Luna Themes

Explore your creativity - tips to overcome the idea phase


Who can be creative? Everyone! Below, I put some issues I had to face through in my experience in creating and maintaining Luna project.

1. Choose a nickname 

This is not a rule and it's not a good idea for everyone, many artists use their own name from the very beginning. When you create something under your name and you rely on your friends and family opinion, they will be very subjective, judging more the person than the artwork. To me, it was useful to pick a nickname and to target unknown persons, because they didn't know who I was and all the focus was on my apps.

A nickname can be also a perfect defense for the impostor syndrome or the shame if the artwork is not very appreciated. Nothing to loose, so no reason to stay away.😊
Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/colored-pencils-paint-heart-school-4031668/
2. A million dollars idea

I was asked many time what do I think about a certain idea, if I see the potential succ…

Pulitzer prizes - Cartoons and Photography

"The Nobel of Journalism", Pulitzer prizes celebrates the best work in media and arts in USA. Most of the topics are politics, which I try to avoid in my articles, but I found some interesting one about society and humanity.
   Cartoons are far of being the superstars in Pulitzer awards. The main attention is on articles from newspaper and most famous - the photography. I saw a lot of powerful photos that reveal the pain, fear and all the disaster made by wars in general. I choose to post here two well-known images, awarded in 1992 and 2007.


Kevin Carter -  "Sudanese girl" The New York Times

Kevin Carter, originally from South Africa, had visit Sudan and in 1993 made the famous photo. One year later, in April won the Pulitzer prize and in July same year he suicide. Many speculations appeared, trying to rely the stories. Alberto Rojas, a Spanish journalist met the other photographer who was in Sudan with Carter in Sudan in th…

Amazing graffiti artists, with realistic and surreal artwork The street art and its popular branch - graffiti are amazing through their universality and accessibility. Discover just a few of unbelievable creations made by famous artists, very appreciated worldwide.
Bansky 
www.banksy.co.uk
  Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki

A legend that fascinated generations through his work, the artist from Bristol(UK) continue to surprise without reveling his identity. Powerful messages, a satire of modern society and politics, a critic of super globalization and greed, a representation of the unheard voices.
Banksy on Instagram

Eduardo Kobra
www.eduardokobra.com

Source: https://www.facebook.com/kobrastreetart/
Being in Guinness Book with his artwork for 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Kobra is a superstar in graffiti industry. His unique style is a combination between perfect portraits(usually great personalities) and colorful geometric patterns, which brings the joy with that bright colors i…

The coolest programming algorithms for beginners, explained humanly (Part 1)

Recursion
The main definition is “to contain it self” . In 1904, an  advert image showed a woman who held a cacao pack with exactly the same image of her on the packet. Of course, in photography and graphics this effect has been used multiple times, but also in mathematics and computer science.
 https://medium.com/@JorgeCastilloPr/tail-recursion-and-how-to-use-it-in-kotlin-97353993e17f


Binary search
In a very few words, it means, searching an element from a list dividing that list in 2 parts. If is less than the middle item, than it will look in the first part, dividing again that list. The guide of binary search is to compare elements till it finds the one that equals to what we are searching for.
For example looking for "4", having the elements above. First, it compares 4 with 7 and decide that 7 bigger, so it start looking for 4 in the first part. Then, it divides again the left part of…

Android 3.3 and its amazing Navigation feature

I hope this article will be read by persons who want to work as android developers, but they considered it is too complicated or the interface is not very friendly.

Android 3.3 comes with new features in order to make app development easier. The best thing in my opinion is the Navigation component, which make easier the view of the entire app.

Now it’s easier to handle the User Interface flow, to handle Up and Back actions properly by default, to be more creative but in the same time to respect the logic standards.

How to use it?


1.Add the dependencies in the project Gradle file:
 implementation "android.arch.navigation:navigation-fragment:$nav_version" // use -ktx for Kotlin
implementation "android.arch.navigation:navigation-ui:$nav_version" // use -ktx for Kotlin

2.Create a new folder in “Res” and then add a new xml file(for resource-type select navigation).

3. Go to "Design" option- like at Layout files whe…

AndroidX or "No more stress with the compatibility of the Android Support Libraries"

Android already have 10 years since it has been release and of course, numerous versions with new features added and constant improvements.  Developers had to make sure they have always the same version of the Android Support Library or otherwise some problems might appear in Gradle. Ta-na-na! the solution is migrating to AndroidX.

-Android Studio has to be 3.2.1(Toolbar-Help-About to check the android version);
-You need to have compile at least have compileSdk 28(Android 9.0);
-In build.gradle(Project) has to be classpath com.android.tools:gradle:3.2.1

How to migrate: Toolbar->
Refractor->
Migrate to AndroidX.

I It t will appear a message of possible errors and then the option “Do Refractor”. Also, the option to zip the project folder and to save it somewhere in your computer. In a few moment the Gradle will sync, I personally didn’t have any problems with my project.