For The Love of Art

I recently attended my high school's 25th anniversary reunion, and one thing in particular stood out to me.  It wasn't your typical "how successful someone is" or "how much fatter we've become", but rather how much art has been a part of my life.  A letter written by a friend 25 year ago, that was also addressed to me, pointed out how much we used to draw back then.  Even one of my old teachers, after all these years, had held onto a drawing I did of him.  I know that I haven't drawn as much as I once have, but this fact didn't really hit me until this weekend.

It made me reflect just how long I have been drawing for.  I'd been drawing for as long as I can remember being able to pick up a pencil and paper.  I always say I had a knack for drawing, considering both of my parents were draftspersons/drafters.  Some of the earliest drawings that I can remember doing were typical boy things:  A dinosaur (a pterodactyl if I'm not mistaken), and a football helmet.  Now granted, memories of my childhood when I was only a few years old may be skewed about just how well they turned out, but I remember just how proud I was of myself to be able to draw.

Now, like most other kids just learning to draw, I'd doodle on my parents' newspapers, or I would trace over whatever pictures I could find.  However, because I'd always had an interest of learning how to draw, I remember my parents would give me the tools to feed this curiosity.  I recall having some type of "technical drawing" set for kids, complete with grid paper, straight edges, triangles, and circle templates to help me draw vehicles and the like.  I also remember getting one of those "learn to draw" books, which taught me basics, such as perspective, depth, and using primary shapes to plan how to create your subject.  I also recall other kids in my classes over the years that could draw really well, and that always pushed me to up my game.

Even through high school, I'd always take an art class every year as an excuse to keep on drawing.  I'd even go so far as to use the family's collection of encyclopedias, under the biology section, to get a better understanding on how the muscles were formed in our bodies.  High school was also a slight emergence in comic book collecting, as a way of finding inspiration on drawing like those great artists.  A few friends of mine and I would even go so far as to try to draw our own comic books.  We'd created alternative personalities of ourselves in comic book form.  On a side note, one of my nicknames that still carries to this day is a result of my personal character creation.

As I carried through college, I'd still continue to hone my skill and "find my voice", so to speak.  I had to evaluate my strengths, and what kind of style of drawing suited me.  I'd moved on from the typical comic book art and made my way through a manga-inspired style (much like, I'm sure, a lot of others, especially with the anime boom in the 90s).  I'd eventually fine tune things to a point where I feel it's something unique to me.  I still picked up some books to aid in my skills.  Even to this day, as I view a lot of other artists' work through Instagram, there always something I'd study and like to incorporate into my own style.  The problem nowadays I guess can be time.  But, as one of my high school art teachers once shared to her class: just keep sketching.

I'd recently picked up a little travel sketchbook to try to help me keep my skills up.  Especially now that it appears my young 2 year old seems to be showing an interest in drawing, just like his parents.  I'll do my best to teach him what I know, but also stress the importance of not paying attention about how good or bad his drawings turn out.  Let him find his voice, and if the interest still stays with him like it has with me, then he'll be just fine.

Zooper Binary Programming - How it Works

Awhile back, as a way of testing the AZ Screen Recorder app for Android, I created a quick short video highlighting my phone's minimalist setup:



Initially, I was thinking of creating a supplemental video detailing the programming behind my "binary calendar" setup (which I may end up doing anyway), but figured I needed to go into the mathematics behind the programming to show how the binary works.

I had originally stumbled across this blog when trying to learn how to program my own binary script.  I'd figured that trying to read a binary clock would be too much of a hassle for myself.  Besides, I was more enamored by the analog clock that I'd scripted for so long, I wanted something more elegant to subtly show the date, and so the binary calendar was born.

Anyway, after reading up on that blog I found, I couldn't quite grasp the programming initially, but it provided enough insight on why the math worked.  I'd noticed the correlation between the remainder patterns of when the numbers are divided, and how each bit in the binary is called upon.

First, a quick lesson on binary...

As the name implies, there are only 2 outcomes for an active bit: on or off... in other words, 1 or 0.  Each bit represent a set value: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.  Bits are aligned where the smallest value (1) is at the very end.

