Category: Blog

Rafting adventures in Bosnia and Monte Negro [VIDEO]

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Hey Guys!

I thought about apologising for not writing for so long, pretty sure all my 7 subscribers were unhappy about that. Sadly, I had a really busy first half of the year. Well, not sadly to be honest. I had an amazing first half of the year with loads of skiing and lots of travelling. And lots of hard work as well. I’ve been placed in charge of the statutory and internal reporting for the group of entities at my job and it’s been challenging. Challenging yet rewarding. Gained new knowledge and experience and practised consolidations and reporting really well. I like working with deadlines. You get to be done with it and enjoy yourself afterwards. Continue reading...

Custom Ribbon tabs and Macros in Excel

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Today I want to share some Excel magic with you. If you are anything like me you probably want to optimize your workflow a lot. One way to do that is using Excel macros. But these require some VBA programming knowledge. I’ve been using macros to save time for quite some time now and want to share my favorite one with you.

Today we are making a macro that assembles many files into one. But what’s more interesting, I am going to show you a way to put this macro as an Excel function, in its own ribbon tab. We are also going to be creating a simple macro to delete empty rows, to make our own ribbon tab look better. Continue reading...

Customer satisfaction done right – GoPro

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Hi guys, today I wanna share a little customer satisfaction story with you.

As some of you might remember, my first post in this blog was about GoPro and their entry-level HERO camera, that I bought back in the beginning of 2015. It was a nice camera, it went through a lot with me, but last month it broke. I was on a ski trip in the French Alps and decided to mount the camera on the tip of my right ski, so that it’d capture myself for a change. Sadly, it went wrong and the mounting thingies on the bottom of the camera housing broke off. If you are familiar with the model I am talking about, it looks like this and the camera cannot be taken out of the housing. Continue reading...

Welcome to Unity Engine… You are going to love it here!

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Today I want to share my journey in falling in love with the Unity game development environment. I will start far off but it’s important to understand the source of my game dev passion, so bear with me.

So as you know, I have this artistic side project called Maina Creatures (Link). I started it a year ago with a friend of mine, but what you see published over there is pretty much created by me. Back in last October we started this, I also quit my well paid Big 4 financial auditor job (can’t get enough of sharing this…) and went back to my home town to pursue my (undefined) dreams. I left finance behind and went into mobile apps for iOS. After publishing PlanD and LemonQuotes (you can check those out in the menu above if you like) I really wanted to start designing a game. Continue reading...

First steps with WordPress: Part 1

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Before you delve into the depths of web development with the WordPress framework, it’s good to have a general idea of what WordPress is, and most importantly why does it even exist.

So what is WordPress?

WordPress is what you call web software. It was first started in 2003 and it’s currently the most used web site platform in the world. Currently there are more than 75 million sites using WordPress globally. You can see realtime WP activity around the world here wordpress.com/activity.

Screen Shot 2016-07-29 at 11.00.42 AM

You can actually summarise WordPress as a powerful content management system (CMS), not just a blogging platform. What made WordPress really appealing is the fact that there are no requirements to purchase specialised software. All you need to author your website is an internet browser (and connection obviously). Another great thing about WordPress is that it’s completely free, and it’s also open-source. The last one means that the source code of the whole platform is available for anyone to download, review, study, amend, extend and use however they deem fit. This means that over the years a vast community of developers has gathered, who support and extend the WP project via contributions to main features, bug fixes and additional plug-ins. Continue reading...

How to pick the right domain name when taking your first steps in web development?

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Hi there, folks!

It’s been some time… First, I want to thank you all, that downloaded my new app and even went as far as to use it and share feedback with me. If you still haven’t gotten around to trying it out, now’s a great time – it’s absolutely free and lets you easily share beautiful images with motivation quotes on them on social media. You can read more about it here Lemon Quotes or you can go directly to the App Store -> https://goo.gl/iJMzFJ.

So, I am working on a course lecture right now and I had to assemble some tips for picking a quality domain name when you are yet taking your first steps in web design and development. Continue reading...

Lemon Quotes – Daily thought sharing. Reinvented. Get FREE on the App Store!

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Hi there!

It’s been some time since I launched Plan D – Daily planning. Reinvented. I’ve been working hard on a freelance project doing a financial audit, so lately I haven’t had the time to post here. But in the meantime I managed to push my new app through App Store Review. And here it is! Live 🙂

It’s an app that lets you easily share beautiful images with famous people’ quotes on social media like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

You can download it on the App Store. It’s absolutely free! No ads! No in-app purchases! Continue reading...

