BitDroid

Here are all the icons that we used for our apps at FauDroids:

Notice something? About half of the apps have a small shadow starting in the middle of the icon and going to the bottom right. This is what I call the material shadow or that big looooong shadow making the icons look awesome (checkout the Google design guidelines for details).

Like eating snowflakes? At FauDroids (the one app a month challenge in 2015) we developed a little Android library which replaces your standard pull-to-refresh layout with a quick game that you can play while waiting for content to load. We call it Bored Rudolf. Here is what that looks like:

As part of MyAdvent we wanted a simple REST interface for quickly pulling some statistics about the service, like how many calendars have been created and how many photos they contain. Simply displaying those stats is simple (and boring!), but what about some simply queries like “give me all calendars with more than 10 photos”?

While working on our latests FauDroids app, I ran across a situation where I wanted to convert an API which uses callbacks to one that uses rx.Observable. The two seemed so related I figured surely the web must be full with tutorials explaining just how to do that. Well, turns out it isn’t. Here and there you’ll find some small examples for other languages, but nothing really that helped me with Java / Android.

Last month at FauDroids we released SigLocate, an app for finding friends in the cafeteria of our university. It consists of only one feature: a map of the cafeteria where users can select a location, create an image from that map and share it via any other app (WhatsApp, Facebook, …). As such it is by far the smallest and simplest app we have developed so far.

FauDroids has been running for some time and we he have now published 5 apps in total of which we are very proud. What started out as a small experiment to help us become better programmers and build something to show for all the effort that goes into that, has affected me in more ways I could have ever imagined, and I’m not just taking about the utter lack of time to push out a new app month after month.

At my work at the university I recently wanted to include some form of automatic build number in an JaxRs based web service. And since the whole project is open source anyways, I felt like including a reference to the current git commit, the one being used by the hosted service, would be a nice little feature to have.

February is over, so where is that monthly app? Well, thanks to exams it took a little longer than last time, but still it’s here: TripWeather!

Taking up a New Year’s resolution never really worked for me, but this year it just might. A friend of mine and I are planning (and actively working on!) on something we are calling the Android Challenge. For this challenge we will develop and release one Android app every month for one year, creating a total of 12 apps in 2015.

Now, January is well over and we are happy to announce that our first app has been official published in the Google Play Store (well, 2 days late anyways). It’s a remake of the child game memory, but instead of having people crowd around one device to participate, it allows multiple devices to connect with each other and through that form one big playingfield.

If you want to take to have a look the app is called FlippyPairs and can be found here:

A mere 15 degrees and almost constant rain here in Germany, caused me and my girlfriend to spend a couple of days away in Linguria, Italy. We found a small apartment in a town called Rapallo, very close to the sea, and from there ventured around to explore the area.

Its crazy how fast time flies when you are not paying attention. Last week was the last for me in Hong Kong and I have now gone back to Germany. Going through some of the pictures that have not made their way into any posts so far, I discovered a couple that are still worth sharing, but wouldn’t justify a blog entry on their own as there are simply too few. Hence I will post them now, both to share them with you, but also as a way to say Goodbye Hong Kong.

While most people know the island of Macau for its large casinos, gambling and shows, there are quite a number of old structures still left from the colonials times when Macau belonged to Portugal. Most of those can be found in the historic center of Macau, far away from the busy casino life.

After climbing all the way up to the Lantau Peak last week, this Sunday was meant to be a lazy one which we spend by hiking the Lamma Trail. The path is about 6 km in total and very well maintained throughout, so it definitely deserves its title.

After a couple of weeks with almost no sunshine and mostly rain and wind, the weather finally turned to its bright side again over the last weekend. We took the chance to go hiking on an offtrack trail up to the Lantau Peak.

Special about this hike is the very beautiful view almost all along the trail. It starts out by being able to see the big Buddah statue in the distance when getting off at Shek Pik Reservoir, which is almost at sea level, and ends by having a great overview over the international airport.

The design pattern Chain of responsibility is a great way of processing data step by step, while separating different functionalities from one another. This works fine in most cases, however stops looking so nice when introducing constructors which take arguments that will not be supplied by the extending classes. Today I have found a solution which takes care of this problem: the strategy pattern.

One custom for Chinese New Year is the so called Lion Dance, where one to two actors slip into a big lion like costume and start dancing. Seeing one of those dragons is considered good luck, which is why many shops and companies hang a bunch of green vegetables together with a small pocket of money (called red pocket) at their front door. The lion will then stand up to take the bunch, tear the leaves apart and toss them back into the crowd.

Over Chinese new Year two friends of mine and I spent 4 days in Indonesia. We stayed at a place called Cianjur Adventure, which is about 100 km south of the capital Jakarta.

At the airport an old man greeted us and we drove for about 5 hours through horrible traffic to Cianjur, where we were lead to a small bamboo hut which was supposed to be our home for the next 4 days. The hut was surrounded by rice fields and two Mosques, which dutifully called to prayer every morning at 4 am.

Since Chinese new year is just around the corner and more and more people are leaving the office to have a vacation, we had team lunch today. This is what we had for dessert.

Today a couple friends of mine and I went to an trip to Lantau Island to visit the third tallest mountain in Hong Kong: Sunset Peak.

The weather was really great and a lot warmer than expected. Luckily somebody brought sunscreen.

The pictures were taken along the Lantau Trail Section 2, although we did it in reverse. Hope you enjoy them.