Author: Padraig Fahy

  • WWE Clash at the Castle Predictions

    WWE Clash at the Castle Predictions

    Later today, from the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales will be the first WWE PPV Premium Live Event held in the UK in 30 years, with the last being WWE Summerslam 1992

    A lot of hype is going into this event as this is the first major Premium Live Event that has been fully booked by Triple H and not Vince McMahon. Something that has never happened since Wrestlemania 1 back in 1985.

    There is a huge emphasis on the hometown hero, Scotland’s Drew McIntyre as he vows to dethrone the head of the table, the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, two years after winning the Universal Title at WWE Payback 2020.

    Plus, Ireland’s own, Sheamus takes on the ring general, GUNTHER for his Intercontinental Championship.

    Here are my predictions for the event:

    Non-Title Matches

    • Edge & Rey Mysterio vs The Judgement Day

    A rivalry that we didn’t make sense when it started has now enveloped into this massive grudge match as the former (supposed) leader of the The Judgement Day, Edge is to face Finn Balor and Damian Priest. The former tag champs in Edge and Ray know how they work together and will do nothing but put on a good show for everyone involved. Hopefully Rhea and Dominik don’t cross paths during the match or Dom might pay the price.

    While I don’t see who could come out as a clear winner, but the popularity of The Judgement Day needs to be increased, so let’s hope that they win today. Judgement Day to win.

    • Matt Riddle vs Seth Rollins

    2 workhorses in the WWE right now as their future plans at the time were put up in smoke whenever Riddle’s tag team partner Randy Orton became injured and Seth’s rival from Wrestlemania, Cody Rhodes also became injured.

    The two were supposed to fight at Summerslam, but Riddle was not medically cleared to compete.

    The two were put together and it has paid off quite well, with this week on RAW, this rivalry became personal and it devolved into a massive fight.

    This should be a barn burner. Matt Riddle to win.

    • Bianca Belair, Alexa Bliss & Asuka vs Bayley, Dakota Kai, Iyo Sky

    There isn’t much to discuss about these 6 women here, just a shame that Bianca is not defending her RAW Women’s Championship title here tonight, but with the returning Bayley, the called up Iyo and the returning Dakota, it would make logical sense that they win.

    There is no stakes for Asuka, Alexa and Bianca to lose but hopefully Bianca is not taking the pin as that could make her weak. Iyo, Dakota and Bayley to win!

    Title Matches

    • Liv Morgan (C) vs Shayna Baszler for the SmackDown Women’s Championship

    This match came about after Shayna won a gauntlet match to face Liv after Liv’s Summerslam opponent, Ronda Rousey was suspended for breaking a referee’s arm.

    There hasn’t been much of a build for this match but this is going to be Liv’s biggest match to date, let’s hope she can retain. Liv to win and retain!

    • GUNTHER (C) vs Sheamus for the Intercontinental Championship

    Oh this is gonna be good, the Austrian with the biggest slaps together again Ireland’s own Sheamus who is looking to become a Grand Slam champion as the IC title is the only title that he has not won in his career.

    Sheamus to win and become champion!

    • Roman Reigns (C) vs Drew McIntyre for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship

    This is the main event and a big match feel, Drew won the Royal Rumble in 2020 and won the WWE Championship in front of no crowd at Wrestlemania 36 but now 2 years later, he is hoping to do it again in front of the UK crowd. Roman won the Universal Championship at Payback 2020 and the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania 38 beating Brock Lesnar.

    If Roman beats Drew, it would upset a lot of people as there isn’t many other people who can beat him for the title. We’ll see what happens, but I would like Drew to walk away with the title. Drew McIntyre to win.

  • Swap from SQLite to MySQL 8 for Ghost

    Swap from SQLite to MySQL 8 for Ghost

    Whenever Ghost released 5.0 back in May, they made a change so that Ghost no longer supports SQLite3 or MySQL 5.

    I didn’t mind running SQLite until the recent 5.9 changes on the Docker image for Ghost changed all of that. So now, if you try to run Ghost via SQLite3 on your Docker container, it will stop working.

