I received a couple of gift packages this week. I will write about all the interesting things later, as there are a lot of them, but today I installed one of the 128 GB SSD drives I received on Tuesday and the Evolveo Encrypt Box I received yesterday.
Fortunately, I found a manual on how to set it up; without it, I would have been unable to get it working. However, it was quite easy with the manual.
The 'Encrypt' box offers encrypted storage. I just plugged in the drive and started the setup sequence on the box, setting up a PIN for the drive in the process. This PIN is then used as a key for the hardware AES 256-bit encryption. The great thing about this box is that everything is done directly on the device. After entering the correct PIN, it connects to the PC or other device like a normal HDD, so it basically works with everything. Even the file system can be whatever you want, as the encryption is done 'on the fly'.
It is a really interesting piece of hardware. Now I just need to find some really important and secret data ...
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When i saw this phone in the recently arived box, i was really looking forward to try it out.But it was because i thought it is another phone. The 5310 XpressMusic to be exact.
released a year after the XpressMusic but is inferior in every way. Although it shares the same display resolution, it has a lower colour depth and is smaller. It also has an older version of the operating system/firmware, lower memory and a worse camera.
It is not capable of holding more than ten games, so I have installed the most interesting pieces from the pack on the Nokia 515 that I previously introduced. However, it will probably not hold my attention for very long.
To be honest, this phone is a bit disappointing.
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I hadn't even finished going through the previous box of phones when I received a new one from another generous donor. There are lots of interesting, very old phones, but what caught my eye is this Nokia 515.
Although it is a classic key phone, it has a fairly nice display. It has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, which is impressive for such a small screen.
So, it can run most of these legendary old Java games, and they look even fancier here without losing any of their playability.
For example, I was quite surprised by Gravity Defied, which looks great on that 'big' screen. I have also installed some other classics. However, to be honest, not all of those classic old games have a variant for 'that big' resolution, so some of them are unplayable or only run on part of the screen. But a lot of them still work.
There is more than enough memory available for installing games. With around 200 MB of available space, it can hold hundreds of games.
So, goodbye to long winter evenings. I'm going to dig out some old Java games.
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Yesterday, i was facing another weird situation. I finally made a first iOS app working on the macbook. Or, to be honest, not really working, but compilable and runnable. So i decided to add it to my repository to keep it tracked and continue working.
So i installed my favourite Gittyup using brew, cloned the repository of HryProDva.cz and wanted just to add the project. Unfortunately just after the cloning, many deleted files appeared to commit. And i was not able to recognise, why that happened.
I have also tried everything to get back to my last commit, so i tried to revert the changes, stash them, or hard reset to the latest master commit again, but nothing worked. The same files have been deleted immediately after these actions again.
I spent about an hour trying to solve that issue. And then finally i found the reason. The apple filesystem is case-insensitive, and the files that have the name same text but different case are being messed and only one of these is being kept. Usualy the lowercase one. And this drives me mad. And i can not find any acceptable solution. One of solution is to wipe whole drive and reformat and ...
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I finally had time to add another phone to my collection. Today, it was the Galaxy J1. It's a pretty fancy phone with Android 4.4.4.
I had to recharge the battery a few times as it was quite tricky, but it seems I've brought it back to life again!
The phone and its hardware are relatively nice, too. It is really thin and fits the hand well. It has 512 MB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A7 processor, which is more than enough for its age. The display isn't particularly smooth, but it's still usable.
I also tried taking a few photos with its camera, and the results were relatively good. It performs surprisingly well in sunny conditions, but surprisingly poorly in any other conditions.
Other than that, it's not really a special phone in any way. I installed a few games again and am going to put it in my collection.
I was looking for old racing games with jet boats and discovered that there are quite a lot of very similar games from between 2013 and 2017. The concept is always the same, and the graphics are very similar. The only variations are the tracks and ...
