Recent content on Michal Skoula
My open source package codeigniter-ai-translation now supports OpenAI provider, in addition to Anthropic. There are some breaking changes, such as a different order of parameters, so please check the readme! It’s easy:
The Claude Code CLI has a status bar built into the bottom of the terminal. By default, it displays very little information. Having come from GitHub Copilot, I needed to customise it slightly.
We all have the type of colleague who is not afraid to create a branch, make a change, and then forget about it for months. When you finally come back to review the branch, the SQL schema has already changed and the code is no longer compatible.
I have created a simple pseudo-3D game demo in MonoGame (C#) to demonstrate how the early FPS games (Wolfenstein 3D) worked.
Bagatelle! Wooden desk, some pegs and holes, and a spring. Each hole has different score value and your goal is to outscore your opponent.
A few months later, I tried to start up my Prusa Mini printer to print something for my daughter. But what I witnessed!
This is my eleventh report on my reading and gaming activities. It seems like I’ve been reading more books than playing games this year, probably because of the Kindle I bought. All of the books were in Czech.
I am pleased to announce my latest contribution to the open source community: PowerDocker . As we all know, Docker Desktop is awkward to use, probably due to Electron and the constant need to skip the sign-up process. So I asked myself: what do I really need from a tool to manage my containers? I only use Docker for development purposes: after writing my Docker Compose file for a new project, I…
EDIT 2025-11-19 It is not true! I have uploaded the wrong package to the store. I uploaded x64 OpenGL versions, and Microsoft thinks that it will work on Xbox. Well, no, 1/ OpenGL, 2/ Creators Program is UWP only. I have now uploaded correct package for desktop (x86 to distinguish it), and the game is now available on Xbox again! Sorry for the confusion .
I am excited to announce my latest project, Pohádkovna.cz , a platform that leverages AI to create and share stories. This project combines my passion for storytelling with the power of artificial intelligence, allowing users to generate unique narratives based on their preferences.
My new project is called LEDmech - a merge between LED strips and “mech” which is czech for Moss . With my wife and colleagues, we are creating pictures with real (glycerine stabilized) moss, lighted by LED strips. It can be controlled with smartphone and it can be part of a smart home automatizations.
I recently published a new version of my game called Nazdar! v0.18 . This version only contains small changes, such as grammar corrections and an updated .NET runtime. I won’t be updating the game or adding any new features, so now is a good time to think about it as finished software. Making my first Monogame game was fun, but sadly, hardly anyone was playing it.
I suddenly felt the urge to buy a new 3D printer when I saw the Prusa Mini in action. I’ve been using my old Alfawise U30 for a few years now and it’s time to upgrade. So on Christmas Eve I opened the box containing a new Prusa Mini+. It took me about 7 hours to put it together.
This is the tenth anniversary report of my reading and gaming experiences over the past year. I’ve had even less time for these cultural consumptions because of another, small, new human beeing ❤️
My latest contribution to the free software community is a web extension for Firefox and Chrome called GitHub Avatars .
You want to translate your CodeIgniter project into multiple languages? Well, I have created a PHP library called codeigniter-ai-translation , which uses Anthropic’s Claude AI to translate your language files. You can install it via composer using the link above.
I have a rainwater tank in my garden and I’m a tinkerer, so I decided to do some water level monitoring. For this I used a Raspberry Pi Pico W, which is small, cheap and has integrated Wi-Fi.
I’ve been using Docker for nearly three years now, primarily for development purposes. As a Windows user, I’ve consistently utilized Hyper-V as the backend. This choice was mainly due to the poor performance of the WSL2 backend, particularly because I insisted on keeping my application files on the Windows partition. Although the Hyper-V backend worked adequately for me, it was still…
What I Read Well, not much. Certainly not as much as when I didn’t have a child :))
After nine months, I have released a new version of my open-source game, Nazdar! The Game .
This is an updated FINAL ranking (as of 2023-11-26) of Formula 1 teams, ranked by their IT sponsors or the products whose logos are displayed on their car wraps.
Loop Clipchamp Outlook Why should we, poor developers, use native Microsoft desktop technologies (even if they are multiplatform) like MAUI or WinUI3, when even Microsoft itself is not capable of it and uses web technologies for new applications?
This is a very fine-tuned procedure to restore MariaDB backups. Make sure you restore the DB to the same version of MariaDB.
