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Tuesday, 29 January 2013

my Collections test and something else (key features of Java)

I study and test some basic technologies. I created a few enums with default access modifiers (they can be used in scope of the current package only).

enum Sex {MALE, FEMALE, SHEMALE}
This Sex enum is used to hold the gender of a Person. Of course, it's a only joke.

enum Employment {EMPLOYED, SELFEMPLOYED, UNEMPLOYED};
This enum is used to hold the employment status of a Person.

My public class Person definition:

public class Person implements Serializable, Comparable {
    private long ID;
    private String name;
    private String surname;
    private int age;
    private Sex sex = Sex.FEMALE;
    private Employment vocation = Employment.UNEMPLOYED;
    private File userPic;
...

Thursday, 24 January 2013

Search (metacharacters)

The searching with metacharacters.
/*
 * API: regular-expression constructs 
 * docs.oracle.com
 */

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

Regex - Quantifiers

Quantifiers:
? - zero or one
* - zero or more
+ - one ore more

Regex - Regular Expressions. This is one of the difficult topics for me. Here is one program to show work with quantifiers.

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

My Synchronised Queue

I received this task from one recruiter. His client was looking for a java programmer and they wanted to check my knowledge of Java. I should to create a class that represents a synchronised queue.

Here is my version of a linked synchronised queue. I had to create to inner classes as well.

Icons for web

In 2012 I am worked for one printing company in London. I have been in charge of preparation files for print. Every day I checked about 60 incoming files and fix about 10 of them. I was surprised how many incoming artworks didn't have any bleed (extra area for trimming).
And I had to create 2-3 absolutely new design a day. I love being busy. The more tasks - the better. 
When i had a little bit more spare time i created assets for company's website.
Before it looked like this. I have began from icons. First icons I have created in Illustrator. They were vector icons with gradient. I wanted to select colour for them later. I saved each icon separately as a png-file with transparency.
Then I had to create icons for every kind of our productions. In order it will be possible in future to replace previous icons to new ones i used their file names. It looked like a product_image211.png, a product_image312.png, a product_image789.png... and so on. In fact, I didn't have a direct access to webserver. I just saved web pages to my HD and I assume, all names of  icons were produced by webserver.

Our director who was responsible for updating of corporate website asked me to separate and to rename all files for each kind of our production separately. They asked me to make different size of icons for different sizes of our production (A3, A4, A5, A6, A7 - icons should be smaller depending of paper size). It was more than 250 icons.

Friday, 18 January 2013

Adobe Illustrator (my main program)

I use Adobe PhotoShop for pictures correction and photo collages.
I love using Adobe InDesign for two purposes: when I create final one-side imposition. I am sure it's more easy and faster to use InDesign than Preps in that cases.
Second case when I love using InDesign is when I need to use Paragraph Styles and I need to apply them for an entire document. The excellent things are Master Pages, off course.

But my main program is Illustrator. I love use it to create one-side and double-side flyers (one or two pages documents). And Illustrator is a main tool to work with mock-ups for packaging. Of course I don't mention about 3D visualisation of a pack.

(On the picture I have shown one document with 3 languages for 3 countries (Germany, France, Russia).

Wireframing. One year ago I didn't know the name of this process. My previous boss asked me to make prototype of company's website in order to move elements and to apply different colours for them and to see the result.
Such a preview is not interactive but it's a not bad way for wireframing.

My fine art


I loved painting. I wanted to become the famous painter in my childhood. And I think, I have a creative flair. But I can not create anything unless I am not alone. I am very shy to show the creative process. And in fact I need to see the sun to fire up my imagination. May to say I am constantly sad. I recall my childhood, I miss about warm evenings. And one clever woman said to me that I am a good person, but social skills lack.

