Monday, September 29, 2014

Fixing XE7 + Android SDK 23 ZipAlign Problem

If you install RAD Studio XE7 and then upgrade Android SDK to version 23, you won’t be able to deploy applications to Android devices anymore.

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The reason for that is that ZipAlign.exe was moved out of sdk\tools folder in SDK 23 and XE7’s deployment process cannot find it anymore. Now it is located in sdk\build-tools\20.0.0, but only is Android SDK Build-tools rev. 20 are installed, which doesn’t happen automatically.

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To fix my Delphi I first had to install Build tools rev. 20. Then I copied sdk\build-tools\20.0.0\zipalign.exe to sdk\tools\zipalign.exe. That fixed the deployment problem.

I’m hoping Embarcadero will fix this in the next update, but for now you can use this workaround.

[Android sdk folder can be found in c:\Users\Public\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\15.0\PlatformSDKs\adt-bundle-windows-x86-20131030\sdk]

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Delphi programmer wanted

This is a job offer for a full time programming job in Ljubljana.

Iščemo Delphi programerja za dolgotrajno razmerje; človeka, ki se ne ustraši stare kode in z veseljem programira s sodobnimi orodji. [XE2, prehod na sodobno različico je že v teku in ga bo pomagal zaključiti prav programer ali programerka, ki ga iščemo.] Delo se opravlja v pisarni v Ljubljani.

Več o podjetju: www.fab-online.com. Kontakt: primoz (pri) fab-online.com.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Users Like FireUI and Dynamic Arrays

A snapshot from the XE7 presentation in Ljubljana.

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Highlights of the presentation were FireUI, System.Threading, dynamic arrays, and OmniXML.

‘Twas a very nice crowd, asking LOTS of questions. It was also good to see some young(er) people and some Delphi [insert a prehistoric version here] users who finally decided that they should upgrade.

Monday, September 08, 2014

RAD Studio XE7 Launch in Slovenia

If you want to see all the great new stuff in XE7, join me on Wednesday, 17th in Ljubljana. We’ll cover the new VCL stuff, multithreading support, improvements for multi-device development, business mobile services and more.

As usual, presentation will be in Slovenian language.

More information & registration

Monday, September 01, 2014

Chromecast Randomly Crashing–Solved!

This is one of rare posts on my blog that doesn’t cover pascal programming. Proceed on your own risk ;)

For the last half a year, I’ve been a happy owner of a Chromecast device. Great stuff, especially as it allows me (with a small hack) to watch Netflix on my TV and listen to Pandora. At the beginning, it was a bit unstable, but through regular updates it stabilized quite a bit – until build 17977 got installed.

Since that time I got random crashes while playing any media (video or audio) from any source (in-house or external provider). It would load the player app, start playing, then crash after a few seconds. It would work fine for days, even weeks, but then it would start crashing and I would not be able to use for for half a day, after which it would start working again.

I’ve decided that the hardware is broken, maybe overheating, and I bought another one. (Did I mention it’s cheap?) But no luck – it started behaving the same as soon as it has upgraded to build 17977.

Few days ago I found a network forum thread where someone (sorry, no link, it got lost) mentioned a possibility of a bad power source. (My Chromecast is plugged into TV’s USB port.) And when the device started playing tricks on me today, I plugged it into an external USB power supply. And – surprise, surprise – it started working!

Something weird is still going on. When I start playing in a new player (i.e. when I switch apps), media is played for few seconds, then the TV goes blank and its power light starts blinking, then the picture reappears and media continues to play.

My current guess is that Chromecast does something weird which basically quick-resets the TV. When Chromecast was plugged into TV’s USB port, that also reset the Chromecast, but now that it’s plugged into an external power source, Chromecast continues playing while the TV does its yoyo trick.

I’m not completely satisfied with this solution as I would rather see my Chromecast to turn off together with the TV, but it is a “good enough” workaround. I still love that device, though. It’s the best stuff Google made in a long long time.

I’m posting this blog in hope that it will help other Chromecast users who may run into the same problem.