I purchased the entire collection from CommonsWare as Ebooks reading on my Sony, calibre and FBReader as I work through the examples using Netbeans (and Ant a bit).

I'm about halfway through the first book at this point. Interesting stuff and well presented I think.

Have slown down a bit on my progress since actually receiving my Droid X. Still forging ahead though and have been able to deploy and test a couple of apps on the actual hardware. :)

Kenny; When I worked at Sony a few years ago I helped write part of the layer that lived between the Linux kernel and Dalvik for the XPeria X10 (which I freaking love). Now that they are available in the US one of my team-mates sent me a developers version that I can hack away at; I cannot wait. My coding was about 90pct C++ and the rest Java/Android so I am not that great at Android yet. I think my first project is going to be a decent .CBR/.CBZ reader for Android (running in on my X10 and hopefully my Nook which also run Android) so I can finally read my manga w/o using a laptop/netbook.

Anyhow all of that aside I am writing to ask what you thought of the Busy Coders book; I ordered it once from Amazon and when it didn't show up in a week I checked the status and the estimated date of arrival was 4 months in the future. I am way too into the instant gratification thing to wait so I canceled it and bought Android Wireless Application Development (Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey) instead; it is based on an older rev of the Dalvik VM but that is fine b/c so is the X10 (1.6). The reason for that is that the UI has been heavily updated/skinned and the kernel now gens Facebook, MySpace, etc events and pushes them (along with things like media updates and synchronization) through the JNI to Android for the "Timescape" and "Mediascape" interfaces. Still, the Busy coders book looked interesting (why I tried to buy it in the first place) so I would like to know your thoughts on it when you finish. I am beyond the space of needing a dummies book but Android and Java in general take a different mind-set than I have been working with the past decade or so (firmware and embedded stuff). I almost wish there was a "Tao of Android" book out there somewhere. Still one of the funnest projects I have worked on....

Jeff, I'm into the "....Advanced" book now. I'm just kind of pushing through to get a better understanding/feel and working a few of the examples (using Netbeans). I think the books are great. They certainly don't get down to the level of the Dalvik machine but that's not the intent either. They do give a great feel for the OS overall and discuss it's features and idiosyncrasies. I bought the subscription directly from Mark on his website $40 for a year for all his books -- which is cheaper than one of the books in paper.

http://commonsware.com/

Instant gratification too. :)

Loving my DroidX btw -- been reading these books on it as I walk early mornings in the twilight. :)

Jeff, I'm into the "....Advanced" book now. I'm just kind of pushing through to get a better understanding/feel and working a few of the examples (using Netbeans). I think the books are great. They certainly don't get down to the level of the Dalvik machine but that's not the intent either. They do give a great feel for the OS overall and discuss it's features and idiosyncrasies. I bought the subscription directly from Mark on his website $40 for a year for all his books -- which is cheaper than one of the books in paper.

http://commonsware.com/

Instant gratification too. :)

Wow too cool for words. Thanks Kenny! One last question about the ebook version; were they easy to work with on the Nook? By that I mean I have a number of software engineering books, C++, Python, UNIX, etc on PDF and they are really hard on the eyes...they are the only kind of book that made me wish for a dead-tree version...

Loving my DroidX btw -- been reading these books on it as I walk early mornings in the twilight. :)

I have a batch on my X10 too; maybe I just need a better app (I too use FB reader on Linux on my netbook when I read with that, works simply but great) or maybe just spoiled by the larger screen size on the ereader but I find I have to flip pages too often (landscape or portrait mode) so I only use the X10 in emergencies (reading emergencies? did I just say that?)...I am off to that site to order...tks again mate!

Wow too cool for words. Thanks Kenny! One last question about the ebook version; were they easy to work with on the Nook? By that I mean I have a number of software engineering books, C++, Python, UNIX, etc on PDF and they are really hard on the eyes...they are the only kind of book that made me wish for a dead-tree version...

Once I figured out how to import them into Aldiko it was better as FBReader is cutting off the right side of some of the long lines in the included example programs. I also bring the book up in the calibre viewer when I'm working through the examples on the desktop.

EPub is always better then pdf as far as I'm concerned, easier to change font sizes etc.

