Being an Employee – 3 months on

Back in June I announced that I was ‘pulling the pin‘ on the limited company I had been contracting through for the previous nine years. At the end of that post I said that although I hadn’t found a permanent role I was hoping to do so in the near future – well, I’m happy to say that I didn’t have to wait too long.

Completely out of the blue I received a message on LinkedIn from a previous client. They had noticed that I was looking for a permanent role and wondered if I would consider returning to work for them.

FillLPG for Android – RIP

So, as per my previous post, I have now removed the FillLPG for Android app from the Google Play Store – and it won’t be coming back.

As promised in that post I have uploaded the installation file (actually ‘files’ – see below) and it can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

The file has been compressed into a ZIP archive to reduce the file size and to allow my blog to upload it – it gets a little fussy sometimes.

Note that to install the app without using the Play Store you will need to be happy with ‘side-loading’ onto your device.

There are many articles about this and it may well vary based on your device and what version of Android it is running – it won’t be possible for me to cover every permutation here so I won’t try.

FillLPG for Android: Pulling the Plug

In a previous blog post I announced that the FillLPG for Android application was no longer in active development (which I then updated but let’s not lose focus here) and indicated that a time would come when I would remove it from the Google Play Store.

Well, that time is upon us.

The tipping point came today when I received feedback from two different channels, a review on the Play Store and an email from a fellow developer.

The review was the typical ‘Doesn’t work, load of rubbish‘ 1 star review that people leave when they don’t stop to think.

If they took a minute to think, ‘hold on, there are over 10k users and a five star review a few days ago says it’s great’ then maybe they would email me and highlight the problem. As it is, they just leave their review and move on.

The email was from a user complaining about the website – something I have nothing to do with, I just wrote the app.

No Jokes please, we’re Developers

Let’s be honest, jokes are normally funny because they are at somebody’s expense. Whether it’s about a mother-in-law, a profession or ‘an Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman’ – somebody is always on the end of it and nobody like to be made fun of.

Now, these jokes are all well and good as long and you are not the subject – that said I’m a Cornishman and I get some stick over that but in general it’s just banter and I personally don’t find it offensive or oppressive.

Some of this I do find over the top and some people will find offence in just about anything (including this blog post I expect) but I do understand that we are more enlightened and have more appreciation of how these jokes can have a serious impact on others and we need to be mindful of that.

Help – A Covid-19 Tracker app has been secretly installed on my Phone!

On LinkedIn the other day I noticed a post claiming that Covid-19 tracker apps had been installed on everybody’s smartphone and that we were all being tracked.

Ok, so lets ignore the fact that we can be tracked via our phones anyway and look at what the fuss is about.

If I open up the settings on my OnePlus 6T Android phone I see a new item – ‘COVID-19 exposure notifications’. This is what some people are losing their minds about right now.

I on the other hand am not. Why not?