Moonshots Beyond the Cloud

The Kivy Python GUI framework is intriguing. Not only it’s cross-platform but also supports Android. Java is too verbose and low level for me and Kivy is an opportunity for developing native Android apps without leaving Python. Outside of the Kivy project documentation, there are few third-party advanced tutorials that go in more depth than the official tutorials. So, before diving into the code of the Kivy demos, I wanted some books to explore more features and get a broader picture of the framework and what it can do. I found two potentially interesting books: Building Android Apps in Python Using Kivy with Android Studio: With Pyjnius, Plyer, and Buildozer by Ahmed Fawzy Mohamed Gad (Apress, 2019), and Kivy - Interactive Applications and Games in Python - Second Edition by Roberto Ulloa (Packt, 2015). I read both and here are my impressions. Building Android Apps in Python Using Kivy with Android Studio I had much hope for Building Android Apps in Python Using Kivy wi...

Self-published book authors are supposed to have many skills. These skills draw on a diverse variety of fields such as marketing, book formatting and typesetting, business, audio and video production, social media management, intellectual property, software, and web design. All this on top of mastering writing and the domains the authors cover. Along with the books, these skills lead authors to produce additional content and artifacts like websites, email newsletters, ebooks files, podcasts, videos, and many more. But authors are strongly, very strongly discouraged from making their own book covers. To the point it’s a taboo. The recommended way is to hire a professional artist or cover designer. It’s sound advice as a bad cover can significantly reduce sales. But I don’t see why authors can’t learn to design covers the same way they can, and have to, learn to create the other content and artifacts. And, for some genres like non-fiction and technical works, a perfect cover ma...