Activities

I started my programming experience when the first for public available computer comes to the market: Commodore 64. After some simple programming with basic I went more into machine code programming to get faster and more efficient code. Later at school and university I learned additional languages, e.g. Fortran, Pascal, C, C++. And some more graphical tools used in control engineering (Matlab, Simulink). I like the experience of have a (mathematical) problem being solved by some code of software. Even some VBA code can extend the functinoality of Excel very much.

In the past I created some Webpages with pure html, javascript and php for myself, family members and some NPOs. Now I am using more the Content Management System WordPress and had already a deaper look into the development of own themes.

Recently I am interested in doing some simple Android App Programming. One reason for me to switch from iPhone to Android, as it has more easy possiblities to write some own application.

Helpsful links

There are so many interesting and helpful information available on the WWW that it should not be necessary to have a own collection of links. I will not maintain them, but as they become somehow important for me I just like to show them here.

Android programming

• Andoird Programming for Beginners
• Android Tutorial and Examples
• Java SE Development Kid Download
• Android Studio
• Default Keymap (Shortcuts used by Android Studio)
• Package Index
• Collection of my own Code Snippets

Web-programming

• Strato – My web host, I use them over 10 years without any problems
• WinSCP – Good FTP Tool
• WordPress – Webhosting service usually provide a wordpress installation

Troubleshooting/FAQ

Here I will collect some information about how I could solve some of my programming issues.

WordPress

• How to fix “HTTP error” while loading bigger content to Media (e.g. video)?
  Sometimes I couldn’t upload huge files using the Media upload within wordpress. A “HTTP error” comes up, which is usually related to the upload size of the files. I could not manage to change the valid size but using ftp it is possible to upload images and videos to wordpress folder directly. The folder for images are located in a subfolder wp-content/uploads. Using the Media uploads WordPress creates seperate subfolders for each year and month baseded  on the upload date. For my own videos I created a new subfolder named wp-content/uploads/videos and stored the huge files there.Unfortunately it is not enough just to put files in these subfolders. They will not show up in the media librLary until they are registered in wordpress. For registration I installed the plugin Add From Server which will do the job.

Android

• How to set my Samsung Galaxy S7 device into developer mode?
  Go to the settings menu, than go to “About device” and tap 6-7 times on the “build number”. When only 3 or 2 taps left it will announce that you soon activate the developer mode. If done so there is a new menu item in the previous settings menu available. Done. Easy but hidden.
• Why layout_weight has opposite effect than expected on child layout? To fix this I needed to set layout_height to “0dp” instead of default value “match_parent” (if parent vertical layout, for horizontal parent layout need to adapt layout_width of child to “0dp”).
• Why there are 2 layouts, activity_main.xml (or name given during project creating) and content_main.xml when Android Studio creates a new project? Which one to use?
  The first one is the frame layout and includes the content_main layout. The last one should be used for changes on the inner layout.

Java

• What are the states and transitions of a thread?
  There is a good explainition about this question here: http://journals.ecs.soton.ac.uk with the main graphics: