Gavin is now the co-founder of Retro Dreamer, where he makes awesome mobile games … and I’m still stuck here.

Anyway, check out our new podcast, What Now?, where we talk about making a living by peddling mobile apps and games.

You can purchase your copy directly from your Kindle Fire.

Know what you can eat and what you can’t when you’re expecting.

When shopping for food or eating at a restaurant, this handy and informative guide will help you make safe decisions for you and your baby.

The application features hundreds of common foods, drinks, and ingredients, along with information on whether the food is safe to consume during pregnancy, and any related benefits or dangers.

In this guide, I will show you how to set up a faster alternative. I will be using Windows, but the tools are platform-agnostic, so you shouldn’t have trouble setting up a faster Android emulator on a Mac or a Linux box. I will also show you how to configure the resolution of the new Android emulator so you can emulate specific Android devices, such as the Amazon Kindle Fire.

First, download and install VirtualBox. We’ll be running our faster Android emulator as a virtual machine. You can probably use VMWare, or Parallels, but VirtualBox is available free of charge, and works perfectly well for our purposes.

Now, download the Android image. For this guide, I will be using Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). For that release, the matching download is android-x86.2.3-4th-test-110620.iso.

Start VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine.

Enter a name for your new virtual machine. Select Linux for the operating system, and Other Linux for the version.

I want my Android emulator to run with 1 GB of RAM. You can choose whatever amount of memory is best for your needs.

For Virtual Hard Disk, check Start-up Disk, and choose to Create a new hard disk.

Select VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) for the type of virtual disk.

Choose Dynamically Allocated storage.

For disk size, I tend to allocate 512 MB. Feel free to allocate more or less disk space for your new emulator.

Once this is done, continue with the last few dialog boxes to create the new Android virtual machine.

Click on Audio, and change the Audio Controller from ICH AC97, which doesn’t work very well with this setup, to SoundBlaster 16.

Click on Network, and change the setting to Host-only Adapter. Now, this bit is specific to your particular network configuration. Some folks claim that setting this to NAT or Bridged Adapter gives best results. Use whichever works best for your rig. I will proceed with Host-only Adapter.

Click on Storage. Under Storage Tree, click on the icon to add a new CD/DVD device. When prompted, click on Choose Disk, and select the Android .iso image you downloaded earlier.

Start the new virtual machine. When prompted, choose Install Android-X86 to harddisk.

When prompted to choose a partition, select Create/Modify partitions. In the cfdisk partition manager screen that follows, choose New, then Primary, and keep the default partition size. Toggle Bootable, and then proceed to Write. After the partition is created, choose Quit to exit cfdisk. Select the newly created partition, and choose ext3 for the filesystem format. Select Yes when prompted to install the boot loader GRUB, and Yes to make the /system directory read-write. Installation should take just a few seconds.

After installation, close the virtual machine and remove the Android .iso CD/DVD in the Storage Settings before starting the virtual machine again.

When you start the new Android virtual machine, you’ll notice that you cannot use your mouse inside the Android OS. To fix this, choose Machine from the VirtualBox menu, and then choose to Disable Mouse Integration. You will now be able to use the mouse inside the Android OS. Take note of the host key used by your installation of VirtualBox. Without this host key, you won’t be able to get your mouse back out of the Android OS. I believe that the default host key used by VirtualBox on Windows is the right Control key, but this may be different in your installation. Click inside the Android virtual machine to bring your mouse into that environment. Click on the host key to get the mouse back out.

To test your application in the new Android emulator from Eclipse, you’ll need to know the IP address of the virtual machine. Click ALT-F1 to bring up the VirtualBox console, and type netcfg to display the IP address assigned to it. Take note of the IP address and click ALT-F7 to get rid of the console.

You can now connect the Android Debug Bridge (adb) to the new virtual machine Android emulator. Bring up a command prompt window, and type adb connect 192.168.56.102. Of course, you’ll use the IP address of your virtual machine, which may be different. If your system can’t find adb.exe, add it to your environment PATH. You’ll find adb.exe in your Android SDK installation directory.

Now you can set up a new Run Configuration in Eclipse to test your application in the new Android emulator. When setting up a new Run Configuration in Eclipse, click on the Target tab, and select a Manual deployment target.

Once this is done, when you choose to Run your application from Eclipse, you’ll be presented with a dialog from which you can select the Android device on which to run your application. Since you connected adb to your new Android virtual machine, you should see the IP address of the virtual machine as one of the available devices on which to test.