Friday, 11 January 2013

The export from CorelDraw into PDF-file (trouble with colour profile)

One occasion from my print designer experience.
Once i had a remote work for PlanetHouse. It was a temporary contract during three months.
CEO have visited us (two designers) in Latvia. First designer was a good-looking girl. She invited me to work with her. She knew only CorelDraw. And I have excellent knowledge in CorelDRAW and Adobe Creative Suit.
I want to say that CorelDRAW has its own colour management system different from Adobe. That programm is not bad for roll-up banners and big posters. But I compared the output colour many times and i know CorelDRAW can not make sure to you the exact expectable colour output. It's easy - the colours won't be saturated.
At some time, i obtained broken-down the output colour from CorelDRAW. I had pdf-file with bad quality colour. It was unexpected problem. It can happen with CorelDRAW at any time. This is why i don't like CorelDRAW. And happily we don't have it on the Apple Mac (maybe it exists i don't know).
This is a screenshot of pdf-file produced from CorelDRAW but it's covered with several circles with more saturated colours. Those are few pieces of a screenshot of pdf-file produced from AdobeInDesign. We can see the difference in colour.

Java books & IDE

Books for Java Beginners:

Head First Java. Kathy Sierra (amazon.co.uk)
Core Java: Fundamentals Volume 1 (Cay Horstmann, Harry Cornell)
Core Java, Volume II - Advanced Topics: 2  (Cay Horstmann, Harry Cornell)

Eclipse IDE download: eclipse.org/downloads
NetBeans IDE download : netbeans.org/downloads

IQ Elite dating site and my personality tests

IQ Elite
One my friend is a senior application developer. He is 50 years old. All his life he worked as a c++ programmer, but now he is a Java developer. Once i offered him to develop a dating website. It looks interesting for me. My friend gave me a link to the IQ Elite dating website. I registered on there to research it inside.

They have a very interesting thing: we can take some tests and then they can be used to find to you your appropriate partner. I am not going to use and to pay for their servis but i passed few tests.


Thursday, 10 January 2013

my main useful links for Java programmers

http://stackoverflow.com/
http://www.javaranch.com/
http://www.java2s.com/
Java Book: http://www.java2s.com/Book/Java/CatalogJava.htm

SCJP mock test online: http://scjptest.com/
Java Tutorials - Table of Contents: cogeco.ca
Java Examples:  http://www.java-examples.com/

Russians:
http://javatalks.ru/
http://habrahabr.ru/hub/java/

Book publisher:
http://www.apress.com/
http://www.manning.com/
http://oreilly.com/

P.s I am just a newbie for Java programming, and at the moment I spend the most of my spare time to prepare for SCJP. Here are only the main but excellent websites. I'd like to pass the exam and to find work as a java programmer. I help to my friend to solve some tasks in java at times, but at the moment i can solve only 50% of exam's questions.

How we printed Moscow Vodka

It happened about 10 years ago. I worked as a main graphic designer (and a head of computer department) for a big printing company in the Latvia. Before Latvia became a member of the Europe Union in 2004th we printed  a lot of production for Russia. After that it became very expensive to export production to a country outside the Europe Union. Our owner made his decision to move his company to the Russia. The latvian branch was sold and closed a little bit later. I worked for that company during about five years and then had to find a new work.
First i worked with MacOS 8 but later I installed MacOS X on the same computer. It was amazing! Computer worked faster than before.
One of our big customers was SPI Group Company (spi-group.com)
I've still got some mock-ups for their production. And now I'd like to tell about one alcohol label.
It's called Moskovskaya Vodka (It means Moscow Vodka):
The label of Moscow Vodka contains three bespoke colours (Red for logo - printed out as a Magenta, Green for background - printed out as a Cyan, and Black for text). Orange ("Yellow") colour presents Hot Foil. We printed out a special separated film for foil with 99,65% scaling because a metal plate will be increased after heating. The 99,65% scaling was our company know-how. We found out it ourself. And the black text "Moskovskaya" has been embossed for protection. At the end it was covered by UV varnish. Black colour was overprinted and covers green colour. We applied hand-made trapping as well.
I have seen the different design of this label for different countries.

Introduction

Hi everybody who visited my blog.
Let me introduce myself. I am Russian from Latvia. That is a small country in East Europe. But it doesn't matter for my blog's purposes.  Now i am based in London (in the UK). My native language is Russian.
The reason why i decided to create this blog is i want to practice my English and i'd like to refer to this web blog in future. I will post only in English. The main topics of my blog will be: programming, graphic design, useful web links and so on... (maybe everything)
Here we go!