    Obviously, if you still want your site to run, you would either need to continue to use a older version of Ghost (Eg. Anything <5.9) OR change to MySQL 8.

    Unfortunely, if you are running a modern day control panel like Plesk or cPanel, you may not be able to use MySQL 8 as it may have only been distrbuted with MariaDB. MariaDB is not supported on Ghost either. Solely Oracle’s MySQL 8.

    So if you already have MariaDB installed and you do not want to go through the hassle of going through the task of switching database engines and potentially causing issues for non-Ghost sites, then carry out the following:

    ⚠️

    You are going to be destroying your current site.

    Back it up.

    To back it up, you will want to go to https://<yoursite>/ghost/#/settings/labs and click on the ‘Export’ button to export the CSV.

    This will not export images. To do that, go to your content folder via SSH. You would have set this when you installed Plesk if you followed my guide!

    Copy this out to a folder in your home directory /home/<username>/ghost_backup

    If you have memberships, this may break some or all functions with it. I don’t have any paid members to know whether this does or not.

    🚨

    I am not an expert in Docker, npm, node.js or related technologies. What I am documenting here is what worked for me. YMMV

    This will involve creating 2 Docker containers:

    • A new Ghost docker container
    • MySQL 8 Docker container.

    We’ll quicky go through the MySQL 8 Docker set up.

    • Volume Mapping should set to /var/lib/mysql and the 2nd box should be set to /var/docker/<container_name>/mysql

      • You can put this anywhere that you like, but I advise keeping it within the /var/ directory for ease of access.

    • Uncheck the ‘Automatic Port mapping’ and you will be presented with 2 ports.

      • Port 3306 would already be used by MariaDB so change this to another port. I chose 3307.
      • Port 33060 would also be used by MariaDB so change this to 33061

    Where it has Environment Variables, add the following:

    • MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD and in the 2nd box, add in your root password. This is caps sensitive, so ensure this is strong.

    🚨

    Yes, I know using root as the username is bad practice. If I knew how to improve this, I would!

    Now with the database server created, we will need to create the database, for this, you will need to drop into the shell for this container.

    In SSH, connect to your server and ensure that you are on root user.

    • Type docker exec -it <mysql_docker_container> /bin/bash/ eg: docker exec -it mysqleight_docker /bin/bash and press enter.
    • Type mysql -p and enter in your MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD that you set earlier. Now you should see mysql >
    • Type CREATE DATABASE db_name; (Replace db_name with the new name of your database)
    • Type exit; to drop out of the MySQL shell and then Ctrl/Cmd+D to drop out of the docker container.

    Now to set up Ghost.

    Create a Ghost container as per my guide here:

    How to install Ghost 5 on Plesk Obsidian

    Sidenote: The above link should be a bookmark and look fancy and shit, but because I am using a .blog TLD, it breaks! Mental! I have already reported it to the Ghost devs but they are not looking at it. 🙄

    When you are setting the “Environment Variables”, you will need to make the following additions:

    ⚠️

    Ensure there are 2 underscores for spaces here!

    • database__client – mysql
    • database__connection__host – 123.123.123.123 (Your Server IP address)
    • database__connection__user – root
    • database__connection__password – **************
    • database__connection__database – db_name
    • database__connection__port – 3007

    Press “OK” and this will create a blank new Ghost site.

    Create your site as per normal, then go to https://<site>/ghost/#/settings/labs to import your content.

    Then copy your content folder back to /var/ghost/my_new_awesome_ghost_container/content – Restart the Ghost container and most (if not all), your posts, content, themes and everything should be back.

    You can update the Ghost container as you would have before.

  • Vince McMahon retiring from WWE begins a new era of Professional Wrestling

    Vince McMahon retiring from WWE begins a new era of Professional Wrestling

    Last Friday evening, Chairman and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced that he is to retire.

    At first, you would think that his Twitter account was compromised, as he had only reassured talent (WWE Superstars) a mere month ago at the Money in the Bank PPV that he wasn’t going anywhere.

