Greetings, everyone! Today, I have some very good news. The Android app that I've been working on for a very long time is finally here! Meet binoc, the perfect way to start your day, yoga, meditation, and everything in-between.  With an aesthetically pleasing design, binoc gives you a random stock image from a category of choices, such as nature, city, or rain, and an inspirational quote. It also lets you set an intention for yourself, which you can choose to be a persistent notification. All of these things make binoc a great way to get started on something. Personally, I find that it really helps me feel inspired! As I mentioned earlier, binoc has a beautiful user interface that is free of clutter and advertisements. I was really inspired by Microsoft's Metro user interface seen on Windows Phone. I have attached a screenshot of the app below.  I was inspired by Metro UI. The view scrolls horizontally as opposed to vertically to make the app feel more natural. Creating binoc has been challenging. Not only did I choose to use Kotlin to write the app, which was completely new to me, but I also wasn't really completely sure what I wanted the app to do until a few weeks into development. Despite this, I feel like binoc has turned out very well. It's useful, great for motivating yourself, and fun to use! Anyway, I hope you like binoc! It is available on Google Play for free, without any in-app purchases, ads, or anything unpleasant like that. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope that binoc helps you take a moment to be in the moment! |
About a year ago, I reviewed the 2014 Mac mini on this blog. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that it was still an excellent machine for productivity tasks, but it could also handle some more intense things you threw at it. Thus, it became my daily driver up until I upgraded to a 2017 MacBook Air a few months ago. That being said, I’ve still been using it some, so I thought I’d briefly share how it’s holding up these days. Here are my thoughts on this miniature Macintosh one year later! Performance Over the last year, I’ve been impressed by how much this Mac can handle. It’s rocking a 2.6 GHz dual-core Core i5 with 8 GB of RAM and a Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB SATA SSD. What all that jargon essentially means is that it’s a moderately powerful little computer, although it certainly isn’t going to put newer Macs to shame. Regardless, I’ve been able to do lots of coding, video editing, and schoolwork on this computer, and it has generally worked pretty well. Granted, it can take a while...