Android screen sizes

For my own reference, but possibly interesting to others. 

Android screen sizes of note:

ldpi: small screens in low numbers
mdpi: range of sizes and quite popular
hdpi: most popular
xhdpi: very few devices

summary: must support normal screens at hdpi and mdpi densities.

See more at http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html

See also, the android guide to supporting multiple screen sizes.

Think mobile at DDD South West

If you're not aware of the DDD (or Developer Developer Developer) series of community events then you've missed out. They provide a great opportunity to learn what's new in the .Net community. Or, officially:

DDD South West is a free one day technical event for developers. It is a day of learning, discussing, contributing and being part of the community in the South West. Our goal is to provide free technical education, the opportunity to mix with peers and to make and develop relationships in the .NET industry.

If you're interested in going to the event then I'd love to be able to talk to you about how an understanding of developing for mobile provides a great gounding for developing for other (non desktop/PC) platforms too. If you'd like to hear it that means voting for my session once you've registered/logged in to the site.

If you're undecided then let me make 2 points.

• When I've talked about this subject before (at DevEvening, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Dundee & Aberdeen - either on it's own or as part of an introduction to Windows Phone development)  it's always proved really popular, prompted lots of positive feedback and people have been helped to think about new things or think about things in new ways which they've found helpful.
• A full day of technical content can be very challenging and tiring. Sometimes it's useful to take a bit of a break and just listen without having to follow along while someone writes code or explain complex new concepts. Let this session be a welcome break in your day at DDDSW.

So you want some help?

Warning: Rant!

So you want help with something.
Ok.

Now make it easy to help you.

I get a bit annoyed by people posting questions (on SO mainly) with a vague problem or descriptions of what's been tried but no actual code

    Deliberately including no examples to protect the guilty


Before you ask for help, please read the following:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask
http://tinyurl.com/so-hints 
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/rubber-duck-problem-solving.html

It'll help us to help you.
We want to help, just don't make us jump through unnecessary hoops.


Not just a rant, I also wanted a place I could quickly find the above links again.;)

Ideas of March | #IdeasOfMarch

As prompted by http://shiflett.org/blog/2012/mar/ideas-of-march

I like blogs.
I read the titles of hundreds of blog articles each day and usually end up reading dozens of posts.

There are 2 main reasons (that I can think of right now) that I like blogs though:

1. I like how anyone can write a blog. Yes, even little old me. Blogs have allowed me to read the thoughts, ideas, experiments, plans and more of hundreds of people. And I'd never have even heard of or met most of them if it wasn't for their blog.
Not that this means I think everyone should write a blog though. And yes, I include myself again there sometimes. ;)

2. Blogs are probably the way I learn most new things in the software development world. Yeah, StackOverflow is probably up there too, but all the important and useful information in software dev seems to come from individuals experiences and not from official documentation. I'm certain that if no-one was blogging I'd spend more of my time fumbling through badly orgainsed and ill structured documentation.

Thank you bloggers of the world.

Slides from last months Scottish user group talks

Last month I went to Scotland to talk at some user groups about Windows Phone development and general mobile development principles that can be applied to all platforms.
I've had some requests for the slides from those talks. (The latest evolution of the slides since the last time I gave these talks.) So here they are:

Thinking mobile and beyond (Edinburgh & Dundee)

View more from Matt Lacey

Awesome Windows Phone Development (Aberdeen)

View more from Matt Lacey