We’ve started a blog at work where we will be writing about all kinds of technology we use at VG.no and its network of services. I will try to be a little more active with my blogging from now on and will make sure to post a link to any interesting articles both on this blog and on twitter.
I wrote up a blog post there about how to speed up SQLite insert operations.
Check it out over at VG Tech.
Yesterday, I released an Android application on the Android Market; Agricola Buddy.
For months now, we’ve had regular games of the Agricola board game at work. It’s a real gem of a game, and in my opinion perfect for “thinkers” – like programmers usually are.
The application helps you with calculating the score for each player in the game, which is done at the end of each game. While far from a necessity when playing, it provided me with an opportunity to create and release an application of limited size and complexity.
You can find the application on the Android Market, just search for “Agricola Buddy” or scan the QR-code to the right.
In the future, I hope to add lots of cool features to it – a way to store results over time, submit to a webservice, easily share the results with others, occupation/minor improvement reference and so on. If you have an Android phone, give it a go 
Here are some screenshots:
Been a while since I made my Samsung Galaxy skin. Since then, a ton of Android phones have arrived and many of them with different resolutions than the “normal” HVGA.
A popular one in Europe is the X10 Mini, from Sony Ericsson which has a QVGA resolution.
When you are creating Android applications, you should make sure that it works well on various resolutions, which the emulator helps you with. However, the built in QVGA skin is rather ugly, so I decided to try and whip up a skin based on the X10 Mini. Here’s what I ended up with:
I quite like it, and it also works fairly well on low-resolution monitors, such as on netbooks (at least it does on mine). I zipped it up and put it up for download. To use it:
Note: I forgot to include the hardware.ini file required for 1.6+. Should work better now
My name is Espen Hovlandsdal aka 'Rexxars'. I'm a 25 year old developer from Norway, currently working for VG Multimedia.
This blog is mainly targeted towards other developers, although I occasionally write about other topics that interest me.
