every time he does something stupid (so this may turn out to be a daily comic). Enjoy!

Apple popularized the shiny white gadget with their iBooks, iMacs, and iPods.  Then the MacBook came out.  For $200 more, a more featured model was available in black.  This set off a revolution, as people payed more money just so they could get their laptop in black.  The iPod line soon followed this new trend, also becoming available in black in some of the higher-end models.  Then the iPhone was released with a glossy black front and metal back, and white was replaced completely in the iPod line by silver.  Around the same time, the iMac was replaced with a black and silver version too (but with a white mouse…?)  This morning, Apple announced the 3G iPhone.  This newer iPhone is available in all black (no silver), but if you buy the 16GB iPhone ($100 more), you can get it in white.  It’s amazing how quickly trends have completely reversed.  Just two years ago, white was standard and black cost more, and now black is standard and white costs more.  The circle has been completed (White -> Black -> Silver & Black -> White)!  Are you trying to set trends, keep up with them, or just confuse everyone???  Make up your mind Apple…

Jobs just announced the new iPhone at his keynote this morning: 3G, GPS, etc (but nothing exciting that wasn’t already rumored), and a new lower pricepoint – just $200 for the 8GB version.  Here’s the problem: the (older with less features) iPod Touch 8GB is $300.  This seems like a glaring mistake to me.  I realize that Apple is making tons of money every month out of the iPhone plan with AT&T, but why would anyone buy an iPod Touch for $300, when they could hacktivate an iPhone for $200, get all the new features (ex: GPS) and just not use the phone app!  I can see three possibilities for this: an oversight (seems incredibility unlikely), a devious plot to raise the number of sold iPhones (possible), or they just think that most people are too stupid to realize they can just get an iPhone, hacktivate it, and not use the phone part (most likely).  But really… where is the cheaper, GPS-enabled iPod Touch 2.0?  Is it just going to arrive silently later, so as to not overshadow the iPhone 2 launch?  We’ll just have to see…

Update: According to Engadget, Apple is no longer letting you buy an iPhone and activate it yourself.  The reason the iPhone is only $200 is because AT&T is subsidizing it.  Apple no longer has a revenue-sharing model with AT&T, and now they are making money like any other phone manufacturer.  You can’t pull the GoPhone trick any more either, as the GoPhone plan can’t be bought with an iPhone any more.  Seems like a bad move to me, seeing as a very significant percentage of iPhones were being sold to people who had no intention of ever buying an AT&T plan.  Time will tell though if people can find a loophole, but for now it seems like Apple has shut the door on this one…

Just finished up the first day at Google ‘KO’! (I’ll explain the "K" in a moment)

I woke up at 7:30, took the bus and at 8, and arrived at the Moscone Center at 8:30, only to be greeted by massive registration lines.  The lines were organized by on the first letter of your last name.  As bad as S-U was (any Smiths in the building?), I am so glad to not have a last name starting with A.  All the lines were snaking around the room, making it nearly impossible to even find the end of the line.

The introductory keynote was supposed to start at 9:30, and they ended up having to let people in without registering (until later) so they could start it on time.  The keynote talked about Google’s goals and how each of their developer projects fit into these goals.  The highlight was the Android demo (on a real device) of Google Maps Street View.  The view was controlled by a compass inside the phone, so as you moved the phone, the view changed.  Basically the effect feels like the phone’s camera is turned on, except that you are seeing somewhere else (I also got to try out something similar in the Google Earth booth later in the day – virtual reality goggles that you could use to look around the 3d buildings in Google Earth).

I started out with a presentation about the current state of web technologies (all the various strategies and Ajax libraries), which was actually extremely interesting.  Then I went to a code lab (bring your laptop and work your way through a tutorial with assistance from the developers) on Gears (offline access and browser extension) – grabbing a sandwich on the way.  Next I went to another code lab, this one on the Google Maps JavaScript API (for embedding dynamic maps into webpages).  Finally, I caught the end of a session on the future of Gears (including peripheral access, file system access, & geolocation based on gps, wifi, cell, and/or ip).

