Category Archives: Epilepsy

Auto Respond, Epilepsy

Epilepsy Awareness Month

This blog has been turned purple for epilepsy awareness month.

This year for Epilepsy Awareness month I will once again be donating all proceeds from Auto Respond Pro purchases to the Epilepsy Foundation.

The Auto Respond notification icon (and anywhere else that I could change it programmatically) will automatically turn purple starting tomorrow (November 1st) and will remain purple until the end of November. On December 1st, if you would like to keep the purple icon you can do so by enabling it in the options, otherwise the icon will return to its normal green. The option to change the icon color will be disabled during November.

As many of you know from reading my blogs in the past, I was born with epilepsy. The epilepsy foundation has helped me a lot throughout life, and they continue to help me and others through hardships. If you would like more detail on that, check out my personal blog which is linked at the top of this page.

Last year I posted one fact about epilepsy, on all of my social media sites, every day in November. I have been extremely busy lately, officially turning Fifteen 15 Studios into a business, changing jobs, and doing many other things, so I won’t have time this year to research more facts to post (or to setup the automatic posting of those facts like I did last year.) I may however post the facts that I posted last year. I have them all in a word document, and will likely post them somewhere before the end of November.

If you would like to make your own donation to the epilepsy foundation, you can give to the national chapter at this website:
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/give/index.cfm
Or you can give to my local chapter here:
http://www.epilepsyuny.org/donate.htm

Auto Respond can be found in the Play Store here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespond

Any additional donations are much appreciated!

You can also find a list of facts about epilepsy (that I posted to my social media profiles last November) here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4658512/Seizure%20Facts.docx

Android, Auto Respond, Epilepsy

Last Chance!

Today is the final day of Epilepsy Awareness Month! That being said, today is also the last day to help me support Epilepsy Awareness and the Epilepsy Foundation by purchasing Auto Respond.

I have a rather large update that is going to be pushed out tonight or tomorrow. Part of that update will return the icon back to its original colors, but the rest of it is bug fixes, new features, and better performance.

To see what’s new, check out the changelog: http://bit.ly/Rmi6Wf

for 99 cents you can have the new scheduler (which is going to be even more enhanced with tomorrow’s update) and you can support a great cause!

Download it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespond

Also, today at noon my last Epilepsy Fact of the Day will be posting to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Then tonight at 6, the entire list of facts will be posted as a word document which is available for download. I encourage you all to go download that document and educate yourselves on the reality of epilepsy.

Android, Auto Respond, Epilepsy

Thanksgiving Update

I’ve spent a LOT of time the last few days, making what seems like minimal progress.  Some things get exceedingly complicated when you start using more complicated views to display things. The upside is that it makes things look and feel better for the user.

All of that being said, I got the checkbox on the schedules working. It took me almost an entire work day to do it, but I did it. Schedules can now be activated/deactivated from the checkbox on the list of schedules, OR from within the edit screen for each individual schedule.

While doing this, I also found and fixed some bugs in the editing/deleting process for the schedules (luckily I found them before releasing the scheduler as a feature.)

All that is left now is creating the alarm activity to trigger the start and end of the schedule, then acting on that alarm to actually enable/disable Auto Respond.

ETA:

I don’t like giving an actual ETA, but I’m hoping to have the scheduler done by the end of this weekend. I probably won’t do any programming today, but I might get some done tomorrow, and I’ll likely spend some time on it on Saturday and possibly Sunday as well.

That being said, if it’s completed by the end of the weekend, I’ll probably test it during the week, and hopefully release it near the end of the week (assuming I don’t run into many bugs.)

As I’ve stated before, this will be a PAID ONLY feature. If you click on “New Schedule” in the free version, it will prompt you to purchase the paid version.



REMINDER: If you purchase the paid version before the end of the month, all proceeds go to the Epilepsy Foundation for Epilepsy Awareness Month! I haven’t gotten many purchases this month, but I have gotten a few. I would be very grateful (and so would the Foundation) if some of you made a purchase before the end of the month.

If you do purchase after the end of the month, and would still like your purchase to be donated, email me and I will make the donation.

Side note: It would be nice to see some ratings and feedback in the Play Store too! 😉

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving today, I wish you all a happy and SAFE holiday! Please be careful while travelling, and use caution when cooking for yourselves, your families, and/or your guests.