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So, my frustration with Apple products is growing. I have had a quick look through the App Store, and it's crazy. I found some free games to try. I installed and ran them, but they all ended at exactly the same part. They announce that I have to pay a monthly fee of between 170 and 350 CZK to play this offline game! WTF? This is absolutely crazy! So I searched a bit more and found some more interesting prices. There are lots of different minigames and simple games, each costing almost a thousand crowns. Is this real? Is anyone really buying those?
Even more interestingly, you can find tens or hundreds of games that you know from Android, where they are completely free or cost between 20 and 50 CZK. Here, they cost about seven hundred crowns or more. I still can't believe this is worth it.
My idea is that they're just taking advantage of the fact that people spend ridiculous prices on Apple devices and thinking they can do the same with games and apps.
So, I'm still wondering: is this really the 'gem' that everyone wants and loves? I cannot stand this device after just two days of trying ...
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I feel really uncomfortable about that. But the coincidence made me buy an Apple notebook. Honestly, I have all the Apple products and I don't really want any more, but more and more users of my apps and websites are asking me to port my games to iOS.
I had been thinking about making that purchase for a long time. But this time, I received an offer that I couldn't resist. I bought a MacBook Pro for 3,500 CZK.
I got it with the original box, too, so unboxing it was quite nice. My first impression was that it is really thin. However, when I took it out of the box for the first time, I was unable to turn it on, and plugging in the USB-C charger made no difference. I took some USB measuring devices and tried many USB-C adapters until I finally managed to get it charging. After about half an hour, it finally booted up. I then went through all the initial settings and got it working. Some of the first issues arose during this process. I was unable to click on anything. After a few minutes, I finally realised that I ...
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I spent last week finishing one of the games I started making a long time ago. This game is something I have wanted to finish for a long time.
It's based on Bomberman, but it's a two-player PvP game where players try to survive for longer than their opponent. It took me around 15 hours to complete, and it looks quite good. I still need to improve some of the graphics and sprites, but it's already quite playable, so I released it and will continue to work on it. The mechanics are fully functional, so the only issues are the spritesheet of the characters and the power-ups.
I used the AI again to help me create the UI for the menus, as I have no talent for making graphics, and it looks much better as a result.
Feel free to try it here: Bombmaster and let me know if you like it.
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I found some great free resources for the UNO game. As I have already programmed the Czech card game "Prลกรญ", which shares many of the same principles as UNO, I have decided to add it to my range of products. A few people have already asked for it, but I always refused. Now, with the free assets available, I have finally forced myself to add it.
It took me a bit of work, but I got the 1v1 version working quite quickly. The only problem is that the 'reverse' cards don't make much sense here, but it is correct according to the UNO rules, so I am leaving it as it is for now. I may add support for more players in the future.
I also created an Android app which is currently under review on Google Play. As I am a novice when it comes to design, I used a neural network to suggest some layouts for me. I then tweaked them slightly and fixed all the problems that had been created, resulting in a fairly nice UI for the game.
As a protection against copyright issues, my card game is called DOS. Wink wink ;)
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Welcome back, younger self! Stay here for a while. Yes, this phone has brought back strong memories. To be honest, I didn't have this exact model; I had the K310i, which was basically the same phone, just without Bluetooth and with an even worse camera than this one. Overall, though, they're the same.
So, to give you an idea, the K310i was the first phone I had with a colour display. I really enjoyed it. Honestly, that era was possibly the best for mobile games, as there were lots of high-quality titles and no need to be online or pay to win. It was just pure gaming in your pocket, wherever you went.
The 'app store' was in every printed magazine. You could browse pages of games, wallpapers and polyphonic ringtones. When you wanted one, you had the exact phone number and text to send in an SMS message. After sending that, you received an MMS containing the items you had ordered. It was awesome!
Even better was sharing the games. Not many phones were capable of sending games straight away. As I recall, only some Siemens phones could "pack" the installed game and send it. Otherwise, you ...
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