nooneatall

Fantastic work on your suburban homes! Any chance that you'll be making 45 deg. and 22.5 deg. versions of the 1x2 homes?

Recently, in the hopes of making more realistic cities, I made many custom lots of varying sizes, some 1x4, 5x6, etc. However, in areas where I only want 1x2 zones to develop, those lots/zones are combining to form larger, e.g., 3x4 lots, thus destroying the character of the neighbourhoods I wish to make. Thus, my question is, how do you limit a custom lot to only grow under a certain footprint? Some custom lots, such as Gascooker's 2x2 suburban semis have this behaviour. Nevertheless, while experimenting in the iLive Reader, I've been unable to replicate this behaviour, although I feel it must be a property of the .sc4lot file that is preventing them from combining 1x2 lots or subdividing 4x2 lots, etc., to grow. If anyone has any leads on what property or other method could limit these larger lots from combining smaller zones or subdividing larger zones, it would be most appreciated!

Hello, I haven't been at Simtropolis for a long time, because of life and other interests, including energy. I've been reading up a lot about climate, oil and gas reserves, among other topics, so I think I'll try to clear a few misconceptions to my best knowledge. I think it's time for everyone to learn something about total recoverable and nonrecoverable reserves, and technically recoverable reserves. An oil reserve may have 100 billion barrels of oil, however, many conventional fields will have a recovery factor of 20% to 40%. So that means that out of 100 billion barrels, we can only extract 20 to 40 billion barrels for most oil fields. In the case of the Bakken formation, from what I've read, the tricky geology and chemistry of the oil means that the recovery factor may be between 1% to 3%, if we're conservative, or 10% if we're more generous (source). If we assume that the deposit has a mean estimate of 413 billion barrels (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/features/ngshock.pdf, 2), and we assume a conservative 3% recovery factor, we can only produce, or extract, 12,4 billion barrels (again, we're being realistic or conservative)! To put this into perspective, the world consumes roughly 86 million barrels of oil per day, or 31 billion barrels per year. The United States consumes roughly (off the top of my head) 21 million barrels of oil per day, or 7,6 billion barrels per year. So, if we could theoretically drain all of the oil as fast as we wanted, which is geologically impossible, this formation, and assuming realistic recovery factors, would only supply the United States for a little over a year. That's not a lot when you think about it. With advanced horizontal drilling techniques, we could maybe hope to increase the recoverable oil, which realistically may be 10%, which would mean a total recoverable reserve of 41 billion barrels, which would be nonetheless a significant amount of oil (source). However, I highly doubt that we will see significant production from this formation anytime soon, although it would be helpful. Believing that this formation will be able to significantly increase worldwide production and reduce North America's dependence on imported crude anytime soon is sadly unfounded, blindly optimistic, and it is foolish to count on it. In light of continuing tightness in supply, and skyrocketing demand from developing economies, we need new production from the likes of this formation, but our predicament will not change anytime in the foreseeable future. A heavy recession or depression notwithstanding, high oil prices are likely to stay for the foreseeable future. Shell is one of the latest companies or organisations to recognise the predicament we are in. "After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand," says Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer (source). Over the past months, I've came to the following conclusion: we must work on reducing our demand for petroleum and fossil fuels by all means necessary, because the outlook for these vital resources are not pretty, and we will face major shortages of these resources in the next 5 to 50 years. The environmental impact of our proliferate use of fossil fuels is also of paramount importance--we must act now to blaze a path towards a more sustainable future. If anyone wants to discuss this further, please post and/or send me an email. Regards, John

Weird... somehow I missed that update two months ago... Nonetheless, it's great. Your storylines add such a nice touch to this CJ, if nothing they give us a good laugh. Nothing better to distract the public from the news than humour! I'm sincerely hoping that this CJ is just 'in hibernation,' as I'm sure we all don't want it to die. But I do sense springtime is coming Looking forward to more!

