Posts
Securing Communications on Android
With all the recent data breaches, privacy has become an important topic. Almost every app communicates over the network, so it's important to consider the security of user information. In this post, you'll learn the current best practices for securing the communications of your Android app. Use HTTPS As you are developing your app, it's best practice to limit your network requests to ones that are essential. For the essential ones, make sure that they're made over HTTPS instead of HTTP. HTTPS is a protocol that encrypts traffic so that it can't easily be intercepted by eavesdroppers. The good thing about Android is that migrating is as simple as changing the URL from http to https . URL url = new URL("https://example.com"); HttpsURLConnection httpsURLConnection = (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection(); httpsURLConnection.connect(); In fact, Android N and higher versions can enforce HTTPS using Android’s Network Security Configuration . In Androi...
Quick Tip: 10 Audio Mastering Tips Every Engineer Should Know
Mastering is considered to be a dark art. A dark art that's seen an increasing number of mastering engineers enter the fray. In this tutorial, I'll shed light on how you can become a better mastering engineer with ten straightforward tips. 1. Room Treatment Room treatment is vital. I'd choose budget monitors in a well treated room over high end monitors in a gymnasium. However you treat the room, the goal is always the same—to have a listening environment that is neutral, that results in even frequencies. 2. Multiple Monitors One pair of monitors isn't enough. Monitors present their own individual view of a master. You should invest in a good pair of monitors, but also a budget pair like the Avantone MixCubes, found in both home and pro studios. These are an excellent substitute for checking in the car, due to their limited bandwidth. You should also check the master on a laptop, on headphones and even whilst wearing earbuds. ...
Data Science and Analytics for Business: Challenges and Solutions
As more companies discover the importance of data science and advanced analytics for their bottom line, a clash of cultures has begun. How can these quickly growing fields become part of a company’s ecosystem, especially for established companies that have been around for a decade or longer? Data scientists and IT professionals have vastly different needs when it comes to infrastructure. Here, I’ll lay out some of those requirements and discuss how to move beyond them—and evolve together. Department Perspectives When starting up data science programs within companies, the biggest issues often arise not from the technology itself, but from simple miscommunication. Interdepartmental misconceptions can result in a lot of grudge-holding between fledgling data science teams and IT departments. To combat this, we’ll examine both perspectives and take each of their needs into account. We'll start by defining what an IT professional requires to maintain a successful workflow, an...
Formatting the Current Date and Time in PHP
You'll often want to work with dates and times when developing websites. For example, you might need to show the last modified date on a post or mention how long ago a reader wrote some comment. You might also have to show a countdown of the days until a special event. Luckily, PHP comes with some built-in date and time functions which will help us do all that and much more quite easily. This tutorial will teach you how to format the current date and time in PHP. You will also learn how to get the timestamp from a date string and how to add and subtract different dates. Getting the Date and Time in String Format date($format, $timestamp) is one of the most commonly used date and time functions available in PHP. It takes the desired output format for the date as the first parameter and an integer as a timestamp value which needs to be converted to the given date format. The second parameter is optional, and omitting it will give output the current date and time in string format...
Set Up Caching in PHP With the Symfony Cache Component
Today, I'll show you the Symfony Cache component, an easy way to add caching to your PHP applications. This helps improve the overall performance of your application by reducing the page load time. The Symfony Cache Component The Symfony Cache component allows you to set up caching in your PHP applications. The component itself is very easy to install and configure and allows you to get started quickly. Also, it provides a variety of adapters to choose from, as shown in the following list: database adapter filesystem adapter memcached adapter Redis adapter APCu adapter and more When it comes to caching using the Symfony Cache component, there are a couple of terms that you should get familiar with. To start with, the cache item refers to the content which is stored. Each item is stored as a key-value pair. The cache items are managed by the cache pool , which groups them logically. In fact, you need to use the cache pool to manipulate cache values. Finally, it's th...
Capturing Lifelike Guitar Sounds Without Microphones: Part 1
If you're recording anything acoustically, or playing live through a PA, microphones remain the usual and accepted route for capturing guitar sounds. From studio exotica costing thousands of pounds down to handheld and USB devices, the microphone reigns supreme. As popular as this is, however, there are some drawbacks. The relationship between the mic and its source needs to remain the same. The slightest movement in any plane of direction can change both the tone and volume of what’s captured. Anyone who's tried overdubbing an acoustic guitar part will know the challenge of creating a consistent recording. Then there's the question of noise. Whether it comes from the recording space or stage, the player, the instrument, or even the recording equipment, all this can diminish the resultant quality. You may believe that there's no alternative. DI This stands for Direct Injection , and refers to connecting an instrument electronically to an amplifier or recording dev...
Understand Arrays in PHP
In this post, you'll learn the basics of arrays in PHP. You'll learn how to create an array and how to use associative and multidimensional arrays, and you'll see lots of examples of arrays in action. What Is an Array? In PHP, an array is a data structure which allows you to store multiple elements in a single variable. These elements are stored as key-value pairs. In fact, you can use an array whenever there’s a need to store a list of elements. More often than not, all the items in an array have similar data types. For an example, let’s say you want to store fruit names. Without an array, you would end up creating multiple variables to store the different fruit names. On the other hand, if you use an array to store fruit names, it might look like this: <?php $array_fruits = array('Apple', 'Orange', 'Watermelon', 'Mango'); ?> As you can see, we’ve used the $array_fruits variable to store the different fruit names. One great thin...