A Farewell to Arms in Puzzle Forge 2

nullgames0 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

nullGoogle2 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

nullgames0 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

nullgames0 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

nullgames0 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

nullhardware0 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

nullhardware0 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

nullgames0 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

nullQNAP13 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

nullmedia0 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

nullservers0 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

nulldev, 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

nullMicrosoft0 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!]

nullGoogle2 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

nullGoogle0 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

nullVCS0 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

nullApple, 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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ISO image locked in Windows 10

nullMicrosoft1 Comment
3 min. reading

After 25+ years of glorious development of Windows, witch-doctors at Microsoft village finally managed to discover that you can mount .iso image as fully-featured drive directly in system and you don’t need extra tools for this purpose:

The same group of maniacs smoked out too much weed and figured out that it will be so cool to not automatically unmount this image during system reset or shutdown.

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My private Windows 10 check-list [updated]

nullMicrosoft0 Comment
33 min. reading

Let’s say that I don’t like Windows 10. Mostly for the fact that a lot of things there are simply unusable or hard-to-use in the default configuration. And need to be changed in order to make them more usable. Since I have quite a few PCs to manage and have to go through this procedure on regular basis, I made my personal list of things you have to disable, uninstall, tweak up or change in Windows 10.

Look for the information in the corner — half an hour of a quick reading! This is really long and detailed article!

Update! Note that this article, written in April 2018 and targeting Windows 10 1511, is year later little bit outdated. If you’re using Windows 10 1903 then you may find certain things on these lists OK or otherwise not needing any change or tweak up.

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My private Microsoft Office check-list [updated]

nullMicrosoft0 Comment
10 min. reading

Whether it is Office 2010 or 2013 (haven’t tried newer and already forgot about earlier) and whether it is on Windows 7, 8.1 or 10, the set of my preferred configuration options and elements is usually the same. So I decided to write it down here to keep track of it whenever I have to fresh-install Microsoft Office anywhere.

This article covers only configuration of each Office component that I use. For other things that I usually do or change during fresh-install of Office, please, refer to this article.

Note that this is an updated version of this post that includes items in the check-list for:

  • Office 2013 under Windows 7,
  • Office 2013 under Windows 10 and
  • Office 365 under Windows 10.

All of these versions ships with sometimes completely different configuration sets (even for Office 2013 under two different versions of Windows) and thus you may find many options listed in this article missing or already set to desired values.

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Remove garbage from Windows 10

nullMicrosoft0 Comment
5 min. reading

Even after years since initial publication, being mature and stable operating system right now, Windows 10 comes to your computer literally bloated with unnecessary stuff. And you need to clean it up by yourself. Certain things can be uninstalled “the normal way” (i.e. using Add/Remove programs panel). Some other requires more sophisticated moves.

Update! Note that this article, written in August 2018 and targeting Windows 10 1511 is now (October 2019) a little bit outdated. The general difference is that many things listed here as not removable the usual way in 1511 may be easily uninstalled using Add/Remove programs panel in Windows 10 1903.

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Google Calendar: Quickly edit new event’s details

nullGoogle0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

By an accident I have discovered a handy feature (bug?) in new Google Calendar’s interface:

  1. Point your mouse pointer to desired date and time.
  2. Press left mouse button and then quickly right mouse button.

This will add a new event to your calendar and redirect you directly into editing that new event’s details (without need of moving your mouse toward “More options” button and clicking it).

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Shift+click on taskbar to quickly open program’s copy in Windows 7

nullMicrosoft0 Comment
< 1 min. reading

So far, to quickly open a new copy of already running program or task I was doing this:

Right-click on program’s item in Windows taskbar + select name of that program from the context menu. Turns out there’s an even faster way of doing so: Click on program’s item while holding Shift button pressed.

Works in Windows 7. May work in other versions (though not tested). You may safely ignore this post, if this is absolutely obvious for you (wasn’t that obvious for me).