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Reset your Drupal password without email.

I deal with Drupal sites often, and one of the most often recurring issues is a forgotten/lost password for the admin account.  Sometimes, the site isn't yours, and you simply were told the wrong info to log into the site but you have FTP access.  Other times, you simply don't want to go through the hassle of sending yourself an e-mail, clicking a reset link, and editing your password through the profile settings page.  There has to be an easier way, right?  Righto.

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Unity3D Assets I Really Love

I bought a Unity 4.x Pro license back in December to help me break into the indie scene on Steam.  I have yet to get that far with Unity, but I have learned a lot, developed a workflow I like, and collected a lot of helpful assets and libraries.  Below are some of the best assets I have used this year.

  1. DiaQ and Dialoguer I bought UniRPG so I could get a jumpstart on developing an RPG in Unity, but unfortunately, UniRPG was never fully realized and was replaced by PlyGame.  The included dialogue editor, DiaQ, was excellent, though!  I am now using an old version of Dialoguer, a newer dialogue editing tool which offers a cleaner interface than DiaQ.  Both are very similar in functionality, so go with whichever one is cheaper. DiaQ: http://plyoung.com/unirpg/docs/diaq.html Dialoguer: http://www.dialoguer.info
  2. Daikon Forge GUI Library AKA DF-GUI This GUI framework allows you to edit your 2D GUI elements inside Unity's 3D scene editor in a very visual way similar to NGUI.  If you have to choose between DF-GUI and NGUI, I recommend DF-GUI, but both are good.  There are also some free alternatives but nothing has the same ease of use. Daikon Forge: http://www.daikonforge.com/dfgui
  3. Ultimate FPS AKA UFPS This is more than a shooter template.  It offers tools and assets for prototyping first-person games in general.  It offers footstep sound systems, a bullet hole system, and a few example weapons for both shooting and melee.  It also offers example scenes for learning how to use Unity's GUI system and how to use UFPS to make a basic shooter.  It goes a step further by giving you power-up item scripts, moving platforms, switch-controlled doors, and even fancy GUI cursors.  It runs circles around the official FPS controller in Unity's Standard Assets Beta.
  4. RagePixel What better way to make your first 2D game than to be able to draw the sprites onto the game world?  RagePixel allows this!  I honestly don't use RagePixel right now, but I have toyed with it, and I think it's pretty neat.
  5. BIG Environment Pack Vol. 2 All volumes of this pack are amazing, but I only own the second one.  In volume 2, you get pretty much everything you need to make an outdoor scene, from trees to grass to rocks to water particles to skyboxes, but you also get some small buildings and ruins and a few furniture assets to place in the buildings.  There are also some neat scripts and camera effects included in some of the example scenes.

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Figuring out a focus for Patreon is hard

I'm kind of a josh-of-many-trades.  Patreon is designed to allow you to offer just one service/product and nothing else.  I think I will be using Patreon to fund my comic, GetLives, but I have yet to start that project, and there are so many other things I also need the funds for.  I need funding for my game assets for example.  It kind of sucks that I can't just set up a variety of projects and have them each get separate funding.  That would require multiple accounts.

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Learning Piano

I bought a piano a while ago, and I was so thrilled to play around with it.  However, when it came down to actually learning how to play it, I was definitely not motivated.  This article is meant to help others in my situation to motivate themselves to learn how to play piano.  It will give you what you need when you need it rather than making you do your own research or telling you to jump-the-gun and start with something too difficult.

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