BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

All right, now I have a reason to think about BrainKing design which would be running on a 320x240 screen resolution because my new cell phone supports these parameters and it might be a good advantage to access BrainKing from anywhere without carrying a much bigger laptop.

But it is not what I have wanted to post today.

Based on reports of BrainKing users and our own investigations, we have made the rules of publishing a Flash banner much more restrictive (for advertisers), in order to give our visitors a better protection against any kind of a strange behavior which could suddenly start to appear. Since yesterday, no provided banner which does not pass our test of safety cannot be published on any page of any BrainKing site (including this one). We understand that the security should be always the top priority and if you can observe a rectangular animated image on BrainKing now, please be aware that it is either a totally harmless plain image or a simple Flash movie with only one purpose - to visualize and promote a site or a product.

And, at least we are a little bit smarter now.

The BrainKing blog has long articles, short entries and very short notes.

This day is dedicated to the third option, of course.

Users with Brain Rook or higher level can embed YouTube videos to all discussion boards which belong to the fellowship(s) where they have a right to post.

An abnormal keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-F12 invokes a smiley popup window, so you don't need to search a mouse while typing. But you have to use it anyway to click the smiley.

All right, I have a small headache tonight. No more writing.

I have tried to install the Safari browser which is very popular on the Macintosh platform and has been finally released in a PC version (as a beta at this moment). Unfortunately, it has crashed each time I have started it, so I guess the current beta version is not stable enough on Windows XP (haven't tried it on Vista yet). Which is a pity because I would like to test BrainKing with this browser as well. Let's hope the next release will be fixed.

Speaking of browsers, I have looked at our stats and the percentage of Internet Explorer users (accessing BrainKing sites) has dropped below 66%. It means that more than 1/3 of all BrainKing visitors use another browser and it is Firefox in almost 30%. Very cool. It could be an answer for everyone who has liked the yesterday's article about Adblock Plus but cannot use it on a non-Firefox platform - just give this browser a chance and try it out. It is very unlikely that 30% of BrainKing users would access our site with a bad product.

I have created a new category of this blog. It is called Firefox Add-ons and, as the name suggests, it is dedicated to entries about Firefox Add-ons which could be interesting or useful for BrainKing users. We have already posted short articles of this kind in the past, mostly related to various language tools, and today I would like to point out a smart blocker of unwanted advertisements.

Although BrainKing system of paid advertisement is much safer than before and all text or graphical banners are under our control (we add them manually to our repository and no third party can change them without our permission), there is always a small chance of an overlooked detail and this is the reason why we recommend (if you are using Firefox which is recommended as well) to install the Adblock Plus add-on.

There is nothing complicated to say about it. After the installation and Firefox restart, you can easily filter out all annoying parts of a web site (or page) by a simple click and selecting Block or Adblock image function. The tool works with easy to understand filters, so it is a matter of several clicks to block, for example, all Flash content from all pages of the selected site. Simple, useful and practical.

This article does not mean that if a problem with particular banner appears, we do nothing about it and just suggest "block it". But since some kind of problems cannot be solved immediately, using the Adblock Plus add-on is a recommended temporary solution which cannot make any harm - if you accidentally block an harmless image, it is also very easy to find it at the block list and unblock it by a simple click.

Autosave is a great feature if you are used to write long posts to discussion boards and don't want to be surprised by a sudden broken connection to BrainKing (and a loss of the unfinished text). However, there are situations when it is still not enough - for example, if you set your autosave interval to 5 minutes, start to write a three pages article and after 3 minutes you would like to save the draft without submitting it.

The solution of the day is the magic combination of Ctrl and Shift keys. If you want to take advantage of this newest improvement of BrainKing, please make sure that:

• You are a paying member and the page Settings / JavaScript is available for you.


• The Autosave interval is set to something else than none and the option Use Ctrl-Enter to submit a text is on (find the mentioned options on the mentioned Settings page).


• You are using Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 or Opera 9 (I have tested it with these browsers).


• You don't use the RTE Editor.

Then, if you start to write a new discussion post or private message or Notepad note etc., try to press Ctrl-Shift, the autosave feature should be instantly invoked and save the text for a later use.

