[Android Studio] Error : Failed to find: com.android.support

It's nice that Google is trying to make a full-fledged Android Authoring Software, complete with what is expected from an authoring tool.  But as of now, the tool itself is in Beta which has a few hiccups hidden somewhere, and one of this is not being able to compile an Android Project. o_o

Like, really?

So if you, like me, had encountered this problem saying:

Error : Failed to find: com.android.support

Relax and open SDK Manager then install the Android Support Repository and/or Android Support Library.  Better yet, install those two. :)

Upon restart of Android Studio, that problem should go away.

Happy hacking!

~creek23

Screencasting with Android

Well, if you are already using the Screencast Video Recorder, there's no use of reading this -- but I'm betting you're not because you stumbled onto this tutorial.

First of all, I am not related to the said screencasting app and I am in no way endorsing it.  I haven't even tried that app yet because 1.) it's not supported on my low-end Android device and 2.) it's a paid app -- yes, I'm cheap, sue me. :P

So this tutorial is about creating a screencast of your Android device using a free and open source tools called Android Screen Capture (or AShot) and FFmpeg.  I should warn you that this tutorial is not for the fainthearted -- it's gonna be messy through setting these tools up, and through creating of the screencast video itself.

I'm going to assume you know what we mean by screencast.  And I'm going to assume you are using Windows on your PC.

To start, download the tools:
AShot - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ashot/files/latest/download
FFmpeg - http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win32/shared/ffmpeg-20120620-git-5a90e55-win32-shared.7z

Here's a very detailed tutorial of setting-up AShot, which I'm very glad not to write over again.  It talks about downloading Android SDK, which AShot uses to capture images from your Android device.  One quick note, however, is the copying of the three files, namely:

• adb.exe
• AdbWinApi.dll
• AdbWinUsbApi.dll

from this directory: C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools

to this directory: C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\tools

Again, simply COPY the three files and not MOVE from one to the other.

Lots of troubleshooting is also discussed on that page, so go thoroughly through that page if AShot won't seem to work.

At this stage, I'm assuming you already got AShot working and you're seeing the same image in your PC as what's on your Android device as shown in the photo above.  You might have also tried screencapturing, and saw a tiny little problem -- (aside from the low FPS which is already answered many times on that page mentioned) instead of a video output, AShot outputs a series of PNGs.  Here's where FFmpeg comes in.

The FFmpeg binary download is just a zip file that can easily be extracted by 7zip or WinRAR -- though, I prefer 7zip.

I'm going to assume you extracted it on the root of your computer in such a way that ffmpeg.exe will be in this path: C:\ffmpeg\bin

And I'm also going to assume that you set AShot to output screenshots on this path: C:\ashot\

Now, all you have to do is open a Command Prompt and type this:
cd c:\ashot\
c:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg -f image2 -i screenshot_%05d.png screencast.avi

Then using any movie player -- I use VLC media player by the way -- you can now view your screencast.avi.

Lastly, if you want to adjust the FPS of your AVI, try adding -framerate X when executing ffmpeg, where X is your desired FPS.

Happy screencasting!

~creek23

Setting-up Android Development Enviroment on Windows

Downloading the Tools.

1. Download Android SDK r4.
2. Download Eclipse Classic 3.5.1.
3. Download Android Development Tools 0.9.5.

Installing the Tools.

1. Extract the SDK at your root directory (ex: C:\)
2. Extract Eclipse and run eclipse.exe
3. On Eclipse, click Help -> Install New Software.
4. Click Add... button, Add Site dialog will pop-up.
5. Click Archive... button and browse for ADT-0.9.5.zip then click OK.
6. Specify ADT as Name then click OK.
7. Toggle-on Developer Tools then click Next to install.
8. Now set the path of the SDK. Click Window -> Preference. Select Android, and set the SDK Location to: C:\android-sdk-windows, then click OK.

Installing the Android API.

1. With the SDK path set, click Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager.
2. Select Available Packages. Then toggle-on the following:
• Documentation for Android 2.1, API 7, revision 1
• SDK Platform Android 2.1, API 7, revision 1
3. And optionally, toggle-on:
• Google APIs by Google Inc., Adroid API 7, revision 1
• Usb Driver package, revision 3
4. Click Install Selected then accept the license and click Install Accepted.

Creating Android Virtual Device (AVD or what we call Emulator).

1. Again, click Window -> Android SDK and AVD Manager.
2. Specify the Name (ex: MyAndroidEmulator)
3. Choose Android 2.1 - API Level 7 as the Target.
4. On Hardware, click New and OK repeatedly until all Properties has been added.
5. Click Create AVD.

Now you can start writing Android Apps!

BING Is Not Google

Ever wondered why Microsoft renamed Live Search to Bing? Sounds girly to me.

So I thought of some possible reason to why they picked such an odd name.

Google is one odd name but it got stuck to people that it became a verb. Instead of saying, "search it on the internet", people say, "google it up". And instead of saying, "I'm trying to look for this stuff on the internet", they say, "I'm googling this stuff" or "I googled this stuff".

So while I'm kept amused by how 'google' became a verb, it struck me, could it be that Bing is a recursive accronym for BING Is Not Google?

I also play with words when I name a new project. Like for my WRS project, ZINC Is Not CMS or my game engine project, KAGE Ain't Game Engine. Simply had it based on GNU -- GNU's Not Unix. :D

So I wondered, why BING? and not LING (Live Is Not Google) or MING (Microsoft Is Not Google)

Was it a tribute to Bill Gates?!?... maybe Bing could mean, Bill Is Not Gay -- or so they say. :D

Chrome 2 vs Firefox 3.6

I was actively participating with testing Firefox (or called Minefield) before Firefox 2 even came out. Then I delve myself to testing other FOSS (Inkscape, Synfig, Pencil) and even started contributing as a developer (KonsolScript, Clash).

Some years later, Chrome came out with a powerful JavaScript engine, V8. It surely was powerful having to render 3D scene written in JavaScript -- I was surely disappointed at how Firefox was not evolving at all anymore.

I used Chrome for almost a year. I was totally satisfied at its speed. Then came Chrome 2.

There were some changes that made Chrome 2 less user-friendly:

• Deleting of history and download list individually -- you now have to clear it all or have a long list of mixed wanted and unwanted download list.
• Not completely removing the SQLite files used for history and/or possibly page caching.
• Unable to finish the page when user has low disk space available.

Firefox 3.6a1pre on the other hand still has that user-friendliness while trying to catch up Chrome's V8 capability.

To witness Firefox' improved speed, download from:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Install it then check Chrome Experiments website. The site enlists heavy JavaScript-driven web applications that only browsers like Chrome could easily run.

I had a good time playing World of Solitaire, which almost gave the feeling of simply playing Windows' Solitaire.

But I was particularly impressed with JS Touch, where it renders 3D scene of a hanging cloth. It makes me wonder, when will I see a 3D JavaScript game running from inside a browser.

Firefox also implemented tearing-off tabs out and into opened Firefox windows like Chrome does. Sadly it still has the same problem of memory bloat -- caused by hour-long surfing.
Overall, I'm surely going to get back using Firefox (or in this case, Minefield).