Friday, July 1, 2016

One year of sketchnoting

I made my first sketchnote at Write/Speak/Code 2015 on the impostor syndrome talk by Neha Batra.

I started with a single black pen, added a gray marker as I experimented with shading.

My friend saw the little gray hearts and suggested that I get the primary colors, which was perfect since I was about to attend Google I/O.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction I got for my sketchnotes gave me the confidence to try drawing as well, which, mind you, I grew up believing that I cannot draw. It was a pleasant surprise to discover the joy of copying and coloring.

When I first wrote about sketchnoting, I said there is no way I can draw portraits. Guess what, I do that now!

At Write/Speak/Code 2016 I sketchnoted for Neha again, and it is really fun to see how much I have progressed in a year.

You can do it too

I have seen many other engineers start sketchnoting since I posted my first sketchnote last year, and it was been absolutely delightful. Wanna get started? Here are some resources:

Posted by at 3:29 PM 0 comments
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Saturday, June 25, 2016

Write/Speak/Code: 10x Myself

I am very active in the Android community, blogging and speaking and sharing code, but I can only do so much as one person. To scale my efforts, I mentor others to do the same, which aligns with the goals of Write/Speak/Code exactly.

During Write day last year I shared my conference report blogging formula, I have seen it being adopted widely. Some examples:

For speaking, last year I met fellow Android developers Yash Prabhu and Danielle Vass at Write/Speak/Code, and I am delighted to see them start their speaking careers shortly afterwards.

This year, I was on the writing panel again, and also moderated the conference organizers panel. I hope to inspire many more women to go forth and share their knowledge. Storify:

Besides mentoring, I took the opportunity of being surrounded by amazing women to level up my own career as well. One of my 2016 speaking goals is to give a keynote, and during Write/Speak/Code I brainstormed and refined a topic that I am super excited about: The State of Android Testing.

I'd love to hear your Write/Speak/Code story. Did you get started on writing, speaking or open source because of it? Let me know!

Posted by at 7:07 PM 0 comments
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The State of Android Testing

We all know testing is good for you, but it is very overwhelming. What is a unit test? What is an instrumentation test? Espresso, Robolectric, Mockito… what do all these libraries do? More fundamentally, why should I test?

I'd like to give a keynote talk to answer all these questions. Do you know a conference that would be interested? Perhaps Droidcon NYC?

Posted by at 6:41 PM 2 comments
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Saturday, June 4, 2016

Coding live stream

I first heard about live streaming when I watched Dina Rodriguez hand lettering on Twitch.

But I wasn't sure what to do in front of a live audience, so I didn't do anything about it until I met Liam Spradlin at Google I/O. He started streaming after watching Dina, and encouraged me to try it, giving me lots of practical tips. There was a lot of code labs announced at Google I/O, so I thought, hey I want to do them anyway, why not live stream too?

Software

OBS, Open Broadcaster Software. Free, available in Windows, Mac and Linux.

Streaming service

restream.io: Stream to many places at the same time. I picked:

Layout

Here is how my desktop looked like during live stream:

My monitor resolution is 2560x1600, and I cropped the Display Capture to 1920x1080 so get the 16:9 aspect ratio. I popped out the chats from the 3 services so I can monitor them, but put them outside of the capture area so my audience won't see them.

I put the emulator outside as well, and declare it as a source in OBS so it is always visible, even when I type in Android Studio. If I want to hide it, I move it down in the list of sources in OBS.

The last source is my webcam. I cropped it to a square.

Here is how it looks like when I stream:

The emulator source is in the top right, and the webcam source is in the bottom right.

Preparation

  • Click "Start Recording" in OBS to see what it captures, and adjust the microphone, webcam etc as needed.
  • Set up the channels in restream.io, and copy the stream key to OBS.
  • For each channel, set up archiving on the site itself e.g. YouTube.
  • Set up OBS with the instructions from livecoding.tv: https://www.livecoding.tv/obs-guide
  • Increase the font size of your browser and IDE.
  • Try out a little bit whatever you plan to do while streaming. I was going to stream from my Linux box, but couldn't get the Android Wear N Preivew emulator going, so I had to switch to my Mac.
  • Advertise multiple times before the live stream, and once again after you have started streaming.

Streaming

Keep an eye out on the chat windows when you stream. Live stream is much less fun without audience interaction! I say my reply out loud, but type links into the chat window so people can click on them.

Results

I trimmed the video to skip the initial part when I'm setting things up and waiting for people to show up.

People seem to like it!

Next

I'll try to stream once a month. I'll be announcing them on Twitter, and you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified of the recorded videos.

Posted by at 5:48 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, June 2, 2016

Advanced Espresso at #io16

I missed the Advanced Espresso talk at Google I/O this year because it was at the same time as Building rich fitness experiences with Google Fit platform and Android Wear, where Fit Cat was featured.

Finally got a chance to watch it at home, and wow, lots of good tips and tricks!

onTransitionToIdle (at 10:33)

According to the talk, it's preferable to set the state of the idling resource once, and call the idle transition callback when the state changes to idle. A good example is CountingIdlingResource, in the decrement function.

