Spring has sprung (09:02 UTC, March 20, 2025) for the Northern Hemisphere and Autumn is here if you are south of the Equator. Rendered in Catfood Earth.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Winter Solstice 2024 #code#catfood#earth#winter#solstice The exact moment (09:20 UTC, December 21, 2024) of Winter Solstice as rendered in Catfood Earth.)
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, September 29, 2024.
Catfood Earth for Android 4.40 is now available on Google Play.
Earth has an updated look and feel and two new features.
The volcanoes layer has been ported over from the Windows version of Catfood Earth. When enabled this will show volcanoes that have recent activity (within the past week) using data from the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.
It's now possible to show your current location on the map. I'm not sure it's a replacement for Google Maps just yet but it does help you find where you are on the satellite image.
The release was prompted by Google requiring API level 34 support... completing this for Fortune Cookies was a nightmare but having learnt from that experience Earth made the jump to MAUI pretty smoothly.
If you already use Earth for Android you should get the new version shortly. If not, this is what Android live wallpaper was made for so give it a try!
Fortune Cookies for Android 1.50 is now available in the Google Play Store.
This update was driven by Google insisting that I target API level 34. Which is fair enough and I figured this would be a five minute task followed by a smooth release. I should have known better.
Of course the starting point is updating Visual Studio, updating the Android SDK, learning that my emulator won't launch any more and eventually coaxing it back to life. That's a couple of hours. Why this doesn't just happen when I'm doing other things I don't know, but for dev tools this has to be a ceremony.
Once all of that was done I learned that Xamarin was officially deprecated in May. I'm going to have to figure out MAUI.
There is a helpful migration page with this gob smacking advice:
"Once your dependencies are resolved and your code and resource files are added to your .NET native project, you should build your project. Any errors will guide you towards next steps."
I think they hired Yoda:
"Errors, they are. Guide you, they will, towards your next steps. Warnings, hmm, check them out you must... eventually. But information issues? Merely whispers they are, nudging you towards shiny new platform features, yes! Listen, you might, if time you have."
Anyway... the actual mechanics of getting this working in MAUI were not that bad. It could be that I need to reinstall my system with extreme prejudice but the platform itself seems to be very unstable. I constantly got Visual Studio and cryptic compile errors that went away on rebuild or a restart. Starting the android emulator has completely frozen my system several times requiring a hard reboot. I don't think I've had that experience since the Clinton administration.
Once it was finally working the Google Play Developer console wanted my "private" key, which I gave it; and to have a conversation about my tax situation in Cuba, which I'm ignoring for now.
As well as a brand new API target Fortune has a nifty new color scheme, a floating action button with a little fortune cookie on it, and will ask you nicely for permission to send notifications.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Fortune Cookies for Android 1.50 #code#fortune#software#cookie#catfood#xamarin#maui Catfood Fortune for Android is based on the UNIX command of the same name and will display a random and possibly no longer socially acceptable fortune from a less civilized era.)
Winter starts right now for those of us at the top of the planet. It's summer time down under. Winter Solstice 2023 rendered in Catfood Earth (03:28 on December 22, 2023 UTC).
With this release Catfood Earth is 20 years old! This update includes version 2023c of the Time Zone Database and the following bug fixes.
The National Weather Service changed one letter in the URL of their one hour precipitation weather radar product. It needs to be BOHA instead of BOHP. Presumably just checking that data consumers are paying attention? Weather radar is working again.
Not to be left out the Smithsonian Institution Global Vulcanism Program has decided to drop the www from their web site. The convention here is to redirect but they're content with just being unavailable at the former address. Recent volcanoes are working again as well.
The final fix is to the locations layer. Editing a location was crashing. This was due to a new format in the zoneinfo database that was not contemplated by the library that I use. As far as I can tell this isn't maintained any more since the death of CodePlex. While working on this update I started using GitHub Copilot, their AI assistant based on GPT 3.5. I was amazed at how helpful it was figuring out and then fixing this rather fiddly bug. The locations layer is back to normal, and I have regenerated all the time zone mapping as well.
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, September 23, 2023.
Catfood Earth for Android now supports random locations. The slice of Earth displayed will change periodically throughout the day. You can still set a manual location or have Catfood Earth use your current location. Install from Google Play, existing users will get this update over the next few days.
