My most popular filename patterns in MusicBrainz Picard

adminmedia0 Comment
1 min. reading

I am using free and powerful MusicBrainz Picard program to clean-up my entire MP3 files collection.

Aside of actual job (pooling MusicBrainz database and fixing, sorting, correcting and cleaning-up tags in your music files), it can also rename actual files on your disk in the same time.

The thing is that it uses a very complex filename pattern by default, while I am using something as simple as:

%artist% - %title%
$num(%tracknumber%,2). %title%

First for standard files and second for parts of albums. Thus, I have written them down here to keep in mind.

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Find all e-mails sent or received in Gmail after office hours

adminGoogle, Microsoft1 Comment
9 min. reading

Someone gave me a task to find all e-mail messages sent or received in Gmail:

  • in given period of day — after 16:00 given day and before 08:00 the next day and
  • in given period of week — between 00:00 and 23:59 during weekends,

so, generally speaking, outside office hours.

Gmail has a quite powerful filtering mechanism, but it:

For some internal reasons I couldn’t follow the “automatic way” suggestion (i.e. to upload messages from Gmail to Google Sheets and try to filter them there) and thus I decided into semi-automatic way.

Meaning that I wrote an Excel sheet which generated Gmail’s filtering queries for me for all required dates and I only have to manually copy-paste them into Gmail’s search box.

You can get similar results Epoch Converter’s batch tool, but I wanted to play a little bit with Excel instead.

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Let’s talk about game economy!

admingames0 Comment
11 min. reading

I am old and thus I still remember these pretty days of Diablo I, back in 1996 — where each and every pieces of Tristram was filled with a pile of 5 000 gold pieces (the biggest amount you could store in single map’s cell) — because Diablo I’s economy had so poor design that most of the players were earning millions by the end of the game, without a real ability of spending this.

Game economy is an extremely important part of each game design and you are deeply wrong, if you think that it plays key role only in economy-based games. I have intentionally mentioned Diablo 1 to show you an example of a dark fantasy game. Some economy-related mistakes for match-three like game are also mentioned here.

In this article I would like to focus on some economy-related issues and mistakes that you must consider when designing money and resources layer in your game, no mater what kind of game you’re currently developing.

Crafting is an important part of game economy, but I have written a separate article on this subject.

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Google Play Games: The good and the bad approach

admingames0 Comment
4 min. reading

Google Play Games on Android and Apple Game Center on iOS is a really good tool for developers and gamedev companies that provides them with a powerful tools to build, analyze and retain your audience and optimize your game.

As for the game players — it allows them to share and compare their results and build their common game profile or even portfolio, by getting experience, achievements and ladder positions across many different games in the same time.

And, as with everything, this can be a base for your success or a begin to your complete failure.

Here is a quick review and compare on how game creators of two different games for Android approached this topic. And, in the same time, a very quick info on two quite different games.

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Simple ways and mistakes to ruin a gameplay in your game

admingames0 Comment
16 min. reading

I’ve been playing Puzzle Forge 2 game way to much. I spent so many hours playing this game that I managed to get some nice achievements in it and in Google Play Games in general.

In addition, I found a quite nice number of gameplay-related bugs in this game. Large enough to use it as a model scenario in discussion on ruining your game and a gameplay in it, by makings simple, yet stupid mistakes and wrong design assumptions.

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A Farewell to Arms in Puzzle Forge 2

admingames0 Comment
5 min. reading

I have finally said “good bye” to the Puzzle Forge 2 game. My decision was made because:

While doing above, I managed to capture some interesting (?) screenshots that I’d like to share here.

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Migrate all your messages to Gmail or other mail account using imapsync

adminGoogle2 Comments
18 min. reading

This article covers:

  • all the information, that I managed to find out or figure out,
  • all the bottlenecks I had to resolve and all the walls, I hit,
  • some additional info or alternative methods,

about migrating all messages from some mail account to Gmail, using imapsync and IMAP protocol.

The imapsync is an extremely flexible and powerful tool, that also has an on-line counterpart (so you don’t get your hands too dirty), and its documentation simply surpasses imagination, so it is certainly able to transfer all the messages between virtually any IMAP servers, not just between Gmail.

But this article focuses on external IMAP server –> Gmail scenario. For other scenarios, you should find some tips here, but you may need to consult imapsync documentation and the Internet or to use another solution.

