I’ve just been digging around in some of my old projects and found my Hours Manager application.
The purpose of the application is to provide me with a way of logging the hours that I do, given that my schedule is so busy, trying to remember when I did what can often be challenging. Unfortunately  it never saw the light of day again due to my hectic schedule.

Given that again I am in a situation where having a log of my work schedule would be beneficial, of course you may be wondering, why don’t I just download one of the many good time management apps for the play store? The answer for me is simple, what would I learn from that?
Programming in Java is something new for me and I have various other android app’s that i have developed in the past although none of which have ever been polished enough to publish. Therefore I’m making a real effort to get this app on the market, not for profit just for the whole experience of releasing an application.

The challenge I have overcome today was adding the functionality to allow users to delete entries from the sql database.  To do so I wanted a dialog window to pop up when the user long pressed one of the entries in the list view.

The code that follows simply creates a new Alert Dialog window from within the SQL View fragment, from there two buttons are initialized (one to confirm and one to cancel). The database is also queried to ensure that the correct item is successfully removed, then the array adapter is notified that the data has changed. From there the list view adapter is updated with a new incarnation of the database.

Hopefully this snippet help’s someone else who’s struggling with creating a Alert Dialog within a Fragment. 

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    protected void removeRow(final long _position)
    {
        // Create a new Alert Dialog, with the fragment activity context
        AlertDialog.Builder alert = new AlertDialog.Builder(
              getActivity()
        );
        // Here we set the dialog title to that of a static string ("Delete Record?")
        alert.setTitle(R.string.dialog_title);

        // Now we open the database and query it for the current entry string - Date , Start Time, End Time etc
        openDatabase();
        alert.setMessage("Are you sure you want to remove the following entry?n" + info.getRowInfo(_position));
        closeDatabase();

        // When the confirm button is pressed
        alert.setPositiveButton("Delete", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(DialogInterface dialogInterface, int i) {
                // Open the database again
                openDatabase();
                // Delete the entry at a specific position
                info.deleteRow(_position);
                // Tell the adapter things have changed
                adapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
                adapter.notifyDataSetInvalidated();

                // Re-populate our information in the List Adapter
                populateList();
                lv.setAdapter(adapter);

            }
        });
        // If the cancel button is pressed simply dismiss
        alert.setNegativeButton("Cancel",new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(DialogInterface dialogInterface, int i) {
                dialogInterface.dismiss();
            }
        });
        // Ensure our database is closed
        closeDatabase();
        // Finally show the alert dialog
        alert.show();
    }

Alert Dialog displaying record information

Real Time Rendering Techniques

Modeling the castle

Matsumoto Castle

After three days of hacking together mount commands finally my NAS is connected so that it can be accessed from terminal.

The script’s purpose is to mount a networked attached file store using terminal with the correct read and write attributes.

1:  ################################################################  
2:  #     Author       :   Robert Lutken                       
3:  #     E-mail  :      [email protected]                 
4:  #     Date   :      Sat, 15-02-2014                      
5:  #     File Name :     nasmount.sh                      
6:  #     Purpose  :      To connect to NAS                 
7:  #     Version      :      1.0                           
8:  #     Notes   :     Unsecure version should not be used in       
9:  #               volitile domains                 
10:  #                                          
11:  #################################################################  
12:    
13:  #!/bin/bash  
14:    
15:  ## The user name of the account on remote device i.e. admin   
16:  username=yourusername  
17:    
18:  ## The Password of the user's account on remote device  
19:  password=yourpasword  
20:    
21:    
22:  ## The source location of the server and the share directory.  
23:  ## In order to mount you should ensure that /etc/nsswitch.conf apears as so:  
24:  ## hosts:     files mdns4_minimal wins [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4   
25:  ## The order is important !   
26:  ## and that winsbind is installed -> sudo apt-get install winbind  
27:  ##  
28:  ## If it isn't then you may use the IP address of the local server  
29:    
30:  mountSRC=//nameofserver/sharedirectory  
31:    
32:  ## The local directory of where the shared folder should be mounted i.e. /mnt/myshare.   
33:  ## This will need to be created i.e. sudo mkdir /mnt/myshare  
34:  mountDST=/wheretomount/share  
35:    
36:  ## Finally the command that put's it all together with relvent read and write permissions.  
37:  sudo mount -t cifs $mountSRC $mountDST -o username=$username,password=$password,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777  
38:    
39:    

There is however an inherent security issue with this script as it stores passwords in plain text.

I would recommend that the use of a credentials file is used :

sudo nano $HOME/Desktop/CIFSCRED  

All this file should contain is :

 username=yourusername  
 password=yourpassword  
 domain=servername  
   

Press CTRL+X and enter Y and Return to save

The file should then be restricted by using :

sudo chmod 0440 $HOME/Desktop/CIFSPWD  

Finally the original script can be updated to

1:  ################################################################  
2:  #     Author       :   Robert Lutken                       
3:  #     E-mail  :      [email protected]                 
4:  #     Date   :      Sat, 15-02-2014                      
5:  #     File Name :     nasmount.sh                      
6:  #     Purpose  :      To connect to NAS                 
7:  #     Version      :      1.                           
8:  #     Notes   :     This version uses a credentials file  
9:  #               which should be secured using :  
10:  #  
11:  #               sudo chmod 0440 myPasswordFile                           
12:  #                                          
13:  #################################################################  
14:    
15:  #!/bin/bash   
16:    
17:  myCredentials=$HOME/Desktop/CIFSPWD  
18:    
19:  ## The source location of the server and the share directory.  
20:  ## In order to mount you should ensure that /etc/nsswitch.conf apears as so:  
21:  ## hosts:     files mdns4_minimal wins [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4   
22:  ## The order is important !   
23:  ## and that winsbind is installed -> sudo apt-get install winbind  
24:  ##  
25:  ## If it isn't then you may use the IP address of the local server  
26:    
27:  mountSRC=//nameofserver/sharedirectory  
28:    
29:  ## The local directory of where the shared folder should be mounted i.e. /mnt/myshare.   
30:  ## This will need to be created i.e. sudo mkdir /mnt/myshare  
31:  mountDST=/wheretomount/share  
32:    
33:  ## Finally the command that put's it all together with relvent read and write permissions.  
34:  sudo mount -t cifs $mountSRC $mountDST -o credentials=$myCredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777  
: