Category Archives: Programming

Modifying the JavaScript String Prototype

  By GeekLad | February 21, 2012 - 7:54 pm | Programming
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When manipulating strings in JavaScript, it is often necessary to perform certain functions to escape characters, decode them, and perform other string manipulations. JavaScript makes it easy to modify the String prototype, making it possible to create new methods on String types. As of late, I’ve preferred this method (pun intended) over creating custom functions.

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Playing the Empire Avenue Social Media Exchange

  By GeekLad | May 9, 2011 - 9:00 pm | Gaming, Programming
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Update: e(RINGLE) has incorporated my algorithm into his P3 for Empire Avenue Chrome extension. Use his extension instead of mine, because it includes what I built and much more! If you already installed mine, be sure to uninstall it before installing P3, or some weird things can happen.

Recently, I started playing in a fantasy social media stock exchange, called Empire Avenue. It took me a while to get a handle on what moves the prices, and I’m still learning. With some help from Chris Pirillo, I think I’ve finally got a good handle on it and he’s helped me start a tool that can help you build a sound Empire Avenue portfolio too.

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Urban Rivals Market Bot

  By GeekLad | March 22, 2011 - 9:43 pm | Gaming, Internet, Programming
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urban-rivals-logoUpdate: Shortly after I posted this, the good folks of Urban Rivals politely asked me to remove the post and I politely declined. About a week later, someone informed me changes were made to the market, and the first few sales for each card are now displayed as images rather than HTML. He said up until then, the bot was working great for him, but the changes to the market have caused the bot to stop working. Unless someone is able to fix it with some sort of image to text JavaScript library (I think there are some libraries that do this w/ captchas), the script is effectively dead. I will leave the source posted, in case someone is able to repair it.

Some time ago, a friend got me into an online card game called Urban Rivals. It is similar to other card games such as Magic the Gathering, but played online either via iPhone/iPad app or in your browser. One aspect of the game that quickly got my attention (other than the game itself), was the card marketplace where you can buy and sell playing cards.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was an inefficient market. Profitable trades presented themselves quite regularly, and with a bit of automation it would be easy to take advantage of the market. I proceeded with developing a Google Chrome extension that would allow me to do so, and it worked quite well.

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