Stories on facebook with Swift 2 and imgur API

brotherlemon 2 Comments

Hi there, long time no posts on my behalf… I do apologise! But before we get to swift-ing, let me overshare 🙂

I did some freelancing for my last employer, I also published my app Plan D and even released two more versions with bug fixes. This being my first time, it was a journey. But it was worth it 🙂

So, now I am working on my next project and past few days I’ve tackled social network image sharing. It’s been… character building, to say the least!

As all my 5 readers know, I code for iOS and use Swift as a language of choice. Apparently nobody in Instagram or Facebook or pretty much any other social network ever thought that someone might develop for iOS using Swift, not knowing Objective C. When I opened the Facebook developers’ docs, I found everything I needed, in a language I do not use. I know, there are a few translators available, but Swift is evolving so fast, that half the methods you can find in ObjC tutorials for facebook posts are deprecated already. It took me 2 days to figure out a practical way, so I am putting it up here, for your viewing pleasure. Continue reading...

Panorama of Pleven – a unique historical experience

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Hi everyone! Today I want to share a recent experience I had during a trip with friends. We planned to spent last weekend (St. Valentine’s) together and to travel to the old capital of Bulgaria, Veliko Tarnovo. Don’t get me wrong, it was awesome there, but what I want to talk about is the city of Pleven. We made a pit stop on our way and visited the Pleven Panorama!

Pleven

Pleven is the seventh most populous city in Bulgaria. It is in the northern part of the country and is the administrative centre of both Pleven municipality and province. A lot can be said about Pleven (and you can read it in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleven), however what’s worth mentioning from my point of view is that the earliest human traces found there date bach to the Neolithic, 5th millennium BC, and that in 1877 the city (then mostly known as Plevna out of Bulgaria) was a major battle scene during the Russo-Turkish war. According to wikipedia.org the ‘Struggle for Mastery’ by Taylor states that: Continue reading...

SumoMe and WordPress – a recipe for success!

brotherlemon 2 Comments

Hi there,

another tech tutorial planned for today.

I guess many of you are running their own websites, be it a small business, a portfolio, a blog, or some product landing page.

I would also guess that most of those are ran on WordPress (or similar platform).

Today I want to share about an amazing bundle of web apps that can help you exponentially grow the traffic you get on your website.

Ever heard of SumoMe?! Their website claims it in the headline – ‘SumoMe – The Best Website Traffic Tools’, and then their landing page has this huge title ‘Tools to Grow Your Website’s Traffic’. Quite the claim I though when I first landed there (see what I did with landed and landing page :P). Continue reading...

Brotherlemon.com is on Facebook, Plan D is coming soon!

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Howdy, my faithful readers! …all 5 of you!

It’s been a while since my last post, but believe me, I have a good reason for not writing for some time. I’ve told you before that I used to work as a financial auditor and spend most of my waking hours at work.

I left this way of life behind me in October last year, when I quit and went into mobile apps, web dev, graphics, video and pretty much anything else that makes me happy.

However, I had an interesting and totally new experience in the beginning of January. Continue reading...

Still not late to get ready for a fulfilling 2016!

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Hey guys, how are you doing 🙂

Another year rolled past us, another festive season is coming to an end, snow has finally come to cleanse the city and purify the soul.

Last year I decided to start setting some annual goals. The whole resolutions thing never appealed to me before that, but some colleagues last year convinced me to set some goals for 2015. I did it and even went an extra step and prepared a nice poster with my goals that I printed and placed where I can see it almost every day. Then I even prepared an Excel file to track my progress. And somewhere along the way I actually started caring about all those goals I’ve written, goals that were the first to come to mind, goals that got no special consideration or thinking over when being jotted down on a piece of paper during a public transportation ride. Continue reading...

Maina Creatures – my ‘artsy’ side project

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Hi there, it’s been some time since my last post.

As I mentioned in it (at least I think I did…) I recently started an interesting ‘artsy’ project with a friend of mine.

I am talking about the Maina Creatures facebook page (CLICK HERE!) and website (CLICK HERE!).

But let me back up a bit… we were inspired by seeing a few such pages being launched in Bulgaria, so no claim over the idea on our behalf. We saw it, we liked it, we researched it… turns out this started a few years back in New York. While the idea behind other such pages in Bulgaria is to create a brand and perhaps monetize on it, we have a slightly different idea. We want to engage the people as much as possible. That’s why we started it of as a joke and as a way to escape the everyday ‘grey’. And we intend on going forward that way. Continue reading...

