What I did over my winter vacation
Don't worry, I'll be back to my series on recreating Delicious using ColdFusion 9 and Hibernate soon enough. This is just a quick post for a quick app I wrote last week.
I happen to work at an awesome place where we get the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve off as an unofficial holiday (the university shuts down, so staff such as myself can't work), so I spent last week hanging out at home with my extended family and getting in some extra quality time with my wife and son.
Speaking of which, I've got a baby on the way -- due any day now. Ok, technically due 7 days from now. And during the course of that break, it occurred to me that it was kind of tedious to keep track of my wife's contractions the last time we went through this (with my first son, in 2008) - was the last contraction 90 seconds? 60? Was it 5 minutes apart? 7?
I could surely write an app to take care of tracking contraction start times, durations, and frequencies all with a single button. I checked the Android Market and while there are a few apps out there for this, I really didn't like the UI of any of them and knew my idea was better. So I opened up Flash Builder Burrito and used my existing Flex skills and AIR for Android to throw together this app to help us decide when it will be time to go to the hospital.
(HUGE DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, this is just some software I wrote for fun. Always consult a physician when concerning things like your health and having a freaking baby... don't be an idiot!)
All told it only took a few hours to get the UI designed and work out the (basic!) algorithms for averaging durations and frequencies.
The screen shot on the left shows the screen during a rest-time (between contractions) and after 2 are complete; the right screen shot shows the screen during timing of a 3rd contraction.
I had decided to average the 5 most recent contractions mostly arbitrarily because it sounded good at the time. I don't know if that's a good measurement or not, but it's there, and it would be easy enough for me to change if I had a reason.
I've only tested it on my Droid X, so I'm not sure how it looks or works on smaller-screened Android phones, like the Droid 2, but it works like a charm for me. My wife, after a good laugh, has seemed to warm up to the idea and we've even been practicing using it when she has Braxton Hicks contractions in the evenings.
I'm contemplating putting it up on the Android market. What do you currently-expectant and experienced mothers and fathers out there think? Is it useful?
in AIR | Android | Flex | Learning | No Responses Yet Posted 2011-01-03 04:40