Once I figured out how to import them into Aldiko it was better as FBReader is cutting off the right side of some of the long lines in the included example programs. I also bring the book up in the calibre viewer when I'm working through the examples on the desktop.

EPub is always better then pdf as far as I'm concerned, easier to change font sizes etc.

Yep that has been exactly my experience with the PDFs I mentioned; just awkward to read.

What is Aldiko? Is it like Calibre or is it a reader or a format or...? we like epubs the best for the same reasons...

Like the Mountain Dew commercial, been there, done that. Got em all as epubs (except for the newest one that only is partially done; that only showed up as a PDF (meh).

Thanks again mate; will be sliding them onto the Nook after dinner (plus we doing a Dark Angel marathon on the video-on-demand system I concocted on Linux)...

Well I got the epub versions loaded on my Nook which promptly spread all four books out over my 750+ book collection and I had to go page by frakking page through 74 pages of books before I found them all. The good news though is that they seem to be written more from a UNIX perspective (good for me) and actually look good on the screen. Thanks again for the tip.

Yep that has been exactly my experience with the PDFs I mentioned; just awkward to read.

What is Aldiko? Is it like Calibre or is it a reader or a format or...? we like epubs the best for the same reasons...

An ebook reader app for Android.

This afternoon I decided to get my Android dev game going and I gotta say it has gotten about 1000% easier than it was in the wild and wooly days on 1.0 and 1.2. And this is on Linux too :)

Now however I gotta start my climb out of the conceptual basement from embedded to Java (again).

Cool!

I've not done much of anything this weekend, but just read another chapter in advanced...

Well I must admit that while the install was easy, it was a long download (I just told it to install the world once Eclipse was set up and the Android plugin was installed) so we spent the hours enjoying a Roger Corman cheeze-fest (Deathrace 2000 and Galaxy of Terror) on the VOD. Not for everyone I know but we laughed like hell). Now that the install is done and everything is tweaked I am not sure where I want to go first plus it is nearly dinner-time here in Vegas so I may just do some orientation reading in the busy coders book or in the dead-tree book I bought. Now I just gotta screw my head back down to the chip level for work in the morning :(

Also keep in mind (or you will find out shortly) that the code examples are written for command line and ant builds. :p

You have to work some trickery in an ide to bring them in to use the Android IDE environment.

I am pretty comfortable on the command line, never actually used Ant....but we will see. A little ADD has me watching The Matrix and fooling with my website...

My study/learning has floundered a bit the last week or so as I learn the real features of my Droidx and am busy with a number of things......that ol' life gets in the way thing....

Don't I know it Kenny; I got sucked into the project from hell this (or was it last?) week. Deathmarching already, next projected day off: October 29th. After that? Christmas. Meh. Writing a distributed, decentralized, learning combinatorial app-system to turn all of the desktop machines at work into a night-time server farm to calculate slot-odds numbering in the trillions of combinations per game per paytable. Sure, it *seemed* like a good idea when I opened my fat mouth in the meeting but....

Good Luck!

Kenny: I can do it. The math is pretty much "canned" in a few files; I have written the framework to drive this sort of thing before so its not new to me either and actually gives me a chance to correct some....less than optimal shall we say design decisions I made in earlier incarnations. Aside from the pressure, the doubters and the fact that I am the only one who knows how it works (which means I gotta do it all myself and keep it all in my head), the part I like the least is the fact that I have to interface with some seriously crufty code to get it all done. On the upside, it gives me a chance to play with OpenMP (always worked with more invasive tools like Intel Thread Building Blocks and the dedicated multicore libs in PS3) which is fun. That said, I do not relish the idea of another deathmarch, no matter how cool/fun/whatever the project is. I gotta figure out how to make it fun or I will probably cop an attitude before its done/delivered. I am getting too old for this crap.

I am bummed though after getting the excellent books you hooked me up with not being able to devote more time/resources to Android. This project is forcing me back down to the basement again conceptually. I was hoping to deliver my manga reader on Android by Christmas...

.... I gotta figure out how to make it fun or I will probably cop an attitude before its done/delivered. I am getting too old for this crap.

I know exactly what you mean.....