Posted on June 29, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 403 words
| Dan Syrstad
If you’re not familiar with HTTP and Flutter widget tests, testWidgets() mocks the Dart http.Client to always return an HTTP 400 status! Surprising, I know. The idea is that you shouldn’t make real HTTP calls from your widget tests. But I think 99.9% of the time, this is not the response you want.
Typically, you could mock the HTTP client with MockClient. This will work if you can provide an HttpClient directly to your widget.
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Posted on June 11, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 1001 words
| Dan Syrstad
I have a gun and it’s from the future. It fires smart bullets which are programmed to hit a specified target miles away. The bullets have built-in navigation and can maneuver around the terrain better than a cruise missile. It can fire an insane number of bullets per minute. And to fire the gun, I don’t even have to hold it or pull the trigger. I just think about my target, the gun locates the target, and fires.
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Posted on February 28, 2022
| 8 minutes
| 1573 words
| Dan Syrstad
Over the years, I have used AWS Route 53, CloudFront, and S3 to deploy single-page web apps (SPA). Most of the time the backend API is delivered alongside the web app. This has a lot of advantages:
Eliminates CORS issues Provides superfast delivery of the web app via CloudFront’s CDN CloudFront may provide faster access to your API than connecting from the browser/app to an AWS region. This is unintuitive, but if the CloudFront edge node is closer to your browser, there will be less latency.
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Posted on January 31, 2019
| 6 minutes
| 1161 words
| Dan Syrstad
I was at my wife’s holiday dinner about a month ago and a conversation came up about
Google Home and Amazon “Alexa” (a.k.a “Echo”). Mind you, the rest of the people there are not as technically savvy as my wife and me. Just about everybody had an aversion to these devices. One person at the table said “Dan, they’re always listening right?” I said Google isn’t always listening. The device is listening for the “Okay Google” key phrase inside of the device, then sends what it hears after the key phrase to Google.
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Posted on April 28, 2011
| 1 minutes
| 180 words
| Dan Syrstad
Today Google announced that Video and Voice “chat” is coming to Google Talk on Android. I just got an Acer Iconia Android tablet yesterday, and it already supports this.
Understand what this means - you’ll be able to call and video chat with other Android phones, tables, and anything that can run GMail & GTalk in the browser. No need for a phone carrier. All that you need is network connectivity, which could come in the form of ubiquitous wifi.
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Posted on September 12, 2010
| 2 minutes
| 330 words
| Dan Syrstad
I was enthused about the announcement of the Android Market Licensing Service. This is a step in the right direction to fight rampant piracy. You can actually now use a pirated version as an opportunity to sell your app. If someone downloads a pirated version, you can use the licensing service to detect it and direct them to buy the paid version.
However, there are a couple of problems. First of all, the generic version of the licensing code has been cracked.
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Posted on September 12, 2010
| 3 minutes
| 575 words
| Dan Syrstad
Any time you put an additional step in the sales process, you gain an opportunity to lose a customer. Such is the case with Free and Paid apps. It’s a common freemium pattern in the Google Android Market and Apple App Store.
You’re familiar with the pattern - there’s a Free version of the app that’s restricted and then there’s a Paid version that has all of the features. As a developer, the problem is that you have to maintain two versions of the same app.
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Posted on September 4, 2010
| 1 minutes
| 69 words
| Dan Syrstad
I must give many thanks to my wife and kids for putting up with my long hours and lack of attention while I was completing our new game Syrious Blasts and launching our new brand Syrious Games. Your patience with me is greatly appreciated!
Archived Comments
Tina -
You are very welcome. It is fascinating to see you create such magic! You are a true genius.
Posted on September 4, 2010
| 1 minutes
| 42 words
| Dan Syrstad
We have made our first release of Syrious Blasts!®, an addicting fast-paced puzzle game for Android devices. The Lite version is free and the Full version is on sale right now for $.99.