The next hour was free time to wander, mingle, and meet with the developers of various Google tools (each of which had a demonstration booth) to ask them any questions.  I couldn’t get anything out of the App Engine developers about Rails support except that the Python layer is added on top of the App Engine layer, and so they do plan to support additional languages.  I also got a Gears T-shirt (go swag! – I also got a Google IO water bottle, bag, & T-shirt, which I’ll discuss in a bit).

Then it was time for the after-party ("After Hours"), and man does Google know how to throw a party.  They apparently gutted an arcade – they had various racing games, foosball, air-hockey, and pool setup in the conference hall.  In addition, they had a bunch of Wiis setup (one of which was projecting extremely largely on the wall).  Food-wise, they had some dinner items, an ice-cream bar, and two chocolate fountains (as well as free all-you-could-drink, which I of course, unlike nearly every person there, couldn’t have).  They also had a quiet area where developers could meet and discuss their experiences with Google products.  Finally, they had a live performance by Flight of the Concord.  Yeah… Google definitely knows how to party (plus it they are obscenely wealthy, which can’t ever hurt).

So, the moment you’ve all (haha… like people read this) been waiting for.  The T-shirts they handed out after registration have a fancy design on the front made of small and large white circles on a gray background (and the staff have the same shirts but inverted).  If you take the large circles as 1s and the small circles as 0s, and convert it to ASCII (from binary), the shirt spells GoogleKO.  On one hand clever (making a seemingly random design actually mean something), but on the other hand, its wrong! (unless its was an Easter egg? KO=knock-out?).

All in all though, it was a great day, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow (day 2 of the event).

Had a pretty exciting week:

• Bought a new laptop (12.1" HP tx2000 tablet with 3GB RAM) to replace my aging dv2000
• Sang a solo (Yesterday, Beatles) in Kirby Music Night (along with 12 other songs, since I’m in both Chorus & Chamber Choir)
• Finally got a cell phone (Motorola w490) with T-Mobile, and am paying $6 a month for unlimited wireless internet on it
• Caved in and got a Facebook so I can stay in contact with all the my friends that are graduating this year (since it finally set in after Music Night – we all started crying )

Next week will be pretty busy too:

• Meeting with school college counselor
• Going to Google IO (2-day web developer conference)
• Latin III final (my only final, since my other classes were AP)
• Last week of school (which I have mixed feelings about, since I’m happy for this year to end, but it will be my last week with all my senior friends)

Today, while I was supposed to be studying for my AP tests, I found all sorts of ways to distract myself:  watching TV, playing Super Smash Bros Brawl (unlocked every character & map and beat every event this weekend), and making fonts.

For the first one, I wrote out the alphabet and some characters, scanned them in, vectorized them, and made a font (using FontCreator).  It took a few hours, but it actually looks kind of cool.

This year in Latin, we wrote a fable, translated it into Latin, learned blackletter calligraphy, and are currently writing and illustrating it.  I found a sheet of paper in my backpack that I had been practicing calligraphy on (copying a random Latin passage), scanned it in, cut out the best of each letter, and made it into a font.  I actually really like how this one turned out.  Oh, and before you think, “ipfum? he is in Latin right?” know that it’s called a long, medial, or descending s, is often used in place of a short s everywhere other than the end of a word in blackletter calligraphy, and happens to also appear in the United States Bill of Rights.

Finally, for the last one, I just kind of threw something together from my cursive (which as you will see, is not very attractive).  This one was tricky, because all the letters have to attach to each other, so I had to modify all of the letters after vectorization so they would fit together with all the others.

If you want to download one of these, just leave a comment stating what you want to use it for, and I’ll mail it to you (as a TrueType font).  I’m not trying to moderate them or anything (I’ll let anyone who wants one take it), I just want to know what (if anything) people want them for.