Level Up - Android Dev: The default emulator is horrendously slow, use Genymotion!

Many years back when I built and published my first Android apps, I only tested them on the default emulator provided by Google. And, even now, the default emulator is still too slow for my liking. It doesn't allow me to properly test apps. So, I purchased physical devices so that I would never have to touch the Android emulator again.

Genymotion provides a different take on the Android emulator. I've known about it for at least a year, but never got around to trying it because of my really bad experience with the default emulator. I've always heard that it was much faster than Google's implementation, but I didn't think an Android emulator could ever be fast enough for me compared to my physical devices.

I'm always learning something new, and today was finally time for me to learn more about Genymotion and test just how much better it is.

Results: Excellent! So much of a great experience that I had to write this blog post about it! I should have tried Genymotion when I first heard about it, and this is my message to all Android devs to also try it out now!

Sidenote: I was going to compare the default emulator with the Genymotion emulator side-by-side, but it was taking too long to load for me, whereas Genymotion startup was a breeze of fresh air. It runs without any lag. It runs faster than my old API 17 device.

Another great benefit is that Genymotion provides system images for many of the most popular devices, including Samsung Galaxy, Samsung Note, HTC One, Nexus, and more. And, they have a very convenient plugin for Android Studio to launch the emulator.

TLDR: It's fast. I have to make sure I stress that because I didn't believe how fast it would be. Genymotion's Android emulator is much faster and better experience than the default Android emulator.



Here, I even saved enough time to write a quick walkthrough for getting started. ;)

1. Go to Genymotion.com, click "Get Genymotion".
2. Download the free version, you'll have to sign up and confirm your email. (It's quick and it's worth it!)
3. Install it along with VirtualBox. For Windows users, they can bundle the two together in the download. For other, you'll have to install VirtualBox separately.
4. If you try to run it now, you might get an error that says "genymotion virtualization engine not found. Unable to load VirtualBox engine". So, just restart your computer and that fixed it for me. Some others had to enable the virtualization feature in the BIOS.
5. Run! Fast!
6. Now, you can click run in Android Studio and you will see an option to load the app in the Genymotion emulator that is running.

Bonus: How to Install the Genymotion Plugin for Android Studio (and, the first time you click on the installed plugin button, you'll have to add the path to where you installed it. Windows default is "C:\Program Files\Genymobile\Genymotion". Mac default is "/Applications/Genymotion.app")

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up - Webmaster: How To Get Started With MediaWiki

Want to create your own wiki pages like Wikipedia? You can organize all your thoughts, add notes for your new book you want to write, and more. The wiki can be either public, private, or half and half. You decide.

Going through this process will allow you to edit any and all features that are provided with MediaWiki, the wiki engine for Wikipedia and many other wiki sites.


Step 1. Download MediaWiki, it might be as a .tar.gz file, which in that use 7-Zip to unzip the compressed file, you may have to use 7-Zip twice to fully open it and see the source files.

Step 2. Copy all the files to a directly on your domain.com/mediawiki/w/ directory. One of the easiest ways is using FileZilla, navigating to the public directory using the GUI, then click+drag all the files into the directory. Note: The reason I said that particular directory is because it will allow you to do a lot more later on, like setup the domain.com/wiki site to serve the pages in your wiki. As you wait for all your files to upload to your server,

Step 3. Create a new database and user for that database. This is the method that the MediaWiki instance will be using to save and retrieve all the information for your wiki.

Step 4. Wait until all the files have finished uploading to your domain.com/mediawiki/w/ directory, then navigate to that page in a browser. It'll say LocalSettings.php file not found, so this is where you will use a wizard to setup all the properties of your site, like public/private and more. Each of these properties can always be changed later. I recommend reading through all of them to understand better what is available to you.

Step 5. After going through the entire wiki, the wizard will prompt you to download the LocalSettings.php file which you can then add to the same folder that you previously installed all the files in.

Step 6. In a browser, navigate to your domain.com/mediawiki/w/ and see that you have your main default page show. Congrats, you now have an instance of MediaWiki running on your own server.


If you run into any problems during this process, you can click on the little question marks in the wizard to pop up more information of a section or input area. Another great source of information is on the official install page.


~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up - Webmaster: Installing Laravel and Composer on Bluehost

These steps will get you though getting Laravel up and running on your Bluehost server, though these instructions should be a good enough how-to for other shared hosting providers as well.

This was my first time experiencing (and hearing of) Laravel and Composer and had to look at many websites to figure this information out. Below is a walkthrough of all the steps I would have needed in one location. For more advanced and specific informations, I provide links at the end. But, the steps shown should be enough to get going quickly from scratch.

1.  SSH into your server at ~/bin/
2. Ensure that you have PHP 5.3.7+ on your server. Composer requires 5.3.2+ and Laravel requires PHP 5.3.7+. You can check with which php and which php-cli
3. Install Composer: Run the command curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php

4. Test that the installation worked by running php-cli composer.phar

5. Install Laravel: Run the command php-cli composer.phar create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist
Note: Step 5 may take a minute or two, there are many dependencies that have to also be installed for Laravel.

Extra steps
6. Look at this file for project-specific adjustable values: app/config/app.php and bootstrap/paths.php
7. See my next post for more walkthrough

More info:
- Laravel installation instructions
- Laravel configuration instructions
- Then, the Quickstart


Error: "warning: composer should be invoked via the CLI version of PHP, not the cgi-fcgi SAPI"
Fix: Use the command php-cli instead of php.


~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Level Up - Paint.NET: How To Create Sprite Sheet From Layers In Paint.NET

Need an easy way to create sprite sheets in Paint.NET? Don't want to create a new file for every image of your animation? Want to experiment with cool new plugins to make your graphic design skills better?

All you need is one plugin combine all your layers into an evenly-spaced sprite sheet.

Difficulty: Easy
Estimated time of completion: Less than five minutes.

Step 1: Download this plugin for Paint.NET: Spritesheet Export Plugin

Step 2: Make sure that Paint.NET isn't running, then copy the "SpriteSheet.dll" file into your Paint.NET installation folder, i.e. Program Files/Paint.NET/FileTypes/ subfolder.

Step 3: Now, when you open Paint.NET, you should have the extra ability to save as SpriteSheet (*.ss.png)

And, if you would like to do the opposite - Spritesheet to images, then check out Sprite Animation Helper Plugin

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Why Do So Many Apps Need Location Permission To Install?

Answer: Ads pay more when developers provide user locations to them.

I'm not going to link to any particular ad networks. But, I know about them because every week different ad networks email me telling about how they pay out the most to developers.

If you don't feel comfortable giving out your location to apps that don't need it, then don't install them. Apps would run perfectly well without location permissions.

I am a developer for Android and Windows platforms. Currently, none of my apps give any user information to ad networks. I make enough money from my apps already due to popular use.

~ Simply Advanced ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Computer/Programming Blog