Noise from the Basement

Using old technology is a bit like driving a Model T on the Indy Speedway. It can be a bit scary, but most of the time it is incredibly frustrating and everything seems to be zooming past at a mind-boggling rate of speed.

Case in point: I have a version of Photoshop from 2002. It’s a robust program that I know inside out. It can do a lot of things, and when it came out, it was pretty mind-blowing. But, it’s from 2002. That means it is 14 years old. In Computer Years, that is like comparing something from the Jurassic Period to Present Day.

If you have worked with Xamarin for longer than me (i.e. one year) then you probably already know about PCL bait and switch technique, especially if you consumed one of the many Xamarin plugins.

As usual I’m late to the party.  It’s November 2016 and the first article I found was written May 2014.  There is also a good video about the bait and switch technique for creating Xamarin plugins which I think was recorded in September 2014.  That said, I’m more an Early Adopter or Early Majority than an Innovator.

Unforeseen circumstances.

It isn’t a phrase that makes you jump for joy. Instead, it is a vaguely menacing combination of words that foretells of something throwing your plans off the rails. For me, it was a leg injury. If you have been following this blog series, you’ll know that I have been training to apply to the Edmonton Police Service. Things were falling into place. I had collected all the supporting documents for my application (transcripts, first aid certification and so forth), and was studying hard to write the entrance exams. I was in the best shape of my life, thanks to working with a personal trainer.

I learned this week that there is no built-in support for Push Notifications in Xamarin Forms.  On the plus side there are several open source projects trying to fill this hole.  The one that has caught my eye is edsnider/Xamarin.Plugins.

It only supports local notifications but that is all I need right now.  I like it because it looks simple to use.  The only downside is it looks abandoned.  Hopefully I’ll get around to actually trying it this week.

I was inspired to get Mini-Compressor to UWP into the Windows 10 Store a while back this summer. I saw this video several months ago when it was called Project Centennial:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2015/2-692

Then a couple weeks ago there was a form you could fill out and a Microsoft employee would help you convert your application.  So I filled out the form about my tiny little application called Mini-Compressor and was surprised when I heard back.  The fellow was very helpful but in the end we couldn’t get Mini-Compressor ported to UWP.