From there it's basic mathematics. Here is an example of a binary table:

	4	2	1
0	0	0	0
1	0	0	1
2	0	1	0
3	0	1	1
4	1	0	0
5	1	0	1
6	1	1	0
7	1	1	1

The top row represents the bit.  The first column represents the numbers.  If, for example, we wanted to represent the number 5 in binary, we need the 3rd bit (4), and 1st bit (1) active, hence the binary equivalent is 101.

So how to we translate this table into the programming?  As previously mentioned, there's a correlation in the remainder patterns when those number are divided by those same number patterns in the bits, starting from 2, as seen in the table below:

	8	4	2
0	0	0	0
1	1	1	1
2	2	2	0
3	3	3	1
4	4	0	0
5	5	1	1
6	6	2	0
7	7	3	1

For example, for each number divided by 4, the remainder is either 0 or something else.  However, we need to go a step further.  Again, looking at when the numbers are divided by 4, this actually represents the 2nd bit (2), so for each remainder value greater than or equal to 2, that represents an active bit.  You'll notice the numbers in red are the ones that match up with the binary table, just to give you a better understanding of what I'm trying to explain.

At this point, it's just a matter of applying the modulus function within Zooper's Advanced Parameters to determine the remainder, and apply it to whatever preset variable (whether it's for "time", or "date", or whatever requires a numeric value) within Zooper itself.  As an example, to determine the 3rd bit of the binary function:

$(#Zooper Preset variable#%8)>=4?true statement:false statement$

If you happened to stumble upon this blog in search of programming some binary into your Zooper widget, I hope I'd explained the concept well enough.  My apologies if it all seems a bit confusing.  This is really for someone who has invested some time already into doing some programming into Zooper, and has a basic idea of how the programming works.

The Death of Competitive Mid-range Android Devices

I recently posited the following on Twitter:

With the Nexus line gone, and the OnePlus 5 projected to go up in price, is the competitive mid-range phone dead?

— Phil Angeles (@Flippin_Eh) May 25, 2017

I think back to when I had first dove into the Android ecosystem 6 years ago.  I'd never owned anything close to a smartphone before, save for a BlackBerry for work (but that doesn't count).  The closest thing I had to it was an iPod Touch.  I could have easily stuck with IOS, but was turned off by the closed nature of the system.  At least a BlackBerry offered flexibility, but I wanted something more.  My brother had already started dipping his toes into Android, and I figured I'd do the same.  To be fair, the first Android device I played around with was some no-name Chinese tablet, running what I can only assume was "Donut", or "Eclair".

I did my research, and had settled on the Google Nexus S.  The thing that attracted me was that Google offered a bare-bones, pure Android experience... just the thing to jump into when you've had absolutely no real experience.  The other key was the price.  I believe I'd picked up the device for around $400US.  This trend continued with their Nexus line of phones, and a couple of years later, I upgraded to the Nexus 5... a phone I continue to use to this day.  It's a phone that truly epitomized the competitive mid-range device (reasonably priced that could hold its own against other phones twice the price).

Others have tried their best to be as competitive as the Nexus line of phones, and certainly the one that has found success is from OnePlus.  Their reputation, based on their tagline "Never Settle" has carried them through 4 devices over the last 3 years, with the 3T as their reigning champion.  Despite the folding of Cyanogen, they've persevered with their current flavor of Android (Oxygen OS), offering not just a pure Android experience, but a fully customizable operating system.

But now it seems the winds have changed.  Google has killed off its Nexus line of phones with the introduction of the Pixel late last year.  It's a true flagship device that's attached with a premium price tag.  I guess aside from the specs, unlimited full-size photo backup to the cloud and 24/7 support direct from the device doesn't come cheap.  With the OnePlus, recent speculation has their OnePlus 5 priced at $650US.

I suppose to truly stay relevant, you have to go big or go home with your improvements.  Perhaps at the same time, you're also trusting your customer's loyalty to buy in (pun intended) to your product, despite these changes.  I'd love to upgrade to a Pixel or OnePlus, but I can't justify dropping that much coin... at least not at this time.  I could always stick to the current Pixel or OP3T when the eventual Pixel 2 or OP5 do release.  Sticking to trailing edge tech isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that's another discussion for another time.