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All legendary weapons in Puzzle Forge 2

admingames0 Comment
8 min. reading

This is basically a shortcut and my personal memo of a corresponding forum thread — a complete (?) list of all forty legendary weapons that you can create in Puzzle Forge 2. With a little bit cleanup.

The game itself hasn’t been updated since July 2016 (and most forum threads ceased even earlier, somewhere in 2014 or 2015), but even today it has a large number of players and certainly — a massive gameplay!

BTW: Using ugly, dully, unreadable and lame phpBB (a forum engine last time updated in 2007!) for supporting game players that are actually bringing you money is so… so… lame!

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What is PUBG and what’s all about all those battle royale games

admingames0 Comment
6 min. reading

End of January is the beginning of the test of the new, free and less resource hunger PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). It should be possible to run this game in Lite version even with integrated graphics card. And, as said it will be available free for everyone at no cost.

Hold your horses, because “free” may mean Thailand or Asia. Currently tests are limited only to this country and it is not sure, if PUBG Lite version won’t be limited only Asian market.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a battle royale-type game (see below) in which up to 100 players can compete on a single server. I will discuss some game details and battle royale games here as well.

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Early access model in game development

admingames0 Comment
5 min. reading

Steam Early Access (March 2013), Xbox Game Preview and Playstation Early Access (both in June 2015) are all early access models for financing and distribution of games (most often, an independent studio’s creations) that is pretty much the same as crowdfunding in the rest of the world.

If you’re interested in any of these subjects then this article may be a good starting point for you. It is an introduction-level text, so pros in this area might quickly get bored.

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Finding TP-Link router in your local network

adminhardware0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

Most TP-Link routers is accessible using admin/admin credentials under one of these URLs:

Of course, you must try to access these URLs from the computer or mobile that is connected (via cable or Wi-Fi) to the same local network, your TP-Link router is connected to.

If above fails and you don’t know current router’s IP address, you may try accessing:

URLs from the same local network, your TP-Link router is connected to.

Most TP-Link routers registers a virtual URL (like above) and you can access their control panel even without knowing their actual IP address.

Photos made with Galaxy J5 seems not rotated in IrfanView

adminhardware0 Comment
2 min. reading

There’s a known (yet very strange) bug in IrfanView, which causes photos made with Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) to stay in original rotation. Since this occurs only:

  • in IrfanView (images are actually rotated and appears correctly in all other media browsers) and
  • only for photos made by Samsung Galaxy J5 (images made by other phones are unaffected)

this issue may simply be ignored by most of the users. However, I decided to write it here, as this seems to be an interesting (yet weird) IT issue.

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A word about crafting in games

admingames0 Comment
5 min. reading

Crafting is a computer games-related aspect in which game player needs to gather certain elements, puzzle pieces or resources in order to develop a new object. It can be found in:

  • fantasy games (mixtures, elixirs, spells),
  • war-games (armour and weapons modifications),
  • survival games (food crafting, tools creation, healing).

In most cases, in order to create these you need:

  • resources (which can be found by exploring game, doing quests or purchasing),
  • knowledge (either learned yourself or by using NPCs-offered services),
  • sometimes money (for paying for these services).

It is mostly popular in RPGs and MMOs.

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Install Optware (IPKG) on QNAP TS-210 with QTS 4.x

adminQNAP13 Comments
4 min. reading

With introduction of QTS 4.x:

  • there are a lot of changes in QNAP’s Control Panel, including the fact that “Application Servers” component is gone,
  • neither Optware nor IPKG or QPKG elements are available for download in the “App Center”.

This causes my “Installing Optware (IPKG) on QNAP TS-210” (6,5 year old!) article to be completely outdated.

Currently then only way to install Optware is to go through Manual instalation as described in QNAP Wiki.

Since I went through this guide and can confirm that it is working, I will be enough nasty to copy-paste that article here (removing stuff not related to QNAP TS-210 and fixing some bugs).

To go through these steps you need a shell access to your QNAP. Using the PuTTY is the most obvious answer.

But wait! There’s a much better way. QNAP introduced a gem called “shellinabox“, available in App Center (or here or here). I strongly recommend to use it, because with it, you need a web browser!

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Convert Webex’s WRF files to some other video format

adminmedia0 Comment
3 min. reading

I had some serious troubles converting Webex’s video session, saved to .wrf file, to some other video format (namely, .mp4). I have ended up using Webex WRF2WMV Converter, but only after contacting Webex support (mostly due to a lot of incorrect information on their website).