Adding a new feature which is not related to board games at all always brings up both positive and negative reactions. And, of course, YouTube videos support is a good reason to discuss about safety again. Whether such discussion is meaningful or not (I have my opinion ) is not the subject of this entry.

ICRA seal means that public boards are moderated (clicking on the seal on BrainKing.com home page will show a page containing the line "User-generated content such as chat rooms and message boards (moderated)"). According to the recent addition of YouTube video embedding support on Music board, the number of the board moderators has been increased, in order to keep the board under a better control. The question is - should a complaint like "I won't allow my kids to read the Music board because they could see inappropriate videos" be addressed?

The answer is no. More exactly, the answer is "there is no reason to treat the Music board differently" because we could easily say that "bad language can suddenly appear anywhere and until it is moderated, everyone can see it, including children, let's make all public discussion boards unsafe!". It is a nonsense, of course. Bad videos would be removed along with banning the offending user from the board. Furthermore, it is unlikely that bad videos would appear on the Music board at all. An empirical experience.

Now, when I read what I have just written, it seems to be a useless article at all. But even an useless entry can have useful side effects.

And we really don't plan to allow users to embed YouTube (or else) videos to other public discussion boards. The possibility of enabling this feature for private (fellowship) boards can be considered.

I have been checking our payment option which are offered to BrainKing users to pay for a membership and it seems that some of them are very rarely used (2-3 times a year) and their advantage is no advantage at all, compared to the other ones.

The subject is the American Express money order (check) and this option has been officially removed from BrainKing's shopping cart system. According to the usage of this method, I doubt that anybody would miss it.

By the way, we are still looking for new payments options to add to BrainKing. If you have a good experience with some payment gateway which is easy to set up (preferably in English), please don't hesitate to recommend it to us. Although the majority of BrainKing's paying members is sending the payments through PayPal, I am sure that there are many other people who have a good reason not to use it, and we would like to give a chance to access all BrainKing features to everyone who is willing to upgrade to a higher membership level.

This entry is nothing but a short note about "third party scripts". This notion covers all auto-player, Greasemonkey and similar scripts written by BrainKing users which allow players to make the forced moves (auto pass, the only move in the current position, etc.) automatically. Since there are many question regarding this technology, the common answers should be summarized and published:

• It is allowed to use scripts to play forced moves, as long as it does not break the User Agreement.


• BrainKing takes no responsibility for any possible harm which could be caused by using products which are not official BrainKing products (no such official script exists at this moment). If you decide to use the mentioned scripts (and to provide your user name and password in some cases), you do it at your own risk. No complaints like "the script didn't work and I have timeouted in 300 games!" or "someone is accessing my account with my user name and password" will be accepted.


• BrainKing does not guarantee that the third party scripts won't stop working because the structure of BrainKing pages has changed and the scripts fail to read them correctly. Unless an official BrainKing API exists and is published, parsing the HTML code of BrainKing pages is done at your own risk too.

If more questions to this subject appear, I'll be glad to answer them, of course.

It would be nice to follow with something like "yes and that's why BrainKing is turning to a new outstanding MMORPG game" but it might be better to stick to more realistic visions. Actually, the point is the option to embed YouTube videos to BrainKing pages.

Not all pages, of course. Since there are many things to test yet, the feature works only for Brain Rooks or higher membership levels and only on these pages:

• User profiles
• Notepad
• Music discussion board

Anyway, the majority of Music board posts contains links to YouTube videos, so why not to play the videos directly on BrainKing instead? And how to do it:

• Find your favourite video on YouTube (example).
• Find the Embed line, it should be located to the right of the video section.
• Copy the code (starts with "<object ") and paste it to the post form of the selected BrainKing page which is enabled for videos (see the list above).

Please keep in mind that the User Agreement (containing rules for discussion boards) is valid for video embedding too. More detailed rules will be posted soon.

The advantage of associating an icon image with a BrainKing account (paying members) is a good and popular feature, especially when I have a look at the gallery pages. It would be great if all users upload their real faces there but I know that it is very unlikely to happen.

However, people tend to change their minds occasionally and there are users who suddenly decide not to show their images anymore (for a reason which is not the subject of this article). They usually solve this problem by uploading a black image (to replace the current one) or sending me a request to deactivate the icon or photo. None of these solutions is ideal.