    A follow-up announcement was published on WWE Corporate website detailing more about this. https://corporate.wwe.com/news/company-news/2022/07-22-2022a

    Vince McMahon & Shinsuke Nakamura

    This includes that he is to retire but still be a shareholder (He is the majority shareholder of the company) and his replacements is his daughter, Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan as “Co-CEO’s”.

    Earlier on Friday, it was announced that Paul “Triple H” Levesque had resumed his position as Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, a position that he held from the beginning of NXT (The wrestling promotion, not the gameshow) in 2013 until 2020 when he stepped back due to health concerns.

    Vince’s retirement comes soon after the Wall Street Journal published 2 articles about incidents of sexual misconduct, going back to at least, the mid-2000s with ‘hush’ payments of at least $12 million being made to various people, in and out of the ring.

    The first report from the Wall Street Journal, detailed about how a paralegal was hired by WWE who was paid $3 million dollar in a ‘hush’ payment from Vince, but while employed, her wages were increased from $100,000 to $200,000 during this relationship.

    To date, several law firms have begun investigating these claims of sexual misconducts. As of writing, there hasn’t been any update to any of these investigations.

    With Vince leaving the most prominent position in WWE since he bought then-named WWWF from his father back in 1982, Vince leaves behind a legacy that seen him sent Professional Wrestling into mainstream entertainment domination.

    Without Vince, we would never have had Wrestlemania, the infamous Attitude Era, John Cena, The Rock, Batista, The Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks, plus thousands of other professional wrestlers, managers, commentators, backstage interviewers.

    We wouldn’t have had the Monday Night Wars between WWF and WCW back in the 90’s. We wouldn’t have had NXT. We wouldn’t have had competition in the form of TNA (Now, IMPACT Wrestling), Combat Zone Wrestling, Game Changer Wrestling, Ring of Honor, All Elite Wrestling and multiple various different promotions that has come and gone. Indie promotions that has produced home-grown talent who have gone onto WWE to become massive households names.

    Without Vince, professional wrestling would still more than likely be a circus attraction.

    Now with Vince leaving the company, we are entering a new era of Professional Wrestling.

    Fans are itching to see how well Stephenie and Nick can produce new and exiting superstars. The thoughts of the proverbial ‘Forbidden Door’ being swung open, just like how AEW has already opened its door with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) with their AEW x NJPW: Forbidden Door PPV back in June.

    Some talent that are in other promotions (mainly AEW) would see this as a great opportunity to go back to a place that they worked for previously. Perhaps they were frustrated by Vince personally or the way that WWE was being run. The likes of CM Punk comes to mind. Tag teams like FTR could see themselves back in the company to be on the world stage once more.

    That may not happen today, nor tomorrow thought as they are not expected to make big changes just yet.

    Over the next 3 – 5 years, we will see a change in Professional Wrestling. New management, new talent, new opportunities. Younger minds making these sweeping changes that would reintroduce healthy competition between all promotions to make professional wrestling bigger and better.

    In some cases, WWE as a company was/is being held back by Vince but maybe that changes. Or has the ‘powerfulness’ of Vince over the years, become second nature for the likes of Stephanie, Nick and the rest of WWE management.

    I am personally excited for a new change. Not just lipstick on a turd and blaming Baron Corbin for poor ratings.

    Mayhaps we get this scene again… This team that they only mean it.

  • [The JukeBox] #78 – Coco Star – Toca Miracle

    [The JukeBox] #78 – Coco Star – Toca Miracle

    I could have sworn that I have already covered Fragma’s – Toca’s Miracle from 2001 but it looks like I didn’t.

    While searching, I noticed that there has been a re-release of the song at the start of July 2022 by Coco Star who created the lyrics back in 1996 for ‘I need a miracle’.

    The song was released as a track on Fragma’s album Toca in 2001 with the instrumental Toca Me also included on the album.,

    The song was released on the Spinnin’ Records label.

