How do I start this process? There is a Facebook Login button at the bottom of the page. Just simple click it and allow Nyne Axis, simple as that. From that point forward you will have access to Nyne Axis.

Problem: I had to take timestamps similar to 2011-10-05 08:09:00.000 and display them as “4 secs ago”.

I started to do some research and remembered that MySQL can store functions. I then went to work creating a function for my MySQL queries and then ran through the table. The function had to take the timestamp 2011-10-05 08:09:00.000 as an input and then take the current time and convert it to a human readable format similar to “4 secs ago”. I tried to use MySQL functions like timediff() and format(), but with no luck.

I ended up with a function similar to the one below.

DELIMITER $$
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `GetTimeDisplay` $$
CREATE FUNCTION `GetTimeDisplay` (GivenTimestamp TIMESTAMP)
RETURNS VARCHAR(32)
DETERMINISTIC
BEGIN
   DECLARE rv VARCHAR(32);
   DECLARE diff BIGINT;
   SET diff = UNIX_TIMESTAMP()-UNIX_TIMESTAMP(GivenTimestamp);
   IF diff < 0 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(abs(diff/60),' From Now');
   END IF;
   IF diff = 0 THEN
      SET rv = 'Just Now';
   END IF;
   IF diff = 1 THEN
      SET rv = '1 sec ago';
   END IF;
   IF diff BETWEEN 2 AND 60 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(FORMAT(diff, 0), ' secs ago');
   END IF;
   IF diff BETWEEN 120 AND 3599 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(FORMAT(diff/60, 0), ' mins ago');
   END IF;
   IF diff BETWEEN 61 AND 119 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(FORMAT(diff/60, 0), ' min ago');
   END IF;
   IF diff = 3600 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(FORMAT(diff/3600, 0), ' hr ago');
   END IF;
   IF diff BETWEEN 3601 AND 86399 THEN
      SET rv = CONCAT(FORMAT(diff/3600, 0), ' hrs ago');
   END IF;
   IF diff > 86400 THEN
      SET rv = DATE_FORMAT(GivenTimestamp, '%a %l:%i %p');
   END IF;
   IF diff > 259200 THEN
      SET rv = DATE_FORMAT(GivenTimestamp, '%b %e at %l:%i %p');
   END IF;
   RETURN rv;
END $$
DELIMITER ;

Once the function was created I could now use it in the query like so:

SELECT id, name, email, status, GetTimeDisplay(dataTime);

You would received a result similar to:

1 Joe Smith jsmith@test.com Watching TV 34 mins ago

I have been using this function for a few months now and it works wonders. You may tweak it a bit more for your needs. This function also works for future dates similar to 1 hr from now.

Problem: Google Maps was displaying a grid with no map data.

I had submitted a question to StackOverflow with not much success. So I decided to start digging into the code to find out why it was just displaying the grid with no map data. After about an hour I removed all the code that I could without comprimising the application. I had added some code to track changes when the app closes and starts back up. I did not think this would cause a big problem, since it hasn’t in the past.

Sadly enough the code was:

public void onResume(){
   super.onStart();
   Log.v(tag, "Task was resume");
}

Once I removed the code from the main class the maps class loaded the map data.