RenderEffects #3: Using RenderNode for faster, better blurring — The previous two articles covered (in more detail, and in many more words), content that I talked very quickly about in the video Android Graphics that I made with Sumir Kataria for the recent Android Developer Summit event. This article goes beyond that content, though I did touch on it…

Recording an audio book was… a lot more work than I thought it would be — When I finally published Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System after 4 years of interviewing, researching, writing, rewriting, and editing, I was able to relax and stop thinking about the book. For about two weeks. Then I thought, “I wonder if people would like an audiobook version…

RenderEffects #2: Pixel shaders in Android 13 — In the previous article, I showed how to create a blur RenderEffect to easily blur everything in a View. This effect, while fun, is… not terribly useful on its own. We tend to want things to see things more clearly, not more blurry. It’s why we wear glasses. And why…

Android RenderEffects #1: the blur effect — This article (and the next one) is essentially a written version of my part of a video that Sumir Kataria and I recorded for this year’s Android Developer Summit: When I set about learning how to use the Blur effect, it…

Androids: The Missing Pieces, Part III — Like the previous article in this series, the content below was originally written in a different form for the book, Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System. But, also like the previous article, it was eventually cut for brevity and focus. I’m reviving it here for those that…

Same book, with new publishers, new markets, and new formats — When Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System first came out in August of 2021, it was self-published, via Amazon’s KDP print-on-demand service. I had spent time looking for a “real” publisher (also an agent, which tends to be the way you get to publishers), but that didn’t…

Androids: The Missing Pieces, Part II — Like the previous article in this series, the content below was originally written for the book, Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System. But, also like the previous article, it was eventually cut for brevity and focus. I’m reviving it here for those that are interested in not…

Androids: The Missing Pieces, Part I — This is the first part of hopefully an ongoing series that further explores topics raised in the book Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System. See the introduction article for more context on this series. The following article was originally the final chapter of the book, before it…

An Introduction — While I was writing (and editing, and rewriting, and re-editing, and re-rewriting, ad infinitum) the book Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System, I realized that much of what I learned along the way, and even wrote into original drafts, would never see the light of day. For…