I made my first android app today. It was terrible and I plan to never do it again.
wow! a real app on my phone--well okay, this is an emulator
It took me about three hours of trying to get the sample apps to run before I gave up and made something from scratch. Both involved heavy use of ChatGPT (not my usual flow).
app icon
That said, if you want an app that reminds you how to tie your tie in an easy step-by-step way, you can download the APK from my website, and I believe you should be able to run that on your phone.
I don't know how to easily share Android source code, so I won't.
Today I hacked together a simple but servicable Go game. It uses chinese scoring, and you have to manually mark dead stones at the end of the game. You can play a demo here. Source code is on github.
Right now you have to sit down with someone else to play. I plan to spend a day adding multiplayer to a few games, if I have time.
This was so-so. I didn't have a ton of fun making it, and it's not that fun to play either. I spent way too much time with things like trying to get sprites to load, and not as much on making the game fun. I think it could be much better with another day or two of work (as usual for hack-a-day).
Today I made a TODO list. It has whiteboard sections to write tasks in, an eraser, and a timer. You should be able to use it flat or on the wall, though it's a little bulky to use flat.
the final whiteboard
The blue is mostly spray paint, with some hand acrylic painting near the tape. The various bits on top are held in place with magnets, which I epoxied.
The cost to make this was $17. $5 for the whiteboard marker, $5 for the MDF board, and $7 for the timer. The eraser I made for free. I already had paints, whiteboard tape, epoxy, and magnets.
in-progress whiteboard. note some blue LEDs on the right
Originally I had planned to add a bunch of electronics (LEDs for which task is active, a built-in timer, a buzzer, etc), but I decided not to. I was way too ambitious, so I didn't think I'd have time. On top of that, I was having a rough time getting my microcontroller to work, or figuring out how to mount hardware cleanly on MDF. I don't think I would have been happy with the electronic version (even with enough time to do it well), and I am with this version. I'm glad I gave up on that part early. I don't think I'll attempt another physical electronics project during hack-a-day -- it's too hard with too little to show for it at my skill level.
There are 24 hours in a day. This shows you how many of those are daylight. You can use it as a calendar, or you can wistfully watch it, waiting for the sun to come back.
As on day 02, I tried to make a soma cube, this time milling it out of aluminium on a milling machine.
The Soma Cube is a 3D, tetris-like puzzle -- picture credit 2ndlook.nl
I picked up some aluminium from a local supplier, and headed to Hive13, the local hackerspace, to use their milling machine.
The Hive13 metal mill
After about 7 hours, despite hard work, I had almost finished cutting the blanks, and that was it. Milling is no joke, especially for a beginner!
correctly sized blanks to make the pieces
And had to call it a night, both because I was tired and because the weekly meeting was starting. I was feeling pretty rough after this one -- three, nearly four failed projects in a row is not a great start to a hackathon.
Today's project was to make a healthy, shelf-stable food that I could eat every day, and take care of meals for the rest of the month. In the process, I realized my initial goals didn't quite make sense, and I also (again!) ran out of time. But I made a little progress.
First, I spent a couple hours researching foods like what I wanted to make. I started with "survival" foods -- hard tack, military rations, disaster food, pemmican and wasna. Commons themes I saw were:
The foods lasted a long time
They were cheap to make (then, not now)
They were dense (physically compact) and could stand being thrown around
They were high-calorie.
They didn't need cooking, and often you could get by with no heat or utensils if needed.
They were something people would eat (and often, the bare minimum standard)
They contained some reasonable macronutrient balance, although usually not an ideal one
They were often meat-heavy
Then I branched out a little to other calorie-dense foods:
Trail mix
Fudge
Energy bars, meal squares, and granola bars
Biscotti
I started realizing my goals didn't quite align with what I was seeing. I didn't really need my food to last years -- one month outside a fridge would be fine. I cared a lot more about taste. And eating calorie dense food was not really a great idea, as someone mostly sitting in a chair rather than than hauling gear cross-country all day.
I did a circuit of local stores -- a grocery store, a restaurant supply store, an indian grocer's. I also picked up enough frozen food at Trader Joe's to last me most of the month, rather defeating the point. Oops!
I came home with a lot of flours and flour-adjacent things. Very carb-heavy. I had several flours: corn, chickpea, and wheat. I ground up a few more.
grinding dried peas into flour one jar of peas makes one jar of flour completed flours. quinoa, chickpea, corn, green pea, oats, lentil, pigeon pea chocolate chips, coconut, cheese, sausage, flax, sunflower seeds, sugar, shortening, and boullion
At this point, I had a wide variety of cheap ingredients. I went to the USDA food database and wrote some notes about macronutrient balance, and did the math on how much things cost.
Then, I started experimenting. I had previously made hard tack, which I found kept forever and I liked pretty well. So I started by experimenting with hard tack, using non-wheat flour recipes. I was worried (rightly so) that non-wheat flours would not hold together as well.
experimenting with non-wheat flour ratios
I tried ratios of quinoa and wheat flour, and also tried adding a few ingredients. I found that 1 part in 3 of wheat flour was plenty to hold things together--it just wouldn't be puffy any more. That seemed fine. I also discovered that it was really important to aim for a consistent thickness, because some of the pieces ended up soft and some hard or burnt. Luckily, non-wheat flours are a lot springier, so this was easier in the second batch.
experimenting with ingredients -- 23 tests total
In the second batch, I kept the same 1:2 ratio, but tried a wide variety of flours, as well as the rest of the additives.
My findings, and my ending point for the night:
A 1:2 ratio of wheat flour to another flour seems to consistently hold together well. The amount of water needed varies just a little. The squares cook with 20 minutes per side.
Quinoa, green pea, oat, and chickpea flours are neutral to good. Corn and wheat flours are excellent. Lentil flour smells too strongly. I forgot to test pigeon pea or make rice flour.
Coconut (un-powdered) is also excellent. I like the smell and a little fat. Shortening was not as good, and I didn't test other fats.
Adding extra salt didn't change the flavor.
Adding fat (via coconut or shortening) makes the wafers a little messier.
Sugar is great. Whether a dusting on top, a little added, or chocolate chips, it's a definite winner. Sugar mixed in should improve shelf life.
I was originally trying to invent a single food I could eat every day, which if you know me was a very stupid mistake. Instead, I'm going to have the final version be something more like my experiments--a wide variety to pick from.
If I continue another day (and I likely will), I'm going to further optimize taste. The most compelling result of all is that I didn't eat the leftovers--I went for frozen food instead.