Call me an early adopter, but it’s only 2023 and I just bought a new Xbox Series X. I didn’t check in advance what the news was. I chose the Series X only because I have a collection of boxed games and want to be able to play them, not because of the higher performance over the extremely cheap Series S.
After more than a year of work, in March I “published” my more or less first real game, which I programmed in C# in the Monogame framework.
Who could resist building their own gaming console? I decided to build an Arcade Cabinet , in the “tabletop” version, also known as a Bartop. I watched several American videos (they all do it the same way) and adapted it a bit for Czech conditions and my own needs (no nail gun, no joysticks, no rubber around the edges). Finally, I found a reasonable use for my Raspberry Pi 3A, which…
What I Read In 2022, I hardly read anything, I mostly played games. The statistics are sad (markdown table).
Half a year ago, I famously migrated my websites and experiments to Azure , specifically to Static Web Apps (which are free), App Service (Flask website, also basically free with limited CPU time), and Cosmos DB (a NoSQL database with a SQL-like API…sounds better than it actually is). And I was basically satisfied, I had resource groups in Azure with individual services, an overview of…
I have a problem with issues at work being spread across several BitBucket repositories. BitBucket cannot limit the visibility of issues to a specific person/team, so we have a separate repository for each major client.
I made a mini project just for fun - diesel - it shows the current fuel prices at my two favorite gas stations. How does it work?
I decided to move all my small websites from the company server to the cloud and get rid of Wordpress at the same time, because I’m a Wordpress hater. I decided to migrate to Azure, because I’m a Microsoft fanboy and with one condition, it has to be completely free, because I’m stingy.
I created an Internet of Things smart box for ExitShop to display the current number of orders and, most importantly, play a melody (like Super Mario) when a new order arrives.
In our house, we have underfloor heating controlled by a Tecomat box, which opens and closes valves based on the temperature in each room and the set target temperature, allowing hot water to flow into each room separately.
Not all games are available on Xbox, so every gamer surely has Steam. However, sitting in front of a PC may not be comfortable, and while you can connect your laptop to your TV via HDMI, it’s not convenient. What if your desktop is in another room?
This year, we moved and now we are three. I didn’t have much energy for reading, but a reading diary cannot be missing. I spent more time playing games, especially on Xbox.
I don’t know when or why, but Firefox started caching forms, probably as a protection against accidental deletion, for example by refreshing the page. It may seem like a great feature for users, but I find it very non-standard.
I built my weather station a few years ago, but only now do I dare to write an article about it. The weather station is open source, but there is no documentation or anything like that. You can find it on GitHub for inspiration. It’s really just a project for fun.
I’m so old that I remember the time of bloggers and RSS readers. Those were truly beautiful times :)
This microwave is about 20 years old. Anyone who comes to it immediately knows how to use it. Just turn the dial.
Motivation Whenever we onboard a new developer to ExitShop , the biggest challenge is setting up the system locally, typically on some WAMP (Xampp, Neard…). Usually, it involves three steps:
Here it is! Once again, a list of what I read last year. For the fifth time.
Here is a chronological list of games I played in 2020!
Planting a tree, building a house, having a son…currently I’m at the second point. We are building a little house in the countryside and I’m writing about it on my blog at domecek.skoula.cz . Stay tuned.
Nintendo 2DS is a “stripped-down” version of the famous 3DS and does not have a flip design + does not have 3D display (which was a hit in 2013). It is a kind of “board” with two screens primarily intended for children, which can be purchased (new) for less than 2,000 crowns.
A great feature in Windows 10 is the native support for Clipboard History. This means that the clipboard (Ctrl + V) doesn’t just remember the last item copied, but remembers multiple items.
I have already written about how to create a gaming console from a Raspberry Pi . With the help of an emulator, you can play games from various consoles. However, it didn’t work out for me. Sometimes it didn’t want to turn on or it caused problems.
OttoDIY is an open source project with a wide community. Essentially, it is a small robot made up of an Arduino, 4 servo motors, an ultrasonic sensor, and a few other parts from a 3D printer.
This year I slowed down a bit. My list includes both absolute nonsense and excellent books. Most of the good ones were fiction. Of the “professional” ones, if you can even call them that, none really caught my attention.
Another use for the Raspberry Pi microcomputer can be a retro gaming console. What we will need:
After about a year of development, I would like to introduce our new project - ARCO1500 8-bit gaming console .