Java Programming for Android Developers For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 14

Hungry Burds: A Simple Android Game

IN THIS CHAPTER

Coding an Android game

Using Android animation

Saving data from one run to another

What started as a simple pun involving the author's last name has turned into Chapter 14 — the most self-indulgent writing in the history of technical publishing.

The scene takes place in south Philadelphia in the early part of the 20th century. My father (then a child) sees his father (my grandfather) handling an envelope. The envelope has just arrived from the old country. My grandmother grabs the envelope out of my grandfather's hands. The look on her face is one of superiority. “I open the letters around here,” she says with her eyes.

While my grandmother opens the letter, my father glances at the envelope. The last name on the envelope is written in Cyrillic characters, so my father can't read it. But he notices a short last name in the envelope's address. Whatever the characters are, they're more likely to be a short name like Burd than a longer name like Burdinsky or Burdstakovich.

The Russian word for bird is ptitsa, so there's no etymological connection between my last name and our avian friends. But as I grew up, I would often ...