Posts

A Chess Solitaire Clock

Image
A year ago this month I returned as Editor of Texas Knights , the official publication of the Texas Chess Association.   And just last month, I signed up to play in an over-the-board (OTB) tournament in Arlington.  I thought I hadn't played in an OTB tournament for about 4 years.  But, after looking at my OTB games database, realized it has been literally 5 years this month since I had played in a tournament that wasn't online.   This may not have a lot of relevance to my Arduino programming activities ... but if I continue that story by saying that ... I got to thinking ... there isn't really a way to easily practice in a way similar to the way an OTB tournament works ... for example, you don't have an opportunity to stop a clock after you move ... or capture moves on a score sheet (although you certainly easily do so easily with a piece of paper and a writing instrument ... a pen, pencil, crayon, etc).  Heck, maybe even a Boogie Board or similar would be appropriate. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Playing around with the Meadow F7

This post refers to an older version of Meadow.  The latest version has something similar to what is described below, and it also makes the below post irrelevant.   I highly recommend that you update your Meadow API to the latest version and focus on using it rather than focusing on the samples below.  However, always keep in mind that you aren't limited to what any manufacture provides to you for development purposes and sometimes it may be worth the time to simplify your development processes by creating reusable 'objects' that can be shared among your projects.   There is nothing wrong with simplifying your development process, but also be careful to fully test anything you create (and intend to use across multiple projects) since shared code that has problems can cause havoc. Like I said in the previous post, I haven't been doing much with Arduino lately.   Although, I would like to say I really like using Visual Studio Code for Arduino Development.  With the Arduin
Post a Comment
Read more

An alternative to using the Xamarin Remote iOS Simulator in Visual Studio.

Image
I haven't really been doing a lot of Arduino programming lately, instead I've been working on building a new cross-platform app using Xamarin Forms in Visual Studio 2019.   When I started, Microsoft had problems with the running the Remote iOS Simulator on Windows and I had found an alternative that worked well for me.   In fact, now that the Remote iOS Simulator support is working again, I've found that I actually prefer my alternative because it's substantially faster (i.e. it doesn't shut down the simulator on the Mac when I stop debugging so I don't have to wait for the simulator to start every time I want to test an app), and to be honest, I find it is just about as convenient. So, I thought I'd share what I do and how I do it.   What will you need?  First, you will need 2 Microsoft Windows-based Computers along with a Mac that is compatible with the XCode Version need for Xamarin development ...yes, that's one more Windows Computer than what is req
Post a Comment
Read more