    Lyrics:

    If you’re gonna save the day
    And you’re hearin’ what I say
    I feel your touch
    Your kiss, it’s not enough
    And if you believe in me
    Don’t think my love’s not for real
    I won’t take nothin’ less then a deeper love

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

    Tell me that you understand
    And you’ll take me as I am
    You’ll always be the one to give me everything
    Just when I thought no one cared
    You’re the answer to my prayer
    You lift my spirits high
    Come on and rescue me

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to feel from you
    Let me tell you, you know
    Aah, I need a miracle
    I need a miracle
    It’s more than physical
    What I need to get me through

  • Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Follow-up – Choosing my next music streaming service

    Back in January, I looked at each of Spotify’s competitors to see what could potentially become the next streaming service that I was going to subscribe to.

    For a couple of months, I had been using Deezer almost exclusively but now I seem to be back on Spotify with absolutely no reason for me to use it over the other.

    The track selection has been good, the UI is neat but how and never, I always feel drawn back to Spotify. The high fidelity audio option is a really nice touch and worth it on it’s own.

    Discoverability is somewhat lacking. Deezer seems to have a look at it’s close circle of artists that you listen to and gives a small list of artists outside before roping you back to square one.

    Most of the artists that I would be listening to are from Japan and they would be putting their music on Spotify over Deezer and any promotions either point them to Spotify, YouTube or LINE (LINE is only available within Japan)

    I seem to be at a crossroads when it comes to finding city pop / future funk music. So my attention turned to Bandcamp and this opened a massive can of worms.

    Bandcamp doesn’t have an official desktop client. There is a 3rd party one that is literally just the website in PWA with keyboard shortcuts. The music discoverability appears to be better on the one hand and the fact that I can subscribe to a LABEL rather than just the artist is very nice.

    Bandcamp’s search is good too as it’s able to show new music in a particular genre or by a label.

    I wasn’t sure if this was the best way to ‘support’ or ‘listen’ to an artist or whether something like Spotify/SoundCloud/YouTube was the way to go:

    One thing I do like about Bandcamp is the ability to support artists by buying their album or a set price or you can contribute more.

    Some artists/labels have the ability to purchase full discographies which you can download and listen to offline is a really nice touch.

    (Source: https://music.businesscasual.biz/ – I have already purchased this for $5 but it’s nice that their entire collection can be bought for just $1! )

    Overall, I have decided to go back to Spotify for most of my listening but from time-to-time, Bandcamp.

    I expect big things to come from Bandcamp in the future as the platform was acquired back in March by Epic Games.

  • Microtransactions, Loot boxes should be curbed by the government.

    Microtransactions, Loot boxes should be curbed by the government.

    This week, Blizzard Activision released a brand new mobile-first ARPG in their infamous Diablo series titled: Diablo Immortal and it already had it criticisms right out of the gate.

    When the game was announced at BlizzCon 2018, it was met with boos as most of the attendees of BlizzCon were players of World Of Warcraft, Diablo III, Heartstone, StarCraft and were hoping for the announcement of Diablo IV.

    When met with the boos, the Principal Game Designer, Wyatt Cheng questioned the audience with a simple question “Do you guys not have phones?”

    It wasn’t a question as to whether players had a phone but more-so, whether they would play a video game with such a highly renowned franchise like Diablo on a mobile device. The first ‘red flag’ of this was the developer of the game, Netease, which didn’t improve the confidence in consumers.

    As a response to this, Blizzard announced Diablo IV, the next proper game in the franchise at their BlizzCon 2019 event.

    Netease are a Chinese game developer which sparked a lot of worry for people as Netease would have to (by law) hand over information about the users that play Diablo Immortal to the Chinese Government. That is never good.

    Fast forward to June 1st and the game releases on Mobile and now people can get the first look at the game.

    In the time that I have spent with the game, I have found it to be enjoyable and have spent about 3 – 4 hours on it.

    While some of the paid content has been pushed in my face. Early beta users and even eagle eyed users of the released full game have got their excel sheets out and figured out that if you want the BEST gear and loot in the game to be the best in PlayerVsPlayer content, then you would need to spend at the very least $110,000!

    In a video by Northern Irish YouTuber Bellular, if you were to not give Blizzard/Netease any money and you wanted to get everything for free, you would need to play the game for up to and possibly even more than a decade!