Hmm... seems that you may be sold on the hosting package for its simplicity... but I'll offer my advice anyways. I personally have a server at home, and host several sites. It doesn't take much, I have a Sempron 2500+ with 512MB RAM and a 120GB SATA with a residential cable-internet connection. This runs blazingly fast with Apache and Windows XP (Though I'm considering installing Apache again and upgrading my internet connection when I start hosting a few commercial sites, but that would be ideally). I don't know exactly where your skills lie regarding computers, but installing Apache and configuring it, configuring your router (if you have one), are basically all you need to do to set-up a webserver and are easily done + many helpful tutorials availible online. The only disadvantage of your own server is, firstly, if there is extremely high traffic that caps your bandwidth (we're talking about... millions, or many hundred-thousands of pageviews a month, for a single website for a [small?] parish would be unlikely), and, secondly, the irritatingly loud fans if you sleep two metres away from the server . If you need any help, too, feel free to send me a PM. Hopefully this is somehow helpful. --noone

Whoa! This is fantastic! Especially those updates shots with the catenaries and the wires... amazing. Out of curiosity, how do the wires handle with slopes? Since I believe networks in SC are full-3D, I don't imagine there being troubles with them (contrary to ordinary, BAT catenaries, for one). Though I don't think I could be of much help, I am sure I could if you can find some weird task that it so happens I'm good at Anxiou... patiently awaiting progress... --noone

Whoa. Seems that everytime I visit ST, there's problems with the site... but the server seems to be completely functional here, has to be something on your end (or a rather big bump along the road, possibly), teddyb4492. This reminds me, I have some textures for the RHW-project ready... only if I can find them Wow, ST5.0 seems... different anyways. Going to take some getting-used-to... -noone

Whoa. Some people have nice systems, here. Myself, I'm still looking at getting a new PC sometime soon... till then, I'm stuck with my school laptop. Still, I thought it would fare out better on the test than it did. Zzzzz..., at least it still runs, just not smoothly. And how, I ask myself, could it have rated so low with such a high clockspeed? No wonder I'm planning on getting an AMD X2 when I get the money.

By the looks of it, it seems like impressive specs. The one thing to watch out for is the board, possibly, which can really lag down a computer even with good specs. For that kind of money (I'm assuming American dollars), you're going to get cheaper components, etc., but even still, it seems like a good price for the specs. If you want the best for the cheapest money possible, you're always better off building yourself a PC. However, unless you know what you're doing, it's not as good an idea. Not too sure about E-Machine's reputation, but chances are it's not the best warranty/ support as probably meantioned above. All-in-all, I'd probably say go for it, unless you're willing to spend a bit more and look at systems with better components (board, hard-disc, RAM, in particular). Because good-quality components can make a big difference, believe it or not. I know from experience. Good luck.

Hein, sorry 'bout the site troubles... you kind of forget things after a while. Guess I shouldn't've been starting to change things during a study-break during exams week... Still haven't got a new PC either, so not much (in other words, absolutely no) progress on my part. The site, though, is back online. I think I have the best setup possible right now, considering my ISP goes to great means to stop people from having servers in their bedrooms... once I get a commercial site I'm developing done, I'll fix that... The best link for the site : http://rhwmod.digital-serv1.dnsalias.com:81/ Hopefully this helps for the people trying to download the MOD. Sorry again for forgetting about it.

Date: 1/20/2006 2:52:20 PM Author: Compromise Well my fellow Britians thets apprshiate we have the gulf stream otherwise we would have the extreme climate of Canada.quote> Pitty, then, that the Gulf Stream is weakening, and the 'extreme climate of Canada' is unusually warm this year, like vidioman said. Damned this climate-change... Oh well! At least I can maybe ride my bike in a few days... next week we're seeing highs of above-zero, compared to roughly -20

Zeddic: that looks nice, though the shape seems... odd. I'd try 'rectangulising' the shape of it, or at least lenghtning the curve and/ or changing the 'calibre', because you wouldn't normally see curves like that on a sliproad. Hopefully you'll understand what I mean. I'm not sure whether to start on a junction with actual acceleration/ decelerations lanes (mine was intended to be a backup in the case where there was only 2x2 tiles of space), because it looks like you'll have it covered with a bit of minor touching-up. By the way, it seems ST is much faster than the last few times I have tried to visit, always reassuring. Now back to studying for exams...

*hears the top-secret call and rushes to the scene...* qurlix, you're not the only one, at least I'm finished all of my independant-studies-projects-and-the-like... and I'm able to rest for a a few days at least before exams... and then the nonstop, no-free-time craze starts again... The only thing I've accomplished is a rough texture for a oneway-to-RHW transition/ junction. Any comments are appreciated... I'll eventually get to one with actual acceleration/ deceleration lanes... -noone