How to avoid your Heroku Apps from idling

One of the main problem on hosting your web applications in Heroku is "idling". Idling is when your web dynos will go down after not having a single visit or connection in 1 hour span.

The solution for this is very easy, just ping your app. But what is the effective or cheapest way of doing it?

As of now, I do have at least 5 web apps hosted in Heroku and at first I am having a hard time on keeping my apps from idling. Here's how I ping my apps simultaneously:

1. Sign up to SetCronJob.com
2. Create a php file with this code inside:
• <?php
  file_get_contents('your_website_here');
  file_get_contents('your_website_here');
  file_get_contents('your_website_here');
  file_get_contents('your_website_here');
  ....
  and so on 
3. Back to SetCronJob, create a job with 30 minutes pattern
4. Paste your app url along with the php file you created : sampleapp.herokuapp.com/cron.php
5. Hit save

That's it!!

Unfortunate for me, I found a very late solution to my problem. You can also use New Relic's monitoring capability to ping your website.  Using SetCronJob only allows you to ping your website for every 30 minutes because of account limitation but here in New Relic it seems every minute it pings your apps. 

Same process but instead of using SetCronJob you can paste your cron url in New Relic's monitoring page.

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MyNBA2k14 MyTeam Mobile Hack - Always win against any card!

I've been playing MyNBA2k14 on my old iPhone3gs for a while. I actually enjoy the game even though sometimes it feel tiring because of repetitive design of this game.

The game is simple, you build 5 cards of players and beat the quick game to earn cards or booster cards. If your pretty new then for sure you will have a hard time building better cards. 

Since I can't do anything in my iPhone3gs , I used my iPad 3 to hack MyNBA2k14 MyTeam mobile and it actually works. Now I can win any game against any players but this requires a jailbroken devices.

Here is the video for proof:

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The Expert - A funny way of doing an elaboration meeting

Have you attended an elaboration meeting? One of my colleague emailed this video and after watching it, I found myself in one of the character in this short film. The Expert. 

I am not an expert but this video taught me what is the difference of a software developer compared to your bosses. And why, you shouldn't be defending what you think is better or sometimes right because you will never win arguments against them.

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Beating MyTeam Mobile on Quick Games

MyNBA2k14 MyTeam Mobile Line up

* 5 common (Pro - combined cards)
* Coach common (Support)
* Double Team rare (Support)

Building Tips: 

You don't need to have a high card on quick game, MyNBA2k14 adapts or give you opponents based on your card levels. If you have common cards then you are good to go , the game will provide a beatable opponent. 

You can do it all Common Cards and make it pro.

Don't upgrade your pro cards , just make it pro cards like combine 2 cards which has max level (level 10 on common cards) it will produce a higher stats.

Battle Tip:

* 1st pick - Always pick the weakest card if the round requires you 2 attributes - most of the time CPU choose high cards but sometimes weak cards but if only one attribute pick the highest stat.
* 2nd pick - has a high chance that CPU will choose lesser cards so pick your best one depends on the requirements
* 3rd pick - Choose high cards
* 4th pick - Choose high cards or to seal the win select one of the support cards , I chose coach (+10 on you) and Double team (-20 on opponent for Rare ) because they give higher rewards and penalties for you and your team.
* Or keep your support card until overtime period.
* Overtime period - most of the time i win in overtime period with the help of the support card

Download link for IOS device:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mynba2k14/id719219018?mt=8&uo=4&at=11lu9j

Download using Amazon for Android:

http://amzn.to/1jQuG2r

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Fixing Network Error in MyNBA2k14 MyTeam Mobile

I have been playing MyNBA2k14 Myteam mobile game for months now , I once get banned for unknown reason but this post is regarding the network error messages that appear frequently on MyNBA2k14.

In order to fix this message, you just use one of the free Open DNS like Google (8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS ip addresses. On my end, it entirely fixed my problem after applying one of this DNSes. 

By the way if your looking for free VC you can checkout this Facebook page that post NBA2k14 VC locker codes.

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Flappy Bird : What is the real score?

Flappy Bird is a very simple game and it is very frustrating to play. If you haven't heard of this game you can get this via world wide web since the game author remove its high earning app from Itunes and Playstore. Weird ha?

Furthermore, Flappy Bird became viral because of known personalities in my country tweeting about their Flappy Bird score. Of course, their followers want to try that game too and the rest is history. It is now became a bragging rights if you score more than 100 points which is really hard to achieve.

Moreover, the game of Flappy Bird not only became popular but also a money making application. It was said that this game earns $50,000 per day for advertisement only. Yet, the author remove its app because of so-called criticism from other people which it is very hard to believe.

There are rumors that Nintendo is the one who requested that this game should be remove in Itunes and Playstore because of the same graphics used in Super Mario game. The only similarity I found is the green pipe but what the hell with that. It is only a green pipe! Nintendo shouldn't be greedy because some indie developer made it big time because of that green pipe which is not true, Flappy Bird became this big because it is hard and frustrating to play which other people find it worthy to share their score thru social media.

Now there are numerous clone of Flappy Bird uploaded every day in Itunes and Playstore, you shouldn't miss Flappy Bird at all.

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Laravel Tutorial Part 1 - A very simple introduction

Enough with Javascript
for a bit, I might be losing some touch in PHP so I'm going Laravel this time around.

How I'm using Laravel

Currently I'm using Laravel framework on building a RESTFul API after jumping from many different frameworks such as Slim Framework and Frapi. And this might affect my writing of this article regarding Laravel since I may not include some templating topics and other frontend stuff that Laravel can do.

What is Laravel ?

Laravel is like any other PHP frameworks such as CakePHP, CodeIgniter and Zend Framework. Of course it has it's own strengths and weaknesses but I'm thinking not to add that since it's the developers duty to find out what is lacking for him/her.

Laravel is Composer Ready!

I asked one of my colleague who is claiming that he is a "PHP master" and he can code PHP even if he is blind-folded. And when I asked him if he is using Composer and Packagist he says he doesn't know about those (sad face). Well anyway, I'm not saying all PHP developer should know about Composer but it is good knowing that you doing it in your project and Laravel is very Composer ready.

Imagine you can build Laravel application within seconds without copying and pasting additional plugins and getting it from all over the web. You can do it by creating a simple configuration file in JSON format and include your code dependencies and required plugins, then Composer can collate and build an app for you.

If your familiar with Yeoman for Javascript application , Composer is for PHP application.

Routing and RESTFul Controller

Actually this is one my favorite feature of Laravel, its RESTFul Controller. Since I'm developing an API, Laravel's approach of Controller really gave ease of doing some work and understanding on how this great framework works. 

If you notice I didn't mention routing well this two comes along with each other if you want a controller you need a routing code to activate or access it.

It really depends on you on how to use this feature of Laravel for me I use those HTTP verbs for API operation like if GET then get data and POST if inserting. You can set a get Controller and just show an html or create a POST controller which handles form submits.

Next Part

I will be tackling some information for authentication for controller and database migration topics.

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