    Most of the games content including gear and literal progression in the game is bound by loot boxes. This has already become a major problem with other games such as EA Sport’s FIFA and Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch.

    With the likes of Overwatch, they do allow you to unlock items which is locked behind loot boxes quite easily. If you open other loot boxes and you get duplicates, it is converted into coins which can be used against locked content. You cannot purchase the coins from Blizzard. Only the loot boxes themselves. You get a free loot box, every time you level up or during a seasonal event.

    Games that do contain loot boxes are banned in Belgium and the Netherlands.

    Daniel Hurley BL, a Parliamentary Researcher in Law for Oireachtas Library & Research Service wrote a ‘Spotlight’ in February of 2020 detailing what could be done to regulate loot boxes and micro-transactions in Ireland with most important question being “Whether loot boxes are a form of gambling”

    ➡️

    Daniel’s Spotlight can be read in full here.

    In November of 2020, Cian O’Callaghan TD (SD – Dublin North Bay) asked the Minister of Justice, Helen McEntee the following:

    (for her) views on the prevalence of loot box gambling mechanics implemented in video gaming; her plans to implement protections for children against these practices; and if she will make a statement on the matter.

    The minister responded with the following:

    There is no current legislation with regard to online video gaming engaged in by individuals. However, I am aware that there has been some attention on issues arising in the context of video gaming. In particular, whether in-game purchases or micro-transactions, described as “loot boxes”, “skins” etc., designed to improve the players’ chances of success in inter-active online games, might encourage gambling like behaviour.

    The issue is whether such micro-transactions constitute gambling or are a form of e-commerce.  It is not clear that these offers fall within the current Irish legal definition of gambling or that purchases are essentially an e-commerce activity.

    Different approaches have been adopted to the issue of whether and how “loot boxes” might be defined and regulated in the context of gambling activities in Europe, with no definitive outcomes. This matter is one which my Department and ultimately the new Gambling Regulator will keep under review.

    This is a position, which is shared by other EU Member States. Ireland supported the 2018 Declaration by the Gaming Regulators European Forum that video gaming products should be licensed and regulated appropriately, if they can be shown to fall into the category of gambling. In preparing the declaration, member states were aware of reports that third party actors, not authorised by the video game developer or under their control, may seek to commercialise certain elements of video gaming in a manner akin to gambling.

    With regard to protection of children and age limits for video games, the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system was established in 2003 to help European parents make informed decisions on buying computer games. It replaced a number of national age rating systems with a single system now used throughout most of Europe, in more than 35 countries including Ireland. However, ‘gambling’, for the purposes of PEGI video game rating, is based on whether there are depictions of gambling in the game that can be found in real life, e.g. casino type games. It is not clear that PEGI (which is a voluntary code of the industry, rather than state mandated) could or would put such gambling related warnings on games containing Loot Boxes as these are discretionary purchases by the player. I encourage parents to ensure that their children only engage in appropriate gaming and are not making purchases unknown to them.

    While it may seem like, this is at the very early stage, it is good to see that they are ‘aware’ of it and hopefully the new Gambling Regulator will be able to curb the aggressiveness of Loot boxes and microtransactions in video games, especially games being developed in Asian countries.

    Other than a ban, developers/publishers should be able to try to do the following which would would be considered fair for the public.

    • Very low cost for purchasable items from the cash shop.
    • Allow only one or two currencies in the game. (Diablo: Immortal has 6!!!)
    • The ability to purchase items from the cash stop via in-game methods (without having to play for decades)
    • Do not have ANYTHING purchasable from the store which can affect gear level. Purely cosmetic items. (Items like a “Double XP boost for 1 hour” should still be allowed, but limited to ‘X’ amount per character or account.)

    There needs to be a justification to have these egregious loot box systems because as most games are targeted at the young demographic (8 – 13 yo), it’s going to onset an early form of gambling and could affect them in the future.

    Plus, parents should be made well aware by game developers (or even by staff in video game stores) contain paid content such as loot boxes. Older parents, grandparents and more should be made aware of the dangers of loot boxes.

    Sources: