Category: Technology

Published on by Nayar

Buying Games from PlayStation Store in Mauritius

PlayStation is maybe not officially supported in Mauritius right now. e.g. most Mauritians choose the US or UK as their country when first setting up their PlayStation.

For the past 3 months I downloaded different demos and free-to-play games. Then PlayStation put a heavy discount on Motorcycle Club, Life is Strange and Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 year anniversary.  I decided to finally buy my first game. And lo! I couldn’t add my PayPal account

 

I even tried with my MCB Prepaid Card but I’d still get an error.

An error occured while adding your PayPal account

Fortunately there are numerous PlayStation groups on Facebook for Mauritians. I inquired about the problem there.

Finally a friend suggested me to buy PSN Cards. I quickly googled it and was going to buy a $10 card but then I remembered that my account is configured for the UK. I should get £10 cards instead.

Finally bought my PSN Card from offgamers.com.

It was very quick and they accepted PayPal as payment. I missed the deal of Motorcyle Club but managed to buy Tomb Raider in time.

 

Published on by Nayar

5 steps to prevent your Twitter account from being HACKED!

When our social media accounts get “hacked”, we wonder how is that even possible. Well, most of the cases, the hacks are not really hacks but it was your old self which gave legitimate access to some applications which might be sold to another party or the said developer turned evil.

Step 1: Click on More >> Settings and privacy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: Click on Apps and Sessions


You might be shocked by seeing how many apps might have access to read your feed and even private messages.

Step 3: Click on the apps you no longer want to have access

Step 4: Revoke Access

Step 5: Repeat process 3 & 4 until satisfaction.

Share this tips with your friends if helpful. Securing your friends account will also secure your privacy from other parties 😉

Published on by Nayar

Why you should Node-RED instead of Java-based Logstash

What is Logstash?

Logstash is an open source, server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously, transforms it, and then sends it to your favorite “stash.” – elastic

In other words: Logstash is a software which can read data from multiple sources such as log files, tcp/udp port, MySQL (via Plugin) and MQTT (via Plugin) and then transforms the data into a desired format such as JSON with some augmented attributes and then sends the data into mainly Elasticsearch.

As you can see, Logstash is not given a complicated task to perform. All we expect from it is to stay alive and perform that task. But the setting up process and maintenance is such a pain. This reminds me of why I always refuse to use Java-based softwares.

Problem #1: Not starting with systemd inside an LXC container

No matter how much I tried, I never got it to start automatically with systemd. I had to open a screen session and then launch the process manually.

Ofcourse, whenever Logstash would crash, it would not autostart. And if i were to reboot the VM, i’d have to launch the process manually.

Problem #2: Long boot time

If I were to kill Logstash and relaunch it, it takes around 100 – 120 seconds. It’s that heavy. You lose 2 minutes worth of data. I guess a C++ based program would have taken a maximum of 10 seconds to do a similar task. Avoid Java-based programs.

Problem #3: Plugins (MQTT and MySQL)

If you want to use some other data sources or filters than provided, you’d have to compile the plugins yourself. When compiling the logstash-filter-jdbc_streaming plugin, I had to downgrade the my Java version from 11 to 8 else Logstash wouldn’t start.

And also the MQTT plugin would stop working randomly and crash the whole Logstash process which is unacceptable!

Problem #4: RAM Usage

Logstash would let me compile plugins without minimum of 2GB of RAM. I have managed to run Elasticsearch on just 256 MB of RAM. Why is Logstash so hungry? I ain’t gonna feed it anymore. Enough is enough.

Hello Node-Red

Node-Red already has a built in MQTT node. I had to install the elastic plugin via the interface itself and voila! I have a working Logstash alternative. Stay tuned for more on Node-Red

 

Published on by Nayar

Game Review: Armoured Warfare on PlayStation 4

Price

Let’s start with the price: it’s a free-to-play PlayStation 4 game! Does it mean that the game is of bad quality? Far from it. And when people speak about free-to-play, the concept of pay-to-win (P2W) also usually comes up. I’ve only played PVE (Player vs Environment) so I can’t really confirm that. The opinion on Reddit dating 3 years back suggest that it is not a P2W.

Graphics

The graphics are great: not mediocre nor as cinematic as Tomb Raider or Uncharted. The terrain is very well textured however the grass looks like really fake sometimes. The water quality is very average. The explosions look good too.

Couch Friendliness

Image result for gaming stress

First Person Shooter (FPS) and Third Person Shooter (TPS) games usually require lots of concentration from the player giving more stress to the later. Armoured Warfare is not so demanding – at least in the PVE missions. You can very well play this game after a tiresome day at work and relax while destroying tanks on your couch. All you have to do is to spot a tank, zoom on it (L2), lock the targer (L1) and fire (R2)! Voila the tank is destroyed not matter how fast it’s moving.

Player vs Player (PVP)

I haven’t been able to play a PVP match yet because you need a minimum of tier 5 tank to be able to join. It took me quite some time before being able to get my first tier 4 tank (2 weeks, 1 hour per day). I guess it’s done on purpose so that the PVP matches contain experienced people only so that no one feels Over-Powered (OP) or Under-Powered (n00b)

Waiting Time

I’ll find a game within 1 or 2 minutes after joining the queue. The maximum I had wait was like 7 minutes on a particular day.

Mini-comparison: Armoured Warfare vs War Thunder

Gore

In War Thunder, it actually displays the actual fake humans in the tank which we have to kill in order to immobilize a tank. Armoured Warfare on the other hand is more like a Machine-to-Machine match which doesn’t shock sensible souls like me. LOL xD

Image result for war thunder crew

Airforce and Navy

Armoured Warfare is focused on Tanks only whereas War Thunder has missions including Airplanes and Warships. I found myself enjoying Tank matches in Armoured Warfare more since it has a target locking mechanism which makes it much easier to strike. Less stress and more gratification for me. I haven’t played the airplanes much.

Image result for war thunder replay

Conclusion

War Thunder is a very good free PlayStation game which which can keep you entertained for hours without any stress. Go ahead and download it.

Published on by Nayar

PlayStation 4 Country Settings for Mauritius

When you’re creating an account on PlayStation Network, you’ll have to choose your country of residence. Unfortunately Mauritius will not be in that list. You’ll have to choose another country. Which country did you choose?

A friend did inform me that I’ll have to make this decision but I wanted to try my newly bought PlayStation 4 ASAP that I didn’t really do a proper study of which country I should have chosen. I simply chose the UK because I thought It would have lower latency in games in multiplayer games. I thought it would determine which servers would be used. Europe is closer to Mauritius than to USA ping-wise.

Game pricing

Comparing the prices of games on the UK and US version of the PlayStation store, the prices seem really high on the UK site.

The Shadows of Tomb Raider costs £ 55 pounds on the UK site whereas on the US site, it’s $ 59.

In Mauritian rupees, it is Rs 2489 and Rs 2103 respectively at the time of writing. It’s a difference of nearly Rs 400 which is huge.

Better buy games on Physical Media (BluRay)

Since the prices games on BluRay are much less than online downloadable games, it’s better to buy BluRay games. After you get bored with the game, you can just sell it to someone else. Moreover, Mauritius Telecom is really squeezing more money from Mauritians buy making us pay extra Rs 200 to upgrade to a 20Mbps MyT connection with more data allowance. I want a real unlimited 10Mbps connection to begin with.