My noob guide to custom UI elements with Swift in iOS 9

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As some of you might know, I recently quit my job as a financial auditor in Big 4 and went on to explore my aspirations with mobile app dev. You can laugh, most do… but now and then there’s someone who actually gets me, someone who even admires my decision. I no longer have the patience to discuss with every single person the exact WHY behind my decision… for most of them quitting a well paid job = suicide… for me the freedom to write this blog post at noon on a working day = freedom. Continue reading...

Pocket photography

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Today I want to share some photography thoughts with you. And mainly… pocket photography. In the recent years we’ve seen mobile phones advance their cameras to the point where it’s actually hard to tell the difference between a DSLR photo and a phone camera photo (apart from the amount of bokeh maybe…). With Apple, LG and Samsung (among others) revolutionising the phone camera capabilities, more and more people start to express themselves photographically by simply using their phones. I am not one to ever leave my DSLR adventures behind.. I love wearing a whole backpack of lenses and camera bodies and changing the lens every 15 minutes, taking time-/hyper-lapses for hours (and making friends wait for me…). So I always thought phone photography is not something that’d fly with me… but as I got my LG G3 last year I realised that more and more often I tend to pull it out to take a photo, that I would’ve normally brought my DSLR to take. This resulted in reducing the times I take my photo pack when leaving home. I thought about ways to improve my experience when shooting with my phone. Continue reading...

The magic of BW photos

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For those of you that haven’t noticed… I am something of a passionate amateur photographer. I’ve enjoyed photography since my early ages, playing with my father’s old camera that was already old when I was still too young to appreciate the art of ‘snapping’. The passion that was ignited then remained and in 10th grade I got a Canon camera. It was the first high-end camera that I played with. It had so many manual settings and so much zoom that it was easy to produce awesome images. I remember that the manual focus was so awesome, that you could focus on the surface of the lens… so as you can imagine I abused the lens with various things like sugar, salt, rice, ash… horrible memory! But there was something I hated about my camera – no interchangeable lenses! That’s why in 12th grade I used all the money I had saved from birthday presents and christmas presents etc. and bought my self a Pentax K-100D, and even an extra to the kit lens 70-300 Sigma lens with stabilization! Over the next years I accumulated around 10 old lenses that I used with adapters, to produce low-quality images with poor focus. It was awesome! Continue reading...

youzign – You are the designer

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I was browsing (on the web, not outside…) the other day and eventually the dreadful moment came for me to go through my mailbox. I had not gotten the chance to do that for a few days, so I was procrastinating going through all the newsletters I am subscribed for. I did that and noted a few interesting gadgets and services, that I marked as future (not-going-to-happen) reading material. Then I decided to check my newly registered and still exciting twitter account.

Someone had tweeted about this thing called Youzign. What caught my attention was the article’s heading: “Why I ditched Photoshop and why you should too”… or something like this. I do not remember the website (otherwise I would quote it here), but anyone claiming that Photoshop is replaceable deserves a nice laugh. I actually never read the article, I went directly to youzign.com, as that’s what I wanted to investigate! Continue reading...

How to quit your job?

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It’s been four years…

Yes, literally four years.

I slowly sit down as the sudden realization of the time spent in the Firm indifferently crawls up my back and chest, wrapping its dead-cold slippery fingers around my neck as a tightening gibbet that is here to pronounce me and Death husband and wife. My mind starts racing, going through all the chances, all the dreams, all the ideas, all the moments, that were never taken, never dreamed, never realized, never lived. As it gradually picks up the pace of introducing definite destruction into my precious perspective of the world I live in, I begin to panic. It’s not the usual frightening panic that casually starts micro-earthquakes deep within the very fabric of my being, which I find odd. It’s more like the settling eye-opening panic, that nurtures your brain and guides its thought processes helping you finally realize that it’s time! It’s time to live! It’s time to live now! Continue reading...

Be a hero with GoPro

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A few years ago, as I was skiing with friends, I saw one guy with a very weird thing attached to his helmet, a GoPro. It was a small camera that looked kinda ridiculous in its encasing with all those metal bolts and this fragile looking mount.

However, this guy insisted that it took awesome video and suggested I check it out. I couldn’t wait to get back home, open my browser and type the magic words ‘gopro camera’.

My senses were flooded with all those surfing, skiing, and even diving! Videos, that had this awesome quality and awesome wide-angle view. I spent hours watching all those videos until I actually believed that this small camera was doing it. Continue reading...