Hi,
The 10,000 app has recieved an update.
I’ve made some improvements to the User Interface, so that buttons will be easier to tell apart from the rest of the UI. There has also been made some modifications to the computer player, so that it will try and score more than you, if you’ve reached 10,000.
I hope you all enjoy it. Go check it out 🙂
Best Regards
Lars Sonne
Hi,
From time to time I’ve made a few PHP pages, for various reasons. Some of these use a MySQL database for storing and retrieving data. When it comes to securing my data and restricting access to editing and deleting functions to me only, I’ve looked at a few simple solutions to the problem. One of the ways I’ve done this, and the one I prefer, is by letting WordPress handle the authentication of the user. The WordPress authentication can probably be bypassed, but since it’s not personal or top secret data, I’ve come to the conclusion that a basic protection is adequate for these data.
How to do it?
First off you need to use WordPress own login page and the users you want to let on to the custom page need to have access to log onto the WordPress site you’re using for authentication purposes.
In my PHP code I’ve included the following lines (the page is located in an adjacent directory to the WordPress installation):
require(‘../wp-blog-header.php’);
and
if(is_user_logged_in()) {
// Show the page, since the user is logged in
} else {
// The user is not logged in
}
The inclusion of the wp-blog-header.php file is required if you want to be able to use the method is_user_logged_in(). It is this method that check to see if the user is logged in (surprise, surprise!). Then all I need to do is put the magic inside the curly brackets between the if and the else. Easy, peasy 🙂
Things that I haven’t checked
There are some obvious things that I haven’t checked, like if it’s possible to circumvent the authentication and if so how easy it is. I also haven’t looked into the possibility of making a special right for the page, but just given access to any user that can log into the WordPress site that I piggyback my authentication off.
The solution is simple, I know, but it covers the bare minimum I needed for the pages I’ve created. Oh, and any updates to the login procedure is not my headache, since they get handled with the WordPress updates. Which is probably better than what I could piece together on my own anyways 😉
Cheers!
Lars
Hi all,
I’ve released a new version of the 10,000 – The Dice Game app on Google Play. This release features a few things.
The option to play against the computer is something that has been on my mind for quite some time and I’m happy to say that the result is now here. The AI proved to be a bit more challenging to implement than I first thought, but from my time in the computer industry I was hardly surprised. Things are in my opinion never straight forward 😉 Nevertheless I’m quite pleased with the result.
I’ve aimed for the computer to be beatable but not a walkover, relying on a set of simple rules to govern its behaviour. I also tried to make it animated so you can follow the steps it takes when playing and who knows, maybe you’ll even get a new trick or two. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Happy rolling 🙂
I like computer games. I like a lot of games. So much that it’s becoming almost like an addiction. Not the one that makes me lie to people and forces me to make morally despicable choices just to satisfy the Beast, but the kind that stops me from being a better version of myself.
Tell me you don’t recognize the situation; I got some stuff I should do, doesn’t matter if it’s important or just a little thing. I want to do it, and doing it would give me a sense of achievement. If I did it I wouldn’t have it hanging over my head. But somehow I end up putting it off and not having it done by the time I end up going to bed, which these days end up being much later than it should be. Especially considering I got two small kids to take care of.
Why is this? Games. Lots and lots of games. It’s so easy when I settle in front of the computer, which is around 8 PM, when the kids are sleeping. I feel my energy ebbing out, knowing I could be doing things with my time now, that I can’t do during the day, if only I could muster the willpower … And then it’s just sitting there. That little icon that promises a few minutes of fun. It starts off so innocent and BAM, the evening has passed. The wife and I have an understanding. She likes watching TV, I like my computer games. And we go to bed at the same time. Well used to anyways.
So why is this? Because I’m soft. Because I’ve put myself in a vicious loop where I don’t get enough sleep since I’m up playing games, and I play games since I’m too tired to do anything else. But I know I’m able to change this. I just need to take the first step… And this is it. So tomorrow evening I’ll refrain from clicking that little time consuming icon. If I can’t muster the energy to get the important things done first, then just shut the computer down and go to bed, or read a book, or spend time with my significant other.
So tomorrow I’ll let the Beast sleep.
And who knows, I may even get something done …
Hi,
About a month ago I released a new version of the 10,000 app. It contained a few things but nothing ground breaking. Nonetheless I had some assumptions about how fast users would upgrade their app, more precisely I expected that 80 to 90 percent would be running the latest version within 30 days of launch.
At the time of writing a little over a month has passed and I have some numbers to reflect on. With a total of about 10,000 active device installs (totally coincidental :)) I think there’s some basis for statistics, which I find interesting.
EDIT: I made a miscalculation the first time I ran through the numbers. I have adjusted this and some of my conclusions has been re examined and adjusted accordingly.
The numbers
After 1 day: 15.5 % had upgraded
After 2 days: 28.9 %
After 3 days: 33.7 %
After 4 days: 36.4 %
After 5 days: 38.9 %
After 6 days: 40.0 %
After 1 week: 42.1 %
After 2 weeks: 48.4 %
After 3 weeks: 52.6 %
After 4 weeks: 55.9 %
After 1 month: 56.8 %
What I find interesting is two things.
Conclusions
I’ll be wary of what to conclude based on this, but for future reference I’ll just note that getting a new version out to all users/devices is going to take a lot longer than I first anticipated. If only 3.3 % upgrades every week from now, which is the difference between week 3 and 4, it’ll take more than 4 months total, for all devices to get upgraded.
Just something to think about 😉