Category: Documentation

Every opacity value hex code

/ Vladimir Paskov / Leave a comment

I often work with HEX colors and want to apply some alpha to them.

Calculating the exact alpha HEX value is tedious job so here it is: the complete list of every possible opacity value in HEX

100% — FF
99% — FC
98% — FA
97% — F7
96% — F5
95% — F2
94% — F0
93% — ED
92% — EB
91% — E8
90% — E6
89% — E3
88% — E0
87% — DE
86% — DB
85% — D9
84% — D6
83% — D4
82% — D1
81% — CF
80% — CC
79% — C9
78% — C7
77% — C4
76% — C2
75% — BF
74% — BD
73% — BA
72% — B8
71% — B5
70% — B3
69% — B0
68% — AD
67% — AB
66% — A8
65% — A6
64% — A3
63% — A1
62% — 9E
61% — 9C
60% — 99
59% — 96
58% — 94
57% — 91
56% — 8F
55% — 8C
54% — 8A
53% — 87
52% — 85
51% — 82
50% — 80
49% — 7D
48% — 7A
47% — 78
46% — 75
45% — 73
44% — 70
43% — 6E
42% — 6B
41% — 69
40% — 66
39% — 63
38% — 61
37% — 5E
36% — 5C
35% — 59
34% — 57
33% — 54
32% — 52
31% — 4F
30% — 4D
29% — 4A
28% — 47
27% — 45
26% — 42
25% — 40
24% — 3D
23% — 3B
22% — 38
21% — 36
20% — 33
19% — 30
18% — 2E
17% — 2B
16% — 29
15% — 26
14% — 24
13% — 21
12% — 1F
11% — 1C
10% — 1A
9% — 17
8% — 14
7% — 12
6% — 0F
5% — 0D
4% — 0A
3% — 08
2% — 05
1% — 03
0% — 00

How to use it:
#000000 – Black with ought opacity
#17000000 – Black with 9% opacity

How to Reset MAC OS X DOCK to DEFAULT SETTINGS

/ Vladimir Paskov / 1 Comment

First launch the Terminal app, located in the Utilities folder under Applications, or just hit Cmd + Space and type “Terminal“.

Type (copy & paste) the command below:

defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock

Then hit return.

Your Dock will now be new as the day it shipped. You are free to mess it up again 🙂

Make a directory writable by Apache on Mac OS X

/ Vladimir Paskov / Leave a comment

Just a quick reference on how to make a directory writable by OSX integrated Apache web server.

1. Set the ownership of your desired directory/file to the _www user:

sudo chown -R _www:staff path/to/folder/

2. Set the permissions so that the _www can write in the directory/file without giving permissions to everyone else:

sudo chmod -R 755 path/to/folder

Happy coding 🙂

Auto ‘versionCode’ increment when building production apk’s

/ Vladimir Paskov / Leave a comment
Android, Smartphone, Android Developer, Android Studio

Since I adopted Fabric as a way to monitor vital app stats such as ‘Time in App per User‘ and it’s Beta distribution platform to distribute test builds, increasing APK’s versionCode numbers became a tedious task.

I decided to simplify the things by letting Gradle to do auto versionCode increments when producing release APK’s

Our implementation of build number increments will consist of a property file named version.properties located in the root folder of our project.

The property file will contain 2 variables, one defining the version name such as “2.3” and one defining the version code such as 15

VERSION_NAME=2.3
VERSION_CODE=19

In our app module build.gradle file

build.gradle

we will define a function which takes care of retrieving the a bough mentioned values from the properties file and increment the VERSION_CODE if needed.

/**
 * Get's value from 'version.properties' file
 * @param varName the name of the variable which value we wan't to get.
 * @return the variable value.
 */
def getVersionPropertiesValue(def varName)
{
    def propertiesFile = file('version.properties')
 
    if(!propertiesFile.canRead()) {
        throw new GradleException("Could not read " + propertiesFile.name)
    }
 
    Properties properties = new Properties();
    properties.load(new FileInputStream(propertiesFile))
 
    def propertyValue = properties[varName]
    if(varName == 'VERSION_CODE')
    {
        // If we are building release increment the version code
        List gradleTasksNames = gradle.startParameter.getTaskNames();
        for(String taskName : gradleTasksNames)
        {
            if(taskName.contains("Release"))
            {
                propertyValue = propertyValue.toInteger() + 1
                properties[varName] = propertyValue.toString()
                properties.store(propertiesFile.newWriter(), null)
                break
            }
        }
    }
 
    return propertyValue
}

In the defaultConfig section of the gradle build script we will call this function to retrieve values for the versionName and versionCode of our app.

android {
    compileSdkVersion 28
 
    defaultConfig {
        applicationId "com.example.foo"
        versionCode Integer.valueOf(getVersionPropertiesValue('VERSION_CODE'))
        versionName getVersionPropertiesValue('VERSION_NAME')
        minSdkVersion 14
        targetSdkVersion 28
    }
}

Now each time a release build is made, the version code will increment automatically. If we want to change the version name we can do so by changing the value of VERSION_NAME property.

Fighting spammers: Removing Website URL Field from Comment Form

/ Vladimir Paskov / Leave a comment

I’m tired of receiving massive amount of spam comments on my blog (1280 spam comments for about a month) and doing:

DELETE FROM `wp_comments` WHERE `comment_approved` = 0

Beside using SI Captcha Anti-Spam which does pretty good job in keeping some of the automated spam bots at bay, I noticed some trend in the spam comments flooding my posts, they are all full of SEO keywords and they are heavy abusing the Website field in the comment form.

Here is a small “plugin” which will remove (unset) the URL field in the comments form:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Remove Website field from comments.
*/
function custom_comment_fields( $fields ){
  if(isset($fields['url']))
    unset($fields['url']);
  return $fields;
}
 
add_filter( 'comment_form_default_fields', 'custom_comment_fields' );

Create a file in /wp-content/plugins/ with the code a bough. Go to the ‘Plugins’ section of the admin panel and activate the newly created plugin named “Remove Website field from comments”.

Yey, no more “Website” field in the “Leave a Reply” section 🙂