I went back to look at my custom idling resources, and try to skip calling the idle transition callback in isIdleNow. That gives me this error:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Resource com.sqisland.espresso.idling_resource.intent_service.IntentServiceIdlingResource isIdleNow() is returning true, but a message indicating that the resource has transitioned from busy to idle was never sent.

So it's seems like I must call the callback. From the doc, it seems harmless to call it multiple times, so I'm going to leave my querying idling resources as is.

For idling resources that query the state in isIdleNow, there is no need to call the idle transition callback. See IntentServiceIdlingResource for an example.

loopMainThreadForAtLeast (at 11:18)

Try to avoid it, but if you need some time to pass in your test, do not call Thread.sleep or SystemClock.sleep. Instead, use UiController.loopMainThreadForAtLeast.

You will need to make a custom ViewAction to get access to the UiController. Note: Not to store the UIController outside the ViewAction, because it may not be valid any more.

More tips

  • (12:10) Do not copy and paste between tests. Create helper functions.
  • (13:35) Use available Matchers. Write your own only if necessary, with TypeSafeMatcher and BoundedMatcher.
  • (15:08) Use CountingIdlingResource.
  • (15:54) Change IdlingPolicy if the defaults are too short.
  • (16:35) Focus on testing behavior, not layout properties. Use position assertions e.g. isBelow if you must verify layout. They are relative and easier to maintain.
  • (17:35) Write many small tests rather than large ones.
  • (18:44) Launch directly into desired screen and state with intents.
  • (19:56) Most UI tests should be as hermetic as possible.
  • (20:37) Use Espresso Intents to intercept Intents that launch external apps.
  • (21:19) Learn how to run long running animations. Read ANIMATOR_DURATION_SCALE from system settings and disable that in your app when it is zero. Show surface updates from Developer Tools to see hidden animations.
  • (24:00) Implement your own FailureHandler if you want to log extra information when your test fails.
  • (24:41) Developer Tools FTW!
  • (25:05) Change touch and hold delay for slow devices / emulator
  • (25:49) Enable testing for accessibility issues. Super easy: AccessibilityValidator.enable()

Thank you Wojtek Kaliciński for the informative talk!

Posted by at 4:51 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, May 26, 2016

Tips on hosting Google Hangout on Air

My friend Yash is hosting an Ask Me Anything via Google Hangout, and asked me for some tips. Thought I'd share them with everyone!

Rule number one of Google Hangout: Anything that could go wrong, will.

That said, here are a few things you can do to make it better.

  1. Get on it 15 minutes before event time to get over technical difficulties.
  2. Go live 5 minutes before event time so people who come early can already see the live stream. Otherwise their window will stay static until they refresh i.e. they won't know the event has started. Also, by starting a bit early people can start posting questions already.
  3. Send reminder emails / tweet after you go live for the same reason as number 2.
  4. If you use the Q&A module, beware that it may or may not work. So you may need a different place to post questions e.g. the event comments.
  5. It's better to have another person to keep an eye on the questions so you can focus on talking. Have that person ask the questions for you to answer.

Here is an example of a Google Hangout on Air we did for 360|AnDev:

Posted by at 10:18 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, April 3, 2016

Go Code Colorado

Go Code Colorado is a state-wide event to innovate on top of Colorado open data. Android Atelier went to Challenge Weekend in Fort Collins.

Preparation

We wanted to use CartoDB to visualize the geo data on the map, so we went to Maptime Boulder to learn about it.

Also, I baked cookies.

Data

How are we going to create value? By showing multiple sets of data on the same map.

The different layers made it very easy to parallelize the work. We looked at different data sets and scrubbed the geo data to put it on the map.

Here is our working demo:

Presentation

Go Code Colorado 2016 centers around the problem statement:

Create an app and business concept that helps businesses build a competitive strategy.

Our app shows agricultural, demographics and logistics data allowing businesses decide where to set up shop. Here is our presentation:

Winners

Two teams advances per location to the final round.

SWO

SWO, or Shop Women Owned, crosses the Colorado business entities with the Social Security Number gender data to showcase women-owned businesses in Colorado. They had a great pitch, and made us realize that we were taking the problem statement too literally.

At the end of the day, this is a business pitch competition. Helping businesses build a competitive strategy (Where will I play? How will I win? Is it worth it?) was not a hard requirement. As long as public data is used, any business plan is fine. In this case, SWO promotes women-owned businesses in bulk, without necessarily helping them build a competitive strategy individually.

Colorado Well Spot

Colorado Well Spot aggregates public data to help oil and gas companies figure out where they should operate. You would think that they would check and make sure not to drill too close to a school, or right of top of a pipeline. Turns out the data is scattered all over the place, and there is not really a good way to do a comprehensive check.

Emily Hueni, the leader of the team, is a GIS specialist with oil and gas experience, and really understands the problem. Once she started talking about the app, we knew they were going to win!

CartoDB

CartoDB is really nice. I like how I can extrapolate from my existing knowledge of SQL and CSS to customize my map. Even though we did not win, we had lots of fun exploring and visualizing the data.

Posted by at 10:10 PM 0 comments
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Location: Fort Collins, CO, USA
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