My first Mac, a UniBody MacBook Pro at $1500

After weeks of surfing craigslist, replying to all sort of scams and went to many places to meet up, I've finally managed to buy a Macbook Unibody at $1500 from Mike King, I gave him a great review due to transaction was successful.

The spec is

2.4Ghz Core 2 duo
2GB Ram
250GB 5400RPM hard drive
It sells for $1999 at bestbuy or apple store.

I've always been a PC user, and I still intend to install windows on this Mac, but after using it for one day I've find myself impressed about how much Apple care about their product, from trackpad to the charger, every piece is done with great detail. I shopped in bestbuy for 2 days and the more I look at Mac, the more I enjoy the quality of the product, which eventually made me making the decision on buying the mac.

Throughout all these times searching for DSLR camera and macbook, I've manage to realize that value of an item is only worth it when it exchanges hand without losing its value, and only quality product intend to maintain their value. If I've bought a PC, the moment I buy it anywhere it loses all its value right after, and it just seems so hard to find PC makers making quality product these days, everything is wrapped with cheap plastics which gets overheat very easily.

Android SDK's Guide, Image from Gallary to be Clickable

Android's Online Resource is very limited, it took me a day before I can figure out how to make those pictures in the photo gallery clickable. I am still a newbie at android development, but I have never spend this much time trying to figure out something that's this simple.

On the android's website it has Hello Gridview guide, which shows you the photo gallary. If you want further clicks from those photos following code is to be added.

All the XML has already set up in the tutorial.

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
GridView gridview = (GridView) findViewById(R.id.photogridview);
gridview.setAdapter(new ImageAdapter(this));

gridview.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public void onItemClick(AdapterView parent, View v, int position, long id){
GoDoWhatever();
}}});
}

protected void GoDoWhatever()
{
//Do Whatever you want to do after pictures in the gallery are being clicked
}

Hopefully this helps

Craigslist Spammer, Craigslist Scammer, They should get banned

I've been trying to buy a laptop for a while, hunting deals off slickdeals and fatwallet. California Tax is 9.25%, buying anything off online or retail store feels like getting ripped off because I'd be paying almost 10% more for someone else's irresponsible action. So I decide to get one off craigslist, at least I can bargain down some price off these over priced laptops.

Craigslist Major City such as Los Angeles, New York were filled with spam results when someone search for "HP Pavillion" or "Dell Latitute", even "Apple Macbook Pro". And all these posts will end up with a image on the bottom to show their websites. Most of them are from china with a phone number leaving behind, and their website will make it look like its an actual site.

Buyers be aware, these spammers are also scammers, the site that they direct you is actually scam sites. Do not deal with craigslist seller if you can not meet them in person, do not send them money over any form of transaction other than cash. If you try to save a few bucks on these foreign over sea bargain, you'll end up losing your money without realizing it.

I really hope craigslist would do something about it soon, such as banning proxy sites and sites from foreign countries, this way we'd have some regulation in the system, free of spams and scams.

I bought Nikon D90, f/3.5-5.6 18-105mm VR kit Lense

I've always wanted a DSLR Camera, but the pricing was just too much for what I can handle. I've browsed through craigslist for past 2 weeks and I've finally found a deal.

Rohit Thakur was selling Nikon D90 with kit 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 VR Lense for $900, very good deal due to the fact it comes with warranty. So this would be beginning for my photography journey.

Since I've done some research on this camera and lense, I've also played with the camera for past 2 days at different best buy locations. I was pretty happy I picked D90 over D200 even with huge discount on D200, the newer technologies in D90 greatly surpassed the older generation.

The Pros about D90
Its smaller comparing to D200 or D300, feels very comfortable at hand.
It has newer CMOS censoring.
It has 12MP DX images, with the right focus, pictures can zoom in up to a person's skin hair.
It has friendly UI, everything seems straight forward, just by reading guide books you can start taking some good photos.
It has.
It can capture non-professional videos that's just for fun.

The cons about D90
The video capture is at 24fps, which you can see the lag if you are trying to move the camera itself.
The camera zoom lense can go a little further than human eye, so if you want a lense that can zoom far away you'd probably need to get yourself another zoom lense.
The camera package doesn't come with HDMI Cable, in order to connect to your HDTV you'd have to buy one and its not cheap.


Hunting down a good deal requires patience, craigslist sellers intend to sell their items at new price when their items are used, it takes a while before you can find someone that can sell it at a fair price because they want to get rid of the item. I am not a professional photographer, but overall my opinion on this camera is quiet good.

For the past few days I've also gone through some of the older cameras and lense, one thing I did realize was older cameras using stainless steel lenses which was a lot more durable, these days everything is plastic, it just seems that corporates are charging us more and giving us less, just my 2 cents.

Android's Button Onclick Event:Button.OnClickListener()

I came from Asp.net background, and I really didn't have any idea on how to develop mobile phone applications. I didn't see any documentation on how get an event for OnClick on Android SDK, this most simple feature is can not be automatically generated by Eclipse, you have do it on your own.

in the \res\layout\main.xml Create the button

<button
id="@+id/TestButton"
layout_width="fill_parent"
layout_height="wrap_content"
layout_marginleft="30dip"
layout_marginright="30dip"
text="Test Button">

And you can reference it like this from code behind

---------------------------------------------------------
package com.example.helloandroid;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.view.View;

public class HelloAndroid extends Activity {
private Button btnFromGallery;

/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
initControls();
}

protected void initControls()
{
btnFromGallery = (Button)findViewById(R.id.TestButton);

btnFromGallery.setOnClickListener(new Button.OnClickListener() { public void onClick (View v){ DoWork(); }});
}

protected void DoWork()
{
//Do whatever you need to do here
}
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------

This may look simple but it was very hard to find it online, I hope google would create more examples in the future.

Conversion to Dalvik format failed with error 1

I started google android development today, after downloading SDK and loading it into eclipse just like how google guide “hello android” has listed.

“no classfiles specified“
“Conversion to Dalvik format failed with error 1“
pops up as I try to run it for the very first time.

How you fix it is
Go to Project -> Clean and it should solve the problem.

Good luck on your “Hello Android Application”