Design, Programming, Music and Life

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Idea - GPS Enabled Gun Safety Lock


So I haven't posted any of my thoughts on the recent shooting at Sandy Hook or any of my thoughts on Gun Control as of yet. Mostly because I am tired of seeing rows and rows of posts on Facebook that only make a statement or complaint, no real proposed solutions that weren't going completely over the left wall or the right wall. It even looks as though people are afraid the Government will try to use this to take away our weapons. So I set out on a thought experiment that would allow us our rights to bear arms, while allowing us the ability to track and disable weapons if a situation arises, so this is one of the solutions I came up with, GPS enabled electronic safety lock for guns.



In this experiment, we were given a good period of time to replace most weapons on the market with ones that included an electronic safety lock. The way this works is by pushing the button, and waiting till it turns red, then you can shoot.

The Logic:
When the button is pressed, the unit sends a unique identifier and GPS coordinates through GPRS, and awaits a simple confirm or deny message. this can happen as quickly as it takes to check the time on your cellphone, so 1-2 seconds.

In some locations, the weapon would be automatically given a denied response if your weapons identifier is not authorized for that area, like Government buildings, schools, malls, etc. Other places would be given an automatic confirmation, like rural areas during hunting season, or shooting ranges, etc. The point is to allow as much freedom with your weapons as possible, but allow the ability to provide a kill-switch if needed.


Friday, December 14, 2012

How-To - Using Joomla to build mobile Web Apps.


This rough How-To will go through using Joomla to build a simple mobile Web App.

You will need a few things first:

Start off by reading the setup instructs for the YooTheme Warp framework, and set up your pages accordingly. I will sometimes make it so the content of the page doesn't go down too far on the first screen, this will give the users an overall good first impression on a mobile device. Once that is complete, we will set it as the default template. With this design, it automatically detects screen size, but if your client wants a different design for Desktop users, then you can use the MobileJoomla plugin and component to assign a different template to mobile devices. 

Next we will have to download the Add2Home plugin, but don't install it right away. Once you download it, navigate to your download directory and extract the file into a folder. then navigate into the plugin folder, and change the photos there (Unless you absolutely love the ones the developer uses)


Once we are done editing and replacing the graphics, we will then re-archive the files back into a .zip and then we will add the Add2Home plugin to your Joomla extensions. Once it is installed, Just make sure you enable it.

Then it's time to start testing it out and making sure all the content is in the right places. Have fun with it and make it yours :)

Till next time!!


Projects - Star Crane Mobile site design

2:02 PM Posted by Unknown , , , , , , , , , No comments


Did some more work on the mobile app for Star Crane today. I was able to get it to finally show the Add to Home Screen pop up for mobile phones and tablets, and I also added a custom Icon and Start Screen for the web app too.

I wasn't happy with the menu design I was using to start with on this, so I decided to use the native UI controls so that it will appear smoothly on all mobile devices. I have some messing around to do in order to get the slides how's to show up right on the mobile side as well, but the good part of making the entire mobile app just a themed wrapper for the website makes upkeep on the app almost completely automated.

I like the direction this is moving, so I think I will keep it like this unless the client doesn't like it, then I may be able to change what they need, but for usability across the board, this is the way I feel it best presents it's self.