Back in late 2000s, back when I was considering to move to OS X as my primary system, one of the big appeal —albeit it’s not always up to the level— was that Macintosh was bundled with first party softwares that are often exorbitantly expensive on the other side. And let me tell you, the…
The Mad Tea Party
Inspiring yet Mad Spiels
By Rian
Gray, a writer.
How to Exclude Steam Games from Time Machine
One of the obvious challenges of using Time Machine is that not all apps and databases are optimized to use automatic backup. Or to be more blunt on the subject, with modern video games ranging roughly up to several hundred gigabytes with day one patches that are equally large, Steam has been enabling developers to…
It’s Now on CDN
Putting Mad Tea Party on CDN or any other cache servers have been on the back burner for the longest time. And for the first time since its inception, and frankly thanks to free tier services available, Mad Tea Party is now using CDN. It won’t drastically change the experience for the readers; perhaps some…
How to Replace WP-Cron with Linux Cron pt. 2
It’s been about 4 months since I wrote about wp-cron madness. To reiterate why wp-cron had to be called manually, that’s due to how some of the cron jobs weren’t executed even though it was queued for prolonged time. I’ve tried three different methods, one of which was to tackle only the cache. As of…
How to Replace CSS import with link on WordPress
When I started tweaking the theme for WordPress, I started with css, especially the fonts. I wanted the fonts that mimic paper-like experience as much as possible, and although the goal post has shifted quite a lot since, the way I had done fonts on css were almost always the same. On WordPress, you can…
App to Cache Google Fonts on WordPress for GDPR
Yet another post diving into the unguided madness that is privacy laws. By all means, while I am in favor of the privacy regulations, it’s hard for me to fathom what service —not what technology— could be in violation of the new law. Google Analytics had its own share of spotlight, hence why I became…
No More Multi Column Layouts
When I started preparing Mad Tea Party back in early 2010, I recall I had a decision to make. The era of widescreen, 16:9 resolution, was here to stay. But most journals, magazines, and even newspapers didn’t print in widescreen. When they had the precious space, they either reserved the saving for the new advertisement,…
The Case of Missing macOS Sleep Trigger
I was on a lookout for a certain trigger to automate macOS, a sleep trigger. I try not to automate any of the scripts around uncertain triggers, especially sleep cycles, when there may be certain expectations of how things should be at that moment. For example, if a script inadvertently disrupts the machine from going…
Metaphor: ReFantazio Spiel
Atlus does not make an easy game to hop on. The developer is behind one of those franchises that predates modern gaming conventions, ones that are hard sell for new gamers. Not only playing all the previous installments be nearly impossible without getting one’s hands on a retro console, the games are simply too dated…
How to Troubleshoot SSH Permission Issues
This one is for documentation purposes. Networking issue is usually the rabbit hole that gets deeper and weirder more we find out. My method of approaching networking is to leave the ones that are currently working, as-is. In other words, don’t jinx it. The problem I encountered was just plain weird. I was spooked by…
How to Metaphor: ReFantazio: Grind in Late Game
Metaphor: ReFantazio does offer lists of side quests to level up the party to prepare for the next big battle, that is, up until the new dungeon area, Skybound Avatar, is unlocked for the final-final confrontation. At this point, I had access to few other bounties, few dungeons, and some candidate encounters. Finishing them all,…
How to Add Delay to systemd During Booting
One of the things necessary to maintain a VLAN at home or small office is to automate the boot up sequence as much as possible. In case of, say, power outage, you would want the system to be able to boot up on its own, unless you opted Pis and others to turn on manually…
M4, M4 Extreme, and eGPU
eGPU, the popular Thunderbolt solution for underpowered laptops, seems to be sitting on the back burner for Apple. Considering MacBooks did open the way with much of the eGPU devices and support in the early days, it does make me wonder if the Californian company is seriously considering to make Apple Silicon chips to compete…
App to Remove Windows 11 Bloatware
Windows needs a lite version. When I’m working with different Linux distros, at least the community comes together to create a lite version, headless version, or a server version, depending on who is the wordsmith in town; we came to terms with the fact such thing is needed. So from where I stand, I find…
App to Verify Copies using Hash
Few years ago, correction, a decade ago, I did write a short code to verify copied files. As much as I would like to believe NAS is more tolerant, it would be a moot point if the files were already damaged going in —as the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out. Once I had the…