Android, Auto Respond, Epilepsy, Euchre

Back to coding

I know it has been a while since I’ve done anything new… It has been a busy month. I started doing some more coding this week, and I’ve found and fixed a few bugs. (Why does nobody tell me about these?? If you find bugs PLEASE send me an email so that I can fix it!)

Here’s some stuff I’ve been working on:

Auto Respond:

1) A pretty big bug fix – I noticed that Auto Respond would sometimes toggle itself off. I was wondering why… what is causing this. It seemed kind of random, but I finally figured it out. It was something in the Dock Settings Menu. I figured out what was causing the problem, and it has been fixed. (It may not have been an issue if the dock options were not enabled. I’m also no 100% sure that this bug affected the free version.)

2) I fixed a small bug on the schedule tab, which cause 12pm to be shown as 0pm when using 12-hour clock.

2a) While on the subject of the scheduler, the changes made in the SDK have set me WAY back in the development of the scheduler. They depreciated some of the code I was using, and I need to figure out how to use the new methods.

3) I’ve made settings on 4.0+ devices take effect immediately. I’m not sure if the same is true for Pre-4.0 devices. (I know I tried it once, but it didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped.)

4) Google just released a new SDK, so I’m going to look at the new options in the SDK and the “support” API to see if there is a way for me to unify the menu across Android versions again.

5) I don’t think anything needs to be changed for the app to support Android 4.2, but I will be looking into that as well. (Especially once some 4.2 ROMs are released for the Galaxy Nexus, and I can test on an actual device.) I would actually like to look into the possibility of adding something into the “quick settings” area of 4.2. Not sure if apps have the ability to add toggles to that list, but it would be cool if I could make that a reality.

These changes are still a work in progress, and are not fully tested as of now. I will likely be fully testing them, across multiple Android versions, in a couple days. Once they are fully tested, and confirmed working properly, I will release an update.

As always, the app is available on the play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespond
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.havens1515.autorespondfree

Both versions are still purple for epilepsy awareness month, and all purchases of the paid version still go to the Epilepsy Foundation.

GUI Euchre:

I have some changes that will be made in my Euchre game as well. I’ve found a few small issues (listed in the known issues document on the download page) and I plan on fixing those later this week. Not too many people actively use that program, so it’s a little lower on my to-do list. The issues that are present are not pressing issues either. They do not greatly effect the usability of the program, they’re just small things that annoy me when I play.

I want to take some extra time to re-do the AI in the game as well. Since I programmed it, I find it a little too predictable. There are also times when I think the computer players call trump too often, or they take risks that are not necessary to take, and other times they are quite risky enough. I want to add some more random events into their logic, making the players a little less predictable, but also try to make them play smarter. Some of my logic is built on too specific triggers, and I want to work on that.

Having never taken a class or read anything about AI design, I am learning as I go. It’s kinda tough to teach yourself a concept like AI design, but I think I’m doing pretty well with it. I would like to eventually be able to build in selectable play styles, or difficulty settings, but that’s kinda tough to do in a game like euchre. I’d first need to learn different play styles, then perfect them, then program them.

if you want to check out the Euchre game (as it is now) you can get it here: bit.ly/GUIEuchre

Android, Auto Respond, Epilepsy

Auto Respond for Epilepsy Awareness!

As I said in my last post, this month is Epilepsy Awareness Month.
I have decided to turn Auto Respond purple for the month. My icons and my Play Store banner have been turned purple instead of their normal blue and green.

On top of changing the color, ALL money that is made from the sale of the paid version of Auto Respond during November will be donated equally between the National Epilepsy foundation (http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/) and my local branch of the Epilepsy Foundation. (http://www.epilepsyuny.org/) My local branch has done WAY too much for me, my family, and my friends to not include them specifically.

70% of all sales in the Play Store go to me, the rest goes to cell carriers. ALL of that 70% will go from my bank account, to the Epilepsy Foundation at the end of the month. I will not keep 1 cent of the sales that I make this month.

Unfortunately, I do not know if there is a way to get 100% of your purchase to charity, but my 70% can still make a difference!

If you would like to donate, separate from your purchase, you can do so here:
https://secure2.convio.net/efa/site/Donation2?df_id=1774&1774.donation=form1
or here:
http://www.epilepsyuny.org/donate.htm

Donations from the “Donate” link in my app can also be sent to the Epilepsy Foundation. Just include a note when you donate that you would like that donation to go to the Epilepsy Foundation. (The money will initially go to me, but I WILL make sure it gets to the foundation at the end of the month!)