Photopea

Growing up, I learned that creativity was grown by constraints. I became resourceful because of the lack of resources. That attitude has helped me keep going when everything around me said stop.

From time to time, you find a tool that is God sent. It meets a clear need in your life. As a developer, I don't see how I would ever buy Adobe Photoshop. However working with designers means that I need a way to open the PSD files sent to me.

In comes Photopea.  Photopea is a free online photo editor with excellent support for PSD, XCF and Sketch files.

This means that you can open files from Adobe Photoshop, GIMP and Sketch App. GIMP is the open source competitor to Adobe Photoshop while Sketch App is a great Mac only design tool.

Photopea changes the game by providing you with a free and advanced editor. It runs totally online. You can also get it as a Chrome extension. Do like them on Facebook.

How to Add a Favicon to your Site

With the rise of DIY website platforms, one detail that is often overlooked is the favicon of the website. A favicon is the icon associated with a particular website. It is a useful tool for branding.

Regardless of how you choose to create a website, in the end, you must use a favicon. In my opinion, it shows attention to detail and trust me on this, the devil is in the details.

This document from W3 explains how to add a favicon to your website. In modern times, you can use a square image and not bother with the size restriction.

A List of Public APIs

The header image for this post is from API Academy. APIs enable you to have an endpoint where developers can build and add new features on top of your existing product.

This list contains links to public APIs that return JSON. It ranges from Art to Weather with my favourite being the Marvel API :-)

I found it while working on the Nigerian API Directory. Although the project was disappointing, I don't regret working on the project because of some of the resources I found online.

Go through the list and let your imagination run wild.

Fashion Tech Competition 2017

Long before I learned how to program, I was a technology enthusiast. For me looking at the next big thing in technology is always exciting.

Wearable Technology is a dream come true and I am proud to inform you that the Fashion Tech Competition 2017 is open.

To signup for the competition, you will need to pay $50 if you are a student, $100 for professional teams/designers/studios and $150 for Corporations.

If you have what it takes signup for the Fashion Tech Competition 2017.

Start

Welcome to the last Saturday of the month. This month had a lot of reasons to celebrate. Lagos is 50 today, Star Wars celebrated its 40th year anniversary. It also marks 50 years since the start of the Civil War.

From the perspective of the seasons, May is special because it marks the end of Spring. In farming communities, this means that planting is done. Summer will witness the commencement of maintenance activities for a good crop.

At this time, there should be no more doubt about what you plan to achieve this year. The year is already splitting into 2. At this point in time, you have to focus on what you really want and go after it.

CodeLagos is a program by the Lagos State Government to teach 1 million people how to code by 2017. It is a great initiative which I am proud to be a part off.

I got this image off their Twitter handle. It is a great reminder that the failure to start is ultimately the failure to improve.

IFTTT

Today I wanted to automate this blog so that when I do a blog post, it would automatically post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The service I used to use before is gone now. So the way I can do this will be to automate. I have heard about IFTTT.

IFTTT is a way to automate tasks on the web. It has become the ultimate automation service for small tasks between internet-connected services.

If you have any services that are internet based that you seek to automate, give IFTTT a try.

I'm Back

It's been a long time since I last posted here. Since finishing the Android Development for Everyday People series on this blog, I thought at the time that it would be great to own my own plot of land on the internet and for a time I did.

I ran my own site using WordPress. Everything was wonderful until one day I saw the white screen of death. I spent time trying to debug it then I realized how low I had fallen.

Here was I a developer debugging a program written so that I didn't have to code. I realized at the moment that I needed to lose all the work I had done and start all over again.

Since I would be starting over, I decided that I could take it as a learning opportunity to remember how to build a usable system. I considered the pros and cons and in the end, I took down the site and here I am.

I plan to develop my own blog engine. I realize now that with WordPress too many things can go wrong that you have no control over. That is the keyword: control. It might have been a clash of themes or any one of a countless number of factors that led to the site crashing but I don't care.

I cannot debug a WordPress site for myself. For a client, I know that I will be billing but for myself, it makes no sense.

So I am back to the basics. Writing my own blog engine. With any luck, there might be a book at the end of the journey.

In the time I spent away, I wrote 3 books on App Inventor. They are all published in the Amazon store. I am currently writing my 4th one although I have to start all over again as I have changed the title which means that the tone of the book will change.

I will give it out 4 free on my new site when it is done. So please sign up for my newsletter on my new site.

I'm back.