To avoid others wasting the time the same way, here is a short memo on this topic.

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Using Sieve for server-side mail filtering

adminservers0 Comment
5 min. reading

If your mail server supports Sieve mail filtering language, you can use a simple text scripts to enable powerful mail filtering and management that is applied directly on server-side. This allows you to create filters that will works client-independenty (a true saviour for those enforced to use Microsoft Outlook).

Sieve has no variables, and no loops (but does have conditionals). Thus, it is limited to simple filtering operations.

But that is enough for:

  • developing simple anti-spam system,
  • managing and organising mails, but auto-moving incoming messages to corresponding folders,
  • rejecting certain e-mails automatically (i.e. if they’re too big or contain invalid attachment).

Here you will find some general info and a few simple script examples.

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The “Couldn’t agree a key algorithm” error in Git for Windows

admindev, VCS0 Comment
2 min. reading

When trying to perform any authentication-related operation in Git for Windows you may hit the wall with:

Couldn’t agree a key algorithm (available: list of available methods)

Some people says (here and here for example, but also in many other places) that this is due to your PuTTY not being up-to-date and ordering getting latest version of PuTTY as a cure. You’re lucky, if that works for you! :>

I wasn’t that lucky and it turned out that in case of my Git for Windows TortisePlink was actually the problem.

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Using FreeBusy functionality to schedule meetings easily

adminMicrosoft0 Comment
15 min. reading

The FreeBusy solution helps you organise and schedule meetings much easier, because you can see when invited employees or friends are already busy with other meetings and when they have free time slots.

It is a (less known) world standard, so it is supported by many mail clients and calendars (including Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird). And, in addition, it is secure, because only time frame and no other details are published and shared with other parties.

To use this solution, you need a mail client or calendar that supports FreeBusy solution either directly or through some kind of plugin. All that is needed to start using FreeBusy is around 5-10 minutes for initial configuration. Once correctly configured, you need to do nothing else. Your time slots are automatically exported to FTP server and free/busy slots for other employees are automatically read from FTP server.

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Use Gmail with different account than in Chrome [updated!]

adminGoogle2 Comments
4 min. reading

There’s a well know bug in Google Chrome that forces you to use the same Google Account (let’s name it account A) both in Google Chrome and in all Google apps that you have run in this browser. Logging-off this account in any of Google apps causes immediate log-off in Google Chrome as well and also causes your Google data synchronisation to stop.

This may be obvious and convenient in most cases, but fails completely in certain scenarios.

For example, I am using Google Chrome in my office and I am syncing all Google data to a separate account B (to have i.e. separate set of bookmarks, for my work only and to not mix them up with my private bookmarks), but when opening Gmail, I want to be logged in to account A (private one), because I’m checking my private e-mails this way (I am using Outlook for office e-mails).

There’s a workaround for this problem (“best answer” here). However, it turned out to be not working for me.

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Always display certain pages in mobile mode

adminGoogle0 Comment
2 min. reading

I pretty much like and enjoy Wikipedia in mobile version, even when browsing it on desktop PC. I would like to see it that way anytime. I asked about this on two Stack Exchange sites and got a great answers that this is possible both in Wikipedia itself and in browser.

The second solution maybe thus used for virtually any website, not just for Wikipedia.

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Git workflow for modern projects

adminVCS0 Comment
15 min. reading

After four years of a break for doing some management stuff and other non-development tasks I have decided to get back into coding (or at least to start thinking about getting back to it). First thing was to prepare development environment in general and refresh git flow knowledge in particular.

This article is a mixture of both my old article about Git+Gerrit workflows and Git workflow for Yii 2 contributors article. I assumed minimalist approach to make it possible to use this new workflow for virtually any Git-based project. Thus, I have purged most of, if not all of the things that are specific to Gerrit and Yii2.

Before continuing with this article, make sure that:

In addition, you may want to change the Git Bash’s prompt to something, you are more familiar with.

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Compare of some family-like or child-control solutions

adminApple, Google, Microsoft0 Comment
3 min. reading

Having kids in these digital days may become a challenge. Especially, if you wish your sibling to get their hands on their first device — either a PC, Mac or some mobile stuff. Challenging, because soon you’ll discover how much you don’t know and how better your kid is than you! :>

Limiting access time and reviewing what is she or he watching, playing or reading is a must and soon you face the problem of remote family control.

Hope that this article will help you in this adventure.

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