Custom Resolutions

What if you need to run the Android virtual machine with a custom resolution?

I’m going to configure my new emulator to look like the Amazon Kindle Fire, which has a DPI of 169 with a resolution of 1024 x 600.

First, in your VirtualBox, right click on your new virtual machine, and choose Show in Explorer. This will show you the location of the .vbox configuration file for the new VM. We’re going to edit this file, but first, we’ll need to close VirtualBox, and close our virtual machine, if it’s running.

Edit the .vbox file; it’s just an XML configuration file.

Find the ExtraData section, and add a line to it declaring your custom resolution:

<ExtraData>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastCloseAction" value="powerOff"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastGuestSizeHint" value="800,600"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition" value="998,300,800,639"/>
      <ExtraDataItem name="CustomVideoMode1" value="1024x600x16"/>
</ExtraData>

I added the CustomVideoMode1 line above.

Save and close the configuration file.

Now, start your virtual machine, and when you see the GRUB boot loader screen, choose Debug Mode.

At the command prompt that follows, type the command vi /mnt/grub/menu.lst to edit the GRUB boot menu file.

You should probably be familiar with the vi editor for this part. If you aren’t, find a quick tutorial to familiarize yourself with the basics.

Duplicate one of the existing entries in the file to create a new one, then change its title to something more meaningful, change its DPI parameter to 169 (that’s what we want from our Amazon Kindle Fire emulator), and add the parameter vga=ask to the end of the line.

Save, close the file, and restart the virtual machine.

You will see the new boot entry as one of the menu items on the GRUB loading screen.

When you select the new boot entry, you’ll be given the option to hit ENTER to see the available resolutions (you entered vga=ask in the GRUB configuration file, remember?). Your new entry, 1024x600x16, will be one of the items.

And here’s our new Android emulator running at a resolution of 1024×600 and a DPI of 169 — all ready for you to test your Amazon Kindle Fire applications.

That’s all!

That should be all. I’m sure you’ll find that the Android emulator running as a virtual machine is far more responsive that the standard emulator. Happy testing!

What gives?

I assume you’ve covered the basics – your system has the Java runtime environment set up, with all the Java-related environment variables set up properly and pointing to the right places.

Are you running on a 64-bit system?

BlackBerry tools don’t play nice with 64-bit systems. Tools don’t run properly, simulators don’t simulate accurately (sometimes not at all). If you are running the BlackBerry dev tools on a 64-bit version of Windows, and start seeing weird behavior, all other things aside, this could be the cause.

At Antair, we run all of our BlackBerry tools on 32-bit Windows XP (virtual) machines. Until RIM updates their tools to support 64-bit systems (ha!), I suggest you set up a 32-bit rig for your BlackBerry dev work.

I’m already running on a 32-bit system. The JDE just fails to open!

OK. Maybe it’s a memory or configuration issue.

Let’s take a look at the batch file that launches the IDE. If you’re working with JDE 4.5, you’ll find the launcher batch file in

“C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.5.0\bin”

Take a look at the ide.bat file. The batch file launches the JDE with something like:

start javaw -Xmx256M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

Open up the command prompt, go to the directory containing the ide.bat file, and run the launch command manually to see if any errors are thrown out to the console:

javaw -Xmx256M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

If you get a clear error message,  you can take steps to address whatever the process was complaining about. In certain instances, you may get an error indicating that there isn’t enough memory provided to the process to launch the IDE. It can happen. But hey, memory is cheap, so let’s give it some more:

javaw -Xmx1024M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

See if that fixes things. We’ve had instances where allowing the process to grab more memory fixes the entire “JDE not starting” issue.

OK. 256, 1024, 2048, it doesn’t matter. I don’t see any error messages on the console, and the JDE still won’t start.

You installed a simulator recently didn’t you? Admit it. You’re testing an existing application to see if it will run on a new BlackBerry device, and you just downloaded and installed one of those brand new simulators that RIM provides. Right?

This breaks JDEs. I don’t know why, but installing standalone simulators with existing JDEs on the system, sometimes breaks some of those JDEs.

To fix it, go into the same bin directory that contained the ide.bat file we’ve been messing with. In there, you’ll find a “Settings.rc” file.

Delete it. Or move it, to be safe. Then start the JDE.

It’ll start as a “newly installed” JDE, with the samples project open, and no customizations that you spent all that time setting up … but it will start.

