Earlier today, I was trying to figure out how to add a float value to constants file. What I used to do was add a string value in my strings.xml, retrieve the string value, and convert it to float.

float floatFromFile = Float.valueOf(getResources().getString(R.string.my_float));

A user-friendly way of cloning a git repo is through the eGit plug-in in Eclipse. But sometimes, especially on Windows machines, Eclipse has trouble cleaning up after itself after completing a clone operation. The best workaround for this is to clone the repo from git bash and then import the repo in Eclipse.

default@ZDOMINGUEZ-T420 ~
$ git clone git@github.com:<your git repo> <local folder to check out to>

Lately, one of my tasks has been to automate regression tests on one of our apps. Since this is a web app, we are using Selenium. Here, I enumerate the steps to configure Firefox for file downloading using Selenium and JUnit by foregoing the downloads dialog box.

By default, MongoDB allows access to the database without authentication. Adding a user with a username/password is easy, but authenticating might be a bit tricky since the official documentation does not say the command directly.

To my two readers out there, hello! It’s been a while since I posted here. I was transferred to another (non-Android) project and lost all my Internet privileges, hence the silence. I still can’t believe almost every other site is blocked by the office firewall! Makes software development ten times harder. Ugh.

This afternoon, I tried importing an existing project into Eclipse. Doing a Project > Clean usually clears up the R.java not found errors, but this time it didn’t work. I tried re-importing the project, copy-and-pasting it into a new workspace, restarting Eclipse, but the error is still there.

Tearing my hair out on my latest project. So here’s some Garbage to cheer me up.

Several months ago, I was faced with a problem of passing a complex object to another Activity. There are several ways of doing this:

• “Deconstructing” the complex object to simple data types and passing them as extras through putExtra()
• Making the object Parcelable
• Making the object Serializable

It is my dream to one day attend Google I/O. But seeing as I’m from a Third World country where everyday is a practice in cost-cutting, it is very unlikely that I would fulfill that dream anytime soon. I haven’t sat down and computed the actual cost, but thinking about it makes my head spin. Off the top of my head:

• US Visa application = P6500 (~USD150)
• Round trip plane fare ticket = P90,000 (~USD2000, if I’m lucky)-
• Google I/O ticket = P21,000 (~USD450, if my research is correct)