Using Dropbox to sync saved games (and more) across multiple computers

Over three years ago I made a post on Reddit explaining how to do this, since then Steam introduced cloud saving, so all saved games were sync'd without a second thought, I kinda grew used to it. Long passed is the time when I'd backup my saved games on CD's and DVD's with fear of losing all those game hours to a computer failure.

However I got hit with this problem recently when I bought Banished on GOG, while it's great that they sell all the games DRM free, it's a shame they don't have cloud saving yet, so I went back to the old technique and decided to share it on a more permanent place than reddit.
Please note that instructions cover Windows 7, Linux and OSX, now Win 8 or 10, honestly I don't know if shell link extension works there, if there's an alternative and as of now, I don't care.
The original post:

I started using this technique to sync saved games so I can continue my massive Civilization games when my gf is sleeping at her house. It's the same I've used for years to sync my pidgin settings and .vimrc across my linux machines, but yeah using it for gaming:

First of all you need [...] Dropbox (why on earth are you not using this yet anyway?) make and account and stuff. If you're on Ubunto it's available on the software center thinggy.

Windows 7 only: Get Shell Link Extension 

(my pictures examples are with wow addons and settings on windows 7)

Now find what you want to sync and MOVE it to a folder on dropbox:

http://i.imgur.com/mPRVC.png 

In this case I'm moving the Addons folder

http://i.imgur.com/Dcyxr.png 

On windows, drag the folder back to where it was with the right button and select Drop Here -> Symbolic Link, it will pop up an authorization thinggy, but it's ok.

http://i.imgur.com/tYGSA.png 

On Mac and Linux pop open a console and use the "ln -s /path/to/drobox/place/where/you/put/your/stuff /original/path/thing" command

And you're done! Yey

Bonus, you can share folders with your friends so you all can use each other's computers to play or whatever, for instance, next I'm making sure me and my gf can play WoW on any of our computers with the same addons and addons preferences.

Not that I condone this kind of thing, but if you got you pc games at the special Bay shop and thus don't have steam, you can use this technique.

Things Developers say

As a QA person I've been told by developers a myriad of rather amusing things or funny conversations caused by failed tests and the all too often "works on my machine".

I've been meaning to compile them, but I'll just start making posts as they happen/I remember.

All names and locations have been removed for privacy of those involved.

$Dev: On $ticket you mention that the $behaviour happens when it shouldn't. However on the requirements it says $behaviour is expected.

$Me: Oh, I must have missed that, where does it say so on requirements?

$Dev: Well, something things are common knowledge and shouldn't need to be written anywhere.

$QA2: This doesn't work

$Dev: Of course it works, look *press button on his laptop* it works, you're testing it wrong.

$QA2: But that's your machine.

$Dev: So? It works.

$QA2: "Works on my machine"

$Dev: It works!

$Me: Great, $Dev we should tell $Boss to arrange $Ops to have your laptop sent to $location.

$Dev: Why?

$Me: Your machine will be the new prod server obviously, since it only works on your machine.

At this point $Dev helped $QA2 to find the root cause of the problem, things were indeed broken.

$Me: This doesn't work when you use $resource_type.

$Dev: Can't reproduce, did what arguments did you use? Can you retest please in the RC and master branch please?

$Me: I used the arguments of a $resource_type, here's the error stack trace on both branches.

$Dev: I used $other_resource_type and it works, are you putting the arguments correctly? Or are you using dummy/broken data?

$Me: I used $resource_type, if I had used bad data I'd have said so in the first place. Just try $resource_type.

*couple minutes go by*

$Dev: Ok this doesn't work, I'll fix it.

Ruby: Custom Errors for Lazy Bums with const_missing

Catching errors is quite a normal thing when writing code, every programing language has some variation of the throw/catch, in Ruby's case, it's the elegant begin, rescue and ensure blocks.

At some point in every project you stop catching "other" people's errors and start catching your own.

So you start creating you own error classes, there's a couple common approaches I've seen over the years.

• Create an Errors namespace on each class/module you need and create errors for that there.
• Create a generic Project::Errors with its own file bag and throw all errors in there.

I usually go for the second approach, so error classes don't distract me, but that's more of a personal preference anyway.

However, I am a lazy bum and I've got tired of specified my error classes, so I made this Gist as an example:

The main idea behind this, is letting you freely type your errors as you need them both where they're being raised and rescued and you don't need to worry about they existing since they'll be created in runtime for you.

This method is probably not very efficient, but I don't care for this case.