USAGE: find_unused_functions.php <root_directory>

NOTE: This is a ‘quick-n-dirty’ approach to the problem. This script only performs a lexical pass over the files, and does not respect situations where different modules define identically named functions or methods. If you use an IDE for your PHP development, it may offer a more comprehensive solution.

Requires PHP 5

Direct download: find_unused_functions.zip

Code:

#!/usr/bin/php -f
 
<?php
 
// ============================================================================
//
// find_unused_functions.php
//
// Find unused functions in a set of PHP files.
// version 1.3 - 08/20/2011
//
// ============================================================================
//
// Copyright (c) 2011, Andrey Butov. All Rights Reserved.
// This script is provided as is, without warranty of any kind.
//
// http://www.andreybutov.com
//
// ============================================================================
 
// This may take a bit of memory...
ini_set('memory_limit', '2048M');
 
if ( !isset($argv[1]) ) 
{
	usage();
}
 
$root_dir = $argv[1];
 
if ( !is_dir($root_dir) || !is_readable($root_dir) )
{
	echo "ERROR: '$root_dir' is not a readable directory.\n";
	usage();
}
 
$files = php_files($root_dir);
$tokenized = array();
 
if ( count($files) == 0 )
{
	echo "No PHP files found.\n";
	exit;
}
 
$defined_functions = array();
 
foreach ( $files as $file )
{
	$tokens = tokenize($file);
 
	if ( $tokens )
	{
		// We retain the tokenized versions of each file,
		// because we'll be using the tokens later to search
		// for function 'uses', and we don't want to 
		// re-tokenize the same files again.
 
		$tokenized[$file] = $tokens;
 
		for ( $i = 0 ; $i < count($tokens) ; ++$i )
		{
			$current_token = $tokens[$i];
			$next_token = safe_arr($tokens, $i + 2, false);
 
			if ( is_array($current_token) && $next_token && is_array($next_token) )
			{
				if ( safe_arr($current_token, 0) == T_FUNCTION )
				{
					// Find the 'function' token, then try to grab the 
					// token that is the name of the function being defined.
					// 
					// For every defined function, retain the file and line
					// location where that function is defined. Since different
					// modules can define a functions with the same name,
					// we retain multiple definition locations for each function name.
 
					$function_name = safe_arr($next_token, 1, false);
					$line = safe_arr($next_token, 2, false);
 
					if ( $function_name && $line )
					{
						$function_name = trim($function_name);
						if ( $function_name != "" )
						{
							$defined_functions[$function_name][] = array('file' => $file, 'line' => $line);
						}
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}
 
// We now have a collection of defined functions and
// their definition locations. Go through the tokens again, 
// and find 'uses' of the function names. 
 
foreach ( $tokenized as $file => $tokens )
{
	foreach ( $tokens as $token )
	{
		if ( is_array($token) && safe_arr($token, 0) == T_STRING )
		{
			$function_name = safe_arr($token, 1, false);
			$function_line = safe_arr($token, 2, false);;
 
			if ( $function_name && $function_line )
			{
				$locations_of_defined_function = safe_arr($defined_functions, $function_name, false);
 
				if ( $locations_of_defined_function )
				{
					$found_function_definition = false;
 
					foreach ( $locations_of_defined_function as $location_of_defined_function )
					{
						$function_defined_in_file = $location_of_defined_function['file'];
						$function_defined_on_line = $location_of_defined_function['line'];
 
						if ( $function_defined_in_file == $file && 
							 $function_defined_on_line == $function_line )
						{
							$found_function_definition = true;
							break;
						}
					}
 
					if ( !$found_function_definition )
					{
						// We found usage of the function name in a context
						// that is not the definition of that function. 
						// Consider the function as 'used'.
 
						unset($defined_functions[$function_name]);
					}
				}
			}
		}
	}
}
 
 
print_report($defined_functions);	
exit;
 
 
// ============================================================================
 
function php_files($path) 
{
	// Get a listing of all the .php files contained within the $path
	// directory and its subdirectories.
 
