R.M. ArceJaeger's Blog, page 2
March 17, 2017
Chaplaincy: The First Steps
I recently took my Oath of Office as an Army Chaplain Candidate!
I am very excited for the opportunity to train for ministry while simultaneously helping to provide Religious Support for my nation’s Soldiers and their Families. There is a lot of experience and discernment that will be taking place over the next few years.
I am going to do my best to chronicle my experiences/lessons learned, etc. as I go, in order to help other potential Chaplains as they embark upon a similar path....
April 30, 2016
Solution: How to Fix Android Studio’s ‘Unable to Obtain Result of Adb Version’ Error
If you recently upgraded to Windows 10, you may be experiencing the following error when trying to run an Android Studio program: Unable to obtain result of 'adb version'. As part of this error, Android Studio will not display any connected devices, even if you do have devices connected for debugging and adb via command prompt can find them (adb devices).
The solution is to close Android Studio and temporarily deactivate your firewall (especially if you have Avast). For some reason, the firew...
April 20, 2016
Munny Medal Quests – When You Can Unlock Them for Free
Right now Kingdom Hearts Unchained X allows you to pay to unlock Munny Medal Quests, but they also unlock for free in 30 minute blocks at various times each day.
As best as I can tell, the unlock times are 9:00 am PST, 1:00 pm PST, and 9:00 pm PST (please leave a comment if your experience is different).
If the app is open at that time, that’s when your 30 minute countdown will start, even if you’re not actively playing. HOWEVER, if the game is not open, the quest countdown will start the ne...
September 18, 2015
Tutorial: How to Implement Push Notifications Using Google Cloud Messaging for Android — Part 1: Client App
This tutorial will walk you through how to successfully send push notifications to an application using Google Cloud Messaging (GCM).
Part 1—Client App covers the setup needed for a client application to register with GCM, send that registration information to the app server, and handle notifications it receives.
The parts in this process are:
Get Project Number Enable API Get API Key Get Google-Services Configuration (JSON) File Set Android Build Dependencies Android Manifest Modification...September 12, 2015
Butte Fire Destroying My Home
Photo by Darin McKinney
The Butte Fire has destroyed nearly 65,000 acres (101 sq. miles) in just 2 days. Within that blaze is my home. I have no idea whether it was spared or not, but the likelihood that it escaped the flames is small indeed.
Photo by Darin McKinney
What makes it so terrible is it’s not just my house—that I could bear, though it would be devastating indeed—nor even that it’s everyone else’s houses, too. It’s that it’s my school, the park, the library I hung out at—in short, m...
July 2, 2015
The Problem With the New Kindle Select Plan & How Amazon Should Fix It
I love(d) KDP. Recently, however, Amazon changed how it computes author payments for Kindle Select borrows. Although the letter Amazon sent out describing the program sounded great (the example it gave was 100 borrows x 100 pages read = $1,000 if the total pages read by users in the program were 100 million), the reality is much different. Amazon’s letter also mentioned that the total pages read last month was 17 billion, and the July payout would be $11 million. We therefore see that the amo...
April 13, 2015
Pictures from Play of Robin: Lady of Legend
Check out pictures from the play of my book, Robin: Lady of Legend, put on by Middle School South, Lake Zurich!
Picture from Middle School South’s (Lake Zurich) website.
Picture from Middle School South’s (Lake Zurich) website.
Picture from Middle School South’s (Lake Zurich) website.
Picture from Middle School South’s (Lake Zurich) website.
Picture from Middle School South’s (Lake Zurich) website.
Who is this? (Band “saves” Robin from Little John.)
The Sheriff comes to bargain.
Robin takes c...
April 8, 2015
Beta Soft Systems: A Scam? — The Evidence
At first, Beta Soft sounded wonderful: headquartered in Fremont California, it was exactly where I wanted to work. Furthermore, if I lacked some skills necessary to do the job, I would receive on-site training once I was accepted by the company.
Thinking I had nothing to lose, I applied to Beta Soft via indeed.com and within a couple of days, I had received a response. Yet from the very beginning of my interactions with them, I had misgivings about the company and finally refused to continue,...
March 30, 2015
Tutorial: How to Shrink Cocos 2d-x Program Sizes
Have you created a default Cocos 2d-x program only to be shocked by its gargantuan file size? A basic Cocos 2d-x program can be 2.5 gb or more. Highly unacceptable!
The reason for such a large program is that Cocos 2d-x copies the cocos2d libraries into your program’s folder so it can reference them. Rather than allowing it to do so, delete the cocos2d folder from within your program’s directory. Then open a command prompt (on a mac, this would be Terminal. On windows, this needs to be an ele...
Tutorial: The Cocos2d Coordinate System
In order to successfully place and manipulate objects/images in Cocos2d, you have to understand its coordinate system.
Before we get into more details, here are some things you could know:
Origin (System) — The origin (0,0) of the coordinate system is the lower-left corner of the application’s screen Origin (Sprite) — The origin of a sprite (image) is the lower-left corner of the image Anchor Point (Sprite) — A sprite’s anchor point (where it is drawn from) is the center of the image Relativ...
