Some thoughts ahead of the Only Connect Series 18 final

by Ali Lloyd on March 10, 2023 No comments

It’s that time of year again where the current series of Only Connect draws to a close. For the uninitiated, Only Connect is a quiz show on the BBC. It has four rounds:

  1. Connections – Figure out the connection from four apparently random clues
  2. Sequences – Determine what would come fourth in a sequence
  3. Connecting Wall – Sort 16 clues into four connected groups of four, and find what connects them
  4. Missing Vowels – Determine the word or phrase which has had its vowels removed and spaces added or subtracted. These come in connected groups of four, where the connection is given.

It is generally considered to be very difficult. The questions often rely on esoteric trivia, but rarely do they solely rely on such trivia. For many of the questions the answer can be figured out in the moment, based on limited knowledge or partial identification; educated guessing is perhaps the most valuable skill of the Only Connect player.

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Ali LloydSome thoughts ahead of the Only Connect Series 18 final

LiveCode 9.0 GM

by Ali Lloyd on April 3, 2018 10 comments

LiveCode 9 contains so many new features that it’s almost impossible to cover them all in detail in a single blog post. So I’m not going to try. There have been several other blog posts along the way detailing specific features, which will be linked in the course of this blog – see these for more information.

Instead, I present the inside story of LiveCode 9.0, as it happened. The story has two main threads. The first is the ability to access to libraries and platform APIs written in other languages, aka the community-funded ‘Infinite LiveCode’  project. While the initial implementation of LiveCode Builder included simple C library support, we have extended this to support accessing more complex C libraries, Objective-C and Java. We have also refined the native layer support – there is more to come on this front in the 9 series, particularly for Windows and Linux. So we owe a huge thank you all who contributed, financially and/or otherwise, to achieve this goal.

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Ali LloydLiveCode 9.0 GM

Testing 1, 2, 28534

by Ali Lloyd on October 4, 2017 5 comments

I really enjoy writing tests. It’s great to ensure that a new piece of functionality will never be broken, or that a bug will never be reintroduced. It’s doubly satisfying when something previously untestable becomes testable, when a certain level of struggle or ingenuity is required to work out how to test something, or when a test is particularly (perhaps even maximally) succinct.

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Ali LloydTesting 1, 2, 28534

Using Infinite LiveCode for Android to Create Native Controls and Wrap OS APIs

by Ali Lloyd on June 28, 2017 16 comments

With the release of LiveCode 9.0 DP 7, the amount you can do with the android API has been significantly increased. Firstly, it is possible to use LiveCode Builder to respond to user events, which essentially allows the Android native control syntax (mobileControlCreate, mobileControlSet etc) to be replaced with draggable widget objects and standard LiveCode syntax. Secondly, it is possible to run services in the background, allowing, for example, background audio on Android.

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Ali LloydUsing Infinite LiveCode for Android to Create Native Controls and Wrap OS APIs

Android audio recording library using Java FFI

by Ali Lloyd on April 13, 2017 17 comments

In this example, we show you how to implement audio recording on Android using the new Java FFI capabilities in the latest DP of LiveCode 9.

The first step in figuring out how to create an Android audio recording library is to figure out what classes and methods are needed, which is tantamount to having a quick look at how it would be done in native code.

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Ali LloydAndroid audio recording library using Java FFI

LiveCode 9.0 DP 6 – Infinite LiveCode Preview

by Ali Lloyd on March 9, 2017 17 comments
LiveCode 9.0.0 DP-6 has just been released, and is the first developer preview containing the Java Foreign Function Interface (FFI). We’re thrilled to be bringing you this exciting first part of the Infinite LiveCode project. It’s been a longish road to get here and as is typical with such large and complex software projects, there have been a number of frustrating walls to be knocked down en route. I’m proud to say we have overcome these roadblocks, and without further ado, let me get stuck in to telling you how you can use it! Foreign handlers can be written in LiveCode Builder (LCB) which bind to calls on Java classes via the Java Native Interface (JNI). In particular this enables binding to classes in the Android API.

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Ali LloydLiveCode 9.0 DP 6 – Infinite LiveCode Preview

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