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Creating a basic Material App Icon

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Creating UI and graphics for app’s has always been a weakness for me, and I’m guessing most developers suffer the same problem.  As I’m always keen to learn new techniques, I recently created a material type icon for myself and though it would be great to share for other developers reference (and my own). 

I followed the technique used in this YouTube video, but there were a few times I had to rewind it to find out exactly what they were doing, which was another reason for writing it down.

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Feb App’itite

I vaguely promised in a previous blog post, I would try and update the apps I use on a daily basis and any new ones that have caught my eye.  Here are a few which I thought were useful and some that have replaced previous apps.

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Android Studio Shortcut Ninja

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After hearing last minute about the Android Dev Summit last year, I was interested to see what topics they would cover and there was some great content.   As all of the talks were recorded I had a few on my list that I wanted to watch after the event but there was one I missed until I listened to one of the fragmented podcast episodes.  They highly recommended a talk called ‘Android Studio For Experts‘, which the podcast host Donn Felker said was an essential watch as they packed so many dev tips into the episode.

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Poor man’s VR

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I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about Virtual Reality (VR) for a while, and in particular what I call the ‘poor man’s VR’.  My interest in it started when Google announced the Google Cardboard take on VR at Google I/O 2014.  After seeing it I was really curious to see how good it actually was. (compared to things like the Oculus rift).  Obviously it wouldn’t be comparable to custom PC driven VR but I just wondered what type of experience you’d get with a phone.

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Droidcon 2015

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Droidcon has become a bit of an annual pilgrimage for me as an Android developer and this year I think it was the best one yet.  It was my fourth time visiting, but I think the speakers really made it this year and it was a star studied list with a good variety of topics which made it great. Also, as always, it was a good chance to catch up with old colleagues and meet new people to share dev war stories!

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Marshmallow System UI Tuner

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After the release of the new version of Android this week to Nexus devices, I discovered a nice feature called the ‘System UI Tuner’ which survived the jump from the preview release but is still hidden away in the OS.

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My Current ‘App’etite

Continuing on the theme of sharing/comparing my setup and recommendations, I thought I’d put together a list of the main apps I use and why I think they are great.  To start, here is my current home screen setup.

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I’ve decided to limit my list of apps to the top 10 for now, so here they are.

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Testing times

Even though I’ve been an Android developer for a while now, believe it or not, I hadn’t yet had a chance to get into the formalized side of writing Unit tests or UI tests for the apps I’d been involved in.

Luckily for me, I think now is one of the best times to actually learn more about testing because historically Android has had poor support for testing in all its forms.

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Where’s my mobile?

I’m sure most of us have had  that sinking feeling when we’ve gone to check for our mobile and realised we’ve left it somewhere.  As mobiles have becoming an increasing part of daily life, the need to keep then safe has obviously increased.

I usually always keep my phone close by or in a safe place but recently I left my phone in work and only realised it was gone when I’d got home.

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Android Developers Toolbox

OK, lets give that lonely solitary first blog post some company by adding one that might be worth reading. (I said might)

I thought I’d make my first real blog post about the tools I use as a developer, like many people have done before.

I always find it interesting comparing how people work and what tools they use so you can improve your own tool set and hopefully pass on some useful tips to other people.  I’ve also created a new section on the website for my most used tools and any new ones that I find over time.  I’ll keep this updated as I discover new and useful tools.

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