I have just added the possibility to activate/deactivate the icon by the user himself. If you are a paying member and want to change your icon mode, please go to your Profile page and find the new small form containing four options: Activate icon, Deactivate icon, Activate photo, Deactivate photo. I think it is self-explanatory enough.

I know it would be even better to be allowed to change the icon to one of the previously approved images from the icon history but this feature requires several modifications in the BrainKing code. The time will come.

First of all I must say that, in my own humble opinion, it was not necessary at all because a site's reputation is usually deserved by an overall meaning of the majority of its users, not by labels or seals or marks of any kind. However, I have found the opportunity and decided to put BrainKing through a content rating process. Why not? A label cannot make any harm, as long as it's not misused.

The English home page of BrainKing - http://BrainKing.com now contains a small blue circular clickable image which points to The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) site where BrainKing has been registered as a site which fulfil all "Family Online Safety" conditions. If you click the label, you should get a page which says that BrainKing is Labelled with ICRA and contains No nudity, No sexual material, No violence, No potentially offensive language, No potentially harmful activities, User-generated content such as chat rooms and message boards (moderated).

Just use this information as you wish.

The popularity growth of our site(s) has been confirmed again because the statistics of visitors was significantly increased during the last month. The BrainKing game site itself shows more than 81,000 unique visits in May 2007 and if we combine it with this blog site BrainKing.info, the total number exceeds the magic limit of 100,000 unique visitors a month. Impressive.

I guess that some people would wonder how it is possible with only 48,000 registered users on BrainKing (and not all of them are active). The answer is simple - thanks to our growing family of BrainKing domains (.com, .cz, .de, .sk, .es, .nl, .it, .se, .ru, .dk, .ee, .hk and .info), good indexing and ranking in search engines, regular updates, link exchanges and different kinds of a promotion, the sites are being visited by many people who have been actually looking for something else but the search engine result page has listed BrainKing as well. And it is not a rare situation when a casual passer-by becomes a registered user.

Which is exactly what the internet marketing is about. And we like to explore new opportunities although some of them have nothing to do with board games at all.

Well, sixteen is not enough. I have increased the maximum number of players in the same tournament section (round robin type) to 20 and I swear it is the final change to this feature. Further megalomaniac requests of this kind will be ignored.

And since the new tournament type makes the backgammon strategy a little different to the normal one, it might be a good improvement to make these games highlighted. If you play a game of a triple gammon tournament type, you will see a green text This game is played with triple gammon tournament rules just below the game board, with a question mark pointing to the Help page with this tournament type description.

The auction is almost finished (1 and half day left), I am just curious if someone is waiting for the last hour to start the final bidding fight or nobody dares to bid over current 606 Euro. One way or another, it's a good success.

Which word is correct, gargantuan or gargantuous?

It doesn't matter anyway. The point is that the advantage of the recently added triple gammon tournament type is more significant if a player can play more games with other tournament participants in the same section. Which is the reason why we have enabled a creation of round robin tournaments with sections containing up to 16 players. Such tables could be quite big and occupy more space at the tournament page, but you still have a good chance to win the tournament even if you lose a game or two. Especially when the triple gammon tournament rules are applied.

There is one consequence of this change - since the number of generated games for one player could be up to 15 (or 30 if everyone plays 2 games with every opponent), the current rule of having 5 or 10 empty slots (applies on Brain Pawn, Brain Bishop and Brain Knight level) must be changed as well, most likely in a more flexible way. But it would be addressed later.

I have been told by several backgammon players that there is something called TTT which adds a new kind of excitement to backgammon tournaments and it would be a great thing to implement this tournament type on BrainKing.

So we did.

With some changes/improvements, as usual:

• The TTT abbreviation might sounds nice in English but since BrainKing supports 20 languages (and more in the future), our name for this tournament type is Triple Gammon which is better suited for a translation.


• Giving 0.5 points for a lost game does not seem too logical to me. BrainKing gives you
  • 0 points for a loss
  • 1 point for a normal win
  • 3 points for a gammon win
  • 5 points for a backgammon win

This new feature is not fully tested yet but I hope there will not be many problems because it could have been easily adapted to our existing tournament system.