Powered by glolg
Display Preferences Most Recent Entries Chatterbox Blog Links Site Statistics Category Tags About Me, Myself and Gilbert XML RSS Feed
Sunday, Mar 24, 2013 - 19:54 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

On Up

Staggered up some sixty stories for the Tembusu Vertical Marathon I signed up for on a whim. Unsure whether the Red Bull that they handed out helped, but I wouldn't mind trying it at my next IPPT.

Fixed up some C++ code to operate on Linux with Makefiles too, with a bit of help, well-appreciated as neither is my favoured development environment - the configuration is often more painful than the actual coding, particularly where compilers follow subtly different standards (e.g. returnable stringstreams and template instantiations, to name a couple)

Might need to brush up on Ruby (on Rails) again, after my first encounter with it died a natural death upon discovering that it couldn't do much that Perl (interestingly, originally Pearl) can't. Mr. Ham was intially disappointed that it had nothing to do with his gemstone thing, but now he can't shut up about the virtues of Haml after hearing about it. Hope he doesn't get wind of Python, else we could be in trouble.


They're not that dissimilar



The Surveys Will Continue Until Happiness Improves

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
- Oscar Wilde


"It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will. Thus our democracy moves in a vicious circle of reciprocal worthiness and unworthiness."
- G.B. Shaw


No good criticism goes unanswered here; a few months after Gallup polls declared us to be the most emotionless and unhappiest people to walk this sorry Earth, a GLC has pulled out the stops with a Mobile Happython, hand in hand with yet another cheerful local consulting firm pegging us as Asia's happiest by - wait for it - counting "happy words" such as "anticipation", "hopeful" and "thank you" on social media platforms. I anticipate an avalanche of very simple good reasons why this might not be the best measure, and am hopeful that they will be heeded, thank you very much.


Whoever selects the pictures for Yahoo has a sense of humour
(Source: Yahoo! News)


It would have been slightly more believable had we come in second or third, but that was never going to happen, was it?

Meanwhile, the press is back on damage control after the rental issue has come to the fore; instead of a macroscopic overview, they went for the personal story, devoting a full article to how a hawker who pays only S$121 a month can only break even because he doesn't have cheap foreign labour to help out, and offers the observation of many stalls not requiring minimum bids at a frankly ulu backwater food centre being closed, as evidence of low rent not being enough.

I leave readers to consider the validity of this argument.

At the same time, our Swiss experiment has raised hackles down South (not like the general accusation was anything new), while political board games have become the new in-thing up North. Time for Party In Power 2 then?

On the subject of trends, 3D printing seems to have caught on here in a big way, a year after first reported. However, if we're hoping to hub on and become a "3D printing hub", there are a few concerns, not the least being that the European Union is also eyeing that while hoping to muscle in on biotech.

Of the remaining problems, the obvious one would be speed - currently, it still takes hours to produce a fairly simple object, from what I know. The not-so-obvious one is that the market would seem to resemble that for information technology, where we haven't exactly been shaking the world - low-cost commodity modellers hailing from China and India, high-end experts congregating in the USA (well, not according to North Korea) seems the natural model, at least while technical and engineering expertise doesn't get properly appreciated here.

For science can revive frogs - what more can one want? But oops, salad is more dangerous than beefburgers. Sucks to be a health food junkie sometimes.


Simmering

I gave in finally.


Petrol Bayes, Reflection Atoll
(Click to enlarge)


Civilization probably still edges SimCity in terms of hours played, but there's little between them in terms of sheer addictiveness. I knew that firing up a new settlement would mean hours lost in a daze, but when the fone came calling, how could I refuse (actually, I was just waiting for an excuse)? The servers have become acceptably stable after a torrid start, which led many to question why the game was online-only in the first place, since multiplayer was never its selling point. The maps, as can be seen, aren't big either, but one suspects that many features are being reserved for later paid expansions more than due to true technical limitations (which reminds me, the cousin got Heart of the Swarm)

The basics haven't changed that much from earlier iterations, at least since the SimCity 2000 I fell in love with. Take an empty plot, zone residential, commercial and industrial, plonk attractions, manage traffic, wait for the money to roll in, build yet-bigger improvements, and rejoice in the sight of thousands feting Your Mayoress.

Oh, there'll probably be a few strikes, natural disasters and alien visitations in between, but nothing too serious.

