Broken Valve with Steam Support

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I am not a fan of services that do not offer the ability to speak to an actual human when you have an issue while using their platform. Instagram is one such service. I don’t have an Instagram account, and I never will, but my sister has, and her account got hacked a year or so ago.

Because I’m the tech savvy one in the family, she naturally approached me to ask if I would help to recover her Instagram account. I agreed to do so because in my mind I thought it would be a straight forward process, seeing that Instagram has over a billion monthly active users.

The other deciding factor was the fact that the hacker was actually harassing her on WhatsApp (another awful service). So off I went to the Instagram support site to recover my sister’s account, only to find a serious lack of support when I got there.

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Working with Buttons in Android Studio

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While learning to build apps in Android Studio, I would always run into issues when trying to add custom styling to the Button elements.

This is because of the way Android Studio’s new-project wizard works, and the way it sets up the project’s theme.xml file. When you create a new project, it is based on the Theme.MaterialComponents.DayNight.DarkActionBar Android library (see below for more details).

A side effect of this is that any Button elements in a layout will get turned into a MaterialButton widget, and not a regular Button widget. MaterialButton will ignore the android:background tag.

To fix this, we have four choices:

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Review: The Last of Us II

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Warning: This review contains major plot spoilers. Read at your own risk!

On June 19th, 2020, Naughty Dog finally released The Last of Us II on the PlayStation 4 (after some initial delay due to the CovID-19 pandemic). The irony considering the basis of the story for the game franchise.

I first played the original instalment of the series back in 2013, when it was first released on the PlayStation 3.

After completing The Last of Us, I went on to play the DLC, The Last of Us : Left Behind, which explains how Ellie became infected, and how she nursed Joel back to health after his fall at the University.

Eight years later, in 2021, I replayed both The Last of Us and Left Behind Remastered Edition on the PlayStation 4. I wanted to do this prior to playing The Last of Us II, as I wanted to refresh my memory with both the story and the mechanics of the game.

I can honestly say that after eight years, the game has not aged one bit. It still looks and plays great. A true masterpiece. The Last of Us is, without a doubt, one of my favourite all-time games.

After completing the first instalment, and the DLC (again), I jumped straight into playing The Last of Us II. The story was fresh in my mind, and I was familiar with the game mechanics and weapons system.

I’d waited a long time for this sequel, and I was ready for some more post-apocalyptic adventures with Joel and Ellie.

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Egg Timer For Android

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It’s official … I am now an Android developer. I have released my very first app in the Google Play Store. A free egg timer.

For a while now, I have been learning to build applications for both Android and Apple iOS devices. I’m currently still working through my online courses, but I wanted to build a simple app for two reasons.

Firstly, how do I put an app in the Google Play Store (what is the process I have to go through)? And secondly, how do I add adverts to my apps?

I used this simple egg timer as a test app to figure out how to do both these things.

I know this app isn’t much to look at, but if you’re looking for a simple, free application to help you make your eggs in a morning, this might just be the app that you are looking for.

Building My First Windows PC

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After happily being a Mac guy for the last ten years, I have decided to have a go at building my own Windows PC.

Why, I hear you ask? Well, what I really wanted was a Mac that I could customize. A Mac where I could not only upgrade the RAM, but I could also swap out the graphics card, or maybe even upgrade the CPU. I was hoping Apple would release a new Mac Pro for the masses which would allow me to do all the above, but sadly, this wasn’t to be.

Apple did release a new Mac Pro in December 2019, but the price of the base model is around £5499 and the high-end model, with “all the whistles and bells”, will set you back an eye watering £53,448. Way out of my price range. Seriously though, who is paying £53,000 for a Mac Pro? Who did Apple even build this machine for?

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