	$matches = array();
	$folders = array(rtrim($path, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR));
 
	while( $folder = array_shift($folders) ) 
	{
		$matches = array_merge($matches, glob($folder.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR."*.php", 0));
		$moreFolders = glob($folder.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.'*', GLOB_ONLYDIR);
		$folders = array_merge($folders, $moreFolders);
	}
 
	return $matches;
}
 
// ============================================================================
 
function safe_arr($arr, $i, $default = "")
{
	return isset($arr[$i]) ? $arr[$i] : $default;
}
 
// ============================================================================
 
function tokenize($file)
{
	$file_contents = file_get_contents($file);
 
	if ( !$file_contents )
	{
		return false;
	}
 
	$tokens = token_get_all($file_contents);
	return ($tokens && count($tokens) > 0) ? $tokens : false;
}
 
// ============================================================================
 
function usage()
{
	global $argv;
	$file = (isset($argv[0])) ? basename($argv[0]) : "find_unused_functions.php";
	die("USAGE: $file <root_directory>\n\n");
}
 
// ============================================================================
 
function print_report($unused_functions)
{
	if ( count($unused_functions) == 0 )
	{
		echo "No unused functions found.\n";
	}
 
	$count = 0;
	foreach ( $unused_functions as $function => $locations )
	{
		foreach ( $locations as $location )
		{
			echo "'$function' in {$location['file']} on line {$location['line']}\n";
			$count++;
		}
	}
 
	echo "=======================================\n";
	echo "Found $count unused function" . (($count == 1) ? '' : 's') . ".\n\n";
}
 
// ============================================================================
 
/* EOF */

Working.

But it’s Sunday!

Yeah.

How much do you work?

I don’t understand.

Well … how many hours do you work?

I always work.

While it’s always advisable to test native client applications on a real device prior to shipping the product, as a web app developer, you can get a good understanding of how your application will act on a BlackBerry, without having to purchase a real device.

Downloading the simulators

RIM offers a wide variety of simulators for you to choose from. If you’re not sure which to choose, I would recommend the following selections:

BlackBerry Torch, 98xx

This is one of the most popular models in today’s BlackBerry market, and has one of the largest screen resolutions. The BlackBerry Torch also features a touch-screen, and the ability to flip from portrait to landscape mode.

BlackBerry Style, 9670

The BlackBerry Style is RIM’s current flip-style phone. While not as popular as some of the other models, it has a unique screen size. If you need to reach as wide an audience as possible, it wouldn’t hurt to test your web application on this simulator.

BlackBerry Pearl, 81xx

The Pearl was the first consumer-targeted BlackBerry. While they have lost popularity as of late, plenty of BlackBerry users are still walking around with these models. The Pearl has a long-and-thin form-factor, with a resolution of 240×260.

BlackBerry Curve, Bold, or Tour

While the BlackBerry Torch has recently gained popularity, most BlackBerry owners of the past few years would have one of these three models. The Curve, Bold, and Tour share a similar form-factor. With the exception of recent models, these devices do not have a touch-screen, and they do not allow the user to switch from portrait mode to landscape mode.

Your web application may behave differently depending on the version of the operating system running on the device. When choosing simulators, it’s a good idea to select a wide range of operating systems.

A good “older” model would be a simulator running RIM OS 4.2. As I’m writing this, the newer simulators will be running RIM OS 6.x.

Downloading the MDS simulator

To test your web application on a BlackBerry simulator, the simulator’s web browser needs to be able to connect to the internet, and for that, you will need to run the MDS simulator first.

The MDS simulator allows the BlackBerry simulator to connect to the internet. You can download the MDS simulator as part of the BlackBerry Email and MDS Services simulator package.

Testing your web application on the simulator

Start with installing both the MDS simulator and the phone simulators you’ll be testing on.

It’s worth noting that although the BlackBerry phone simulators are Java-based, and require Java to be installed on the computer to run, they will only work on Windows machines. The simulators also tend to behave strangely on 64-bit systems.

At Antair, we do our simulator testing on 32-bit Windows XP hosts, running as virtual machines.

Once installed, start the MDS simulator. All it will do is open a terminal window and dump some startup output. If an error comes up, you can look at the output information for a clue. Otherwise, you can just minimize this window.

Now, start one of the BlackBerry phone simulators.

You should be able to launch the web browser and type in the URL of your web application.

The settings and options presented by the web browser in the simulator, are the same options that will be available to your users. You will be able to test whether your web application works well with Javascript turned off, or cookies disabled, etc.

This release introduces the news functionality, adds a new animated theme called Daydream, and has several other improvements.

The Daydream theme displays the clock and weather information over a background of animated lights.

The News feature allows you to view local and international news directly from Nightstand.

The new Antair Nightstand is available in the BlackBerry App World.

Here’s a brand new video of Antair Nightstand, with the new theme and news functionality.