But is SimCity 5 (so good they named it plain SimCity, thereby giving those in charge of the sequels a headache) that big a leap? Consider that SimCity 4 came out a decade ago (yes, that's ten years, in 2003), and wasn't that far off the pretty; oh, there was SimCity Societies somewhere in between, but no-one I knew cared too much about that. But fair enough, it's full 3D like all the rest.


An obedient and productive citizen
(Click to enlarge)


The start isn't too complicated - extend the main street, designate some residential areas, and some hardy pioneers will arrive. Unlike previous titles, the building density isn't explicitly selected, but limited by road width, which makes sense - how many skyscrapers does one see by a dirt path?

The roads themselves can now be curved too, if that's your fancy, but there's a reason why most planned cities have a grid layout. Those Sims need jobs, so some industry, at least to begin with, is very helpful - I was lucky that they went downwind without me actually checking, since smokestacks are the rule until the city gets its technology level up.

Having the Heroes and Villains set, I saved up for the nefarious Dr. Vu's Vu Tower instead of waiting to meet requirements for building a University, and the evil mastermind swiftly spread his knowledge to neighbouring factories. For good measure, I plonked a casino next to the tower, and a French police station on their doorstep for convenience. Built the Maxis Man Manor too, but balked at it costing 900 simoleons an hour to upkeep, and shut him down indefinitely since Dr. Vu doesn't actually cause much crime unless you release his henchmen.

With industrial demand through the roof, I had raised their tax rate from 9% to 12% without any protests, only to discover that the newly-developed high-tech shops were much less shy about complaining. Hey, they should be glad I didn't go full Cyprus and simply helped myself to their bank deposits (good news for our homegrown offshore banking sector, mind). Fair enough, the place was still turning a healthy hourly profit, as I happily upgraded almost all my roads to high-density streetcar avenues. A library, grade school and high school went down - note that one can't rename buildings any longer, which was a nice touch.

Utilities had been provided by water towers and sewage pipes, added as required, but never quite keeping pace with demand. The problem was finally solved for good by saving up for a water treatment plant as well as a sewage treatment plant, and placing them side-by-side in a corner; apparently, the sewage replenishes the water table, which is then pumped right back out and filtered. NEWater for the masses! No more manual placement of pipes, either.

As for electricity, the first provider was a wind farm, which got overwhelmed quickly. The area's not named Petrol Bay(es) for nothing, though, and the problem sorted itself after an oil well or two got sunk, and an oil power plant built; the outstanding issue is how to make full use of all that black gold, with insufficient storage at the Trade Depot, and onerous requirements to obtain more by means of the Trade Port.

By this time, the University was up and running, with attached School of Engineering, but unfortunately the citizens seem to have gotten kind of spoilt - fair enough, there were some problems earlier with sewage and pollution, but it seems as they're now complaining that they're too lazy to get on the school bus, with moans about education despite all schools being at half-capacity. Never figured out why no planes arrive at the municipal airport either, with 400 tourists apparently having taken up permanent residence in the departure lounge.

Holding nightly events at the Expo Centre (which seems to give about 30000 simoleons in profit each time) and a few generous simoleon infusions from fone meant that I didn't have to worry too much about that, and I... had better get some real work done.


So cosy, so peaceful
(Click to enlarge)




comments (4) - email - share - print - direct link
trackbacks (0) - trackback url


Next: Cited


Related Posts:
999-RIP-OFF
Tokyo Drifting
The Cycle Begins Anew
Recollections From Beyond
Come On Now
Back to top




4 comments

anonymous said...
issit u hold gangbang parties every night at expo


March 24, 2013 - 21:44 SGT     
Bert's Blog Logic Bot said...
[Parse Error] #!** is not a valid command. Quitting.


March 24, 2013 - 22:00 SGT     
anonymous said...
that doesn't answer the question
can u try again
by the way, they really have these swinger parties
it's a woman satisfying her fetish of getting fucked hard by many multiple men in a single setting


March 24, 2013 - 23:02 SGT     
gilbert said...
Whoever you are, you seem like an extremely knowledgeable person. Anyway, we have the gender-neutral equivalent. It's called government. Not that I'm best qualified to speak on it, mind.


March 24, 2013